Gandhi, Without the Myth

Abstract

That power ultimately comes from the barrel of a gun is not the hypothesis of Chairman Mao alone; it is a conviction common to Richard Nixon, Eldridge Cleaver, Hubert Humphrey, Andre Kosygin, Georges Pompidou, Jerry Rubin, Edward Heath, the editor of the New York Times, Al Capp, and more than several archbishops. To name a few! In fact, across generational and cultural, political and economic frontiers, a belief in the final efficacy of violence seems, ironically, to be one of the few ties that bind us. Century upon century, at least as far back as Cain, violence has been the principal means to public power and vies with sex as a source of stimulation and satisfaction.