In the news today...

[catsittingstill]

This is what militant means. And this is what militant means also.  And a little more here, if it's still not clear.

So when you find an atheist shooting someone he's been hired to guard, and then being showered with rose petals by fellow atheists, while major atheist organizations declare that no one should attend the funeral of the murder victim, you'll know you've found some militant atheists.

It trivializes the concept to pin the label on people who simply criticize religious ideas.

Comments

Militant

[bigbumble.livejournal.com]

I was in high school when Martin Luther King was advocating "Militant Nonviolence". This struck me as an oxymoron, so I asked my social studies teacher how something could be militant and non-violent. She did not have an immediate answer, but to her credit she got back to the class with her answer a couple of days later. Militant means taking physical action on an issue whether it be protest marches, sit ins, rallies, rioting, shooting people, lynching people. Militant non-violent leaves out the rioting, shooting and lynching parts.

In short, there are militants and there are militants. There are also connotations that go with the term when it is used without a violent or non-violent modifier.

Re: Militant

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I realize Wikipedia has shortcomings as an authoritative source.

But it thinks militant means (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militant) "open to using violence to achieve an end."

Which, in my opinion, applies better to the links I provided than to people who criticize religious ideas.

If someone wanted to talk about militantly nonviolent atheists I would have less problem with it--the juxtaposition of the two apparently contradictory terms would force people to think rather than just absorb the slander.

Re: Militant

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I think your teacher was full of bull**** and just trying desperately to find a way to call Dr. King something nasty. It doesn't mean that the word actually means that, only that people who want to find something nasty to call a good person will resort to lies.

Re: Militant

[bigbumble.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should have placed quotes around my paraphrasing of my teacher's answer. "Militant means taking physical action on an issue whether it be protest marches, sit ins, rallies, rioting, shooting people, lynching people. Militant non-violent leaves out the rioting, shooting and lynching parts." She was stating that Militant Non-violence was activism without violence. The term "Militant Non-violent" was widely used in the news at the time and she was leading discussions on it as part of our current events part of the class.

Re: Militant

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Maybe so, but the term "militant non-violent" was in the news as a sensationalist and inaccurate way of marginalizing the nonviolent. It's literally impossible to be both militant and nonviolent at the same time, but it sounded more negative than "extremist nonviolent," which might have let some people dare believe that there was any good in these vicious nonviolenters! So the papers used the word 'militant' wrongly, on purpose. It doesn't mean we have to perpetuate the deliberate falsehood.

Re: Militant

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, I get a fair number of Google hits on "militant nonviolence Martin Luther King"

There is apparently a biography of King that calls him "Apostle of Militant Nonviolence" as part of the title, and I'm also getting hits that combine King and Gandhi and "militant nonviolence."

It may not have been intended as a slur.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

It strikes me, just thinking about the language, that militant as a noun is a quite different word from militant as an adjective, and it's just unfortunate that they're spelled and pronounced the same. (Without bothering to research it, I suspect that militant as a noun, as in 'Islamic militant', is a recent development which makes prescriptivists howl.)

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

But very very quietly, in case we upset someone.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

See above about Wikipedia's page for "militant" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militant)

[occams_pyramid]

From my sig file - origin not known:

What is Blasphemy? It's the idea there's a superior being who can make the mountains, the oceans and the skies, but who still gets upset about something I said.

He's an all-powerful being, he's just got self-esteem issues.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-)