dinner out

Talking about civil disobedience was quite emotional. Was the first time in weeks that I had done any reading for Ethics and only because it was Martin Luther King assigned. He said that we must confront the community, and if it does not want to negotiate then we must take to a program of direct action, by which he meant a nonviolent protest of civil disobedience (of breaking the law) and yet subsequently submitting to the law willingly and its penalties. And that that in reality would be expressing the highest respect for the law. But what does a group do if the community that it wants to confront simply does not want to negotiate and if a nonviolent Gandhian movement does not succeed? I want to believe what Gandhi said, which I do believe sometimes, that in the end, the way of love and truth will triumph every disaster but what if I , or others can't wait that long? And a state has violence, a monopoly on violence which it can legitimately (in the sense, electorally justified) use, and what of groups that do not? and what of those that say that war is an extension of politics by other means as Bismarck did? and yet I would not want to go so far as saying violence should be used by those who cannot achieve their ends by other means.

also had dinner yesterday with an ancient civil rights professor of law who's taking a lot of heat in the national press for his support of the use of torture in qualified situations and who really loved the sound of his own voice as well as dinner with Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha who sadly had nothing interesting to say.