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{1} "One day, I remember, a dirty glass of water was on a counter and Mr. Muhammad put a clean glass of water beside it. ‘You want to know how to spread my teachings?’ he said, and pointed to the glasses of water. ‘Don’t condemn if you see a person has a dirty glass of water,’ he said, ‘just show them the glass of water that you have. When they inspect it, you won’t have to say that yours is better.’ Of all the things that Mr. Muhammad ever was to teach me, I don’t know why, that still stands out in my mind." – The Autobiography of Malcolm X, page 205
Last night, I was thinking about some of the recent discussions on DU. It seems to me that DU serves us best when discussions – including most of the heated debates – provide us an opportunity to examine all sides of an issue, like glasses of water on the counter. Perhaps this is especially true in the issues that are the most controversial: impeachment, the democratic primaries, how to end the US war of occupation in Iraq, and others.
When we are confident in our opinions, we usually are patient with people with differing points of view. We are happy to place our glass of water on the counter next to their glass. We do not have a compulsive need to demand that other glasses of water be taken off of the counter. We trust that those who thirst for knowledge will look at the different glasses, and pick out the cleanest one.
{2} " I’ve told how debating was a weekly event there at the Norfolk Prison Colony. … Standing up and speaking before an audience was a thing that throughout my previous life never would have crossed my mind. … I will tell you that, right there, in the prison, debating, speaking to a crowd, was as exhilarating to me as the discovery of knowledge through reading had been. …. Whichever side of the selected subject was assigned to me, I’d track down and study everything I could find on it. I’d put myself in my opponent’s place and decide how I’d try to win if I had the other side; and then I’d figure a way to knock down those points. ….
" ‘Compulsory Military Training – Or None?’ That’s one good chance I got unexpectedly, I remember. My opponent flailed the air about the Ethiopians throwing rocks and spears at Italian airplanes, ‘proving’ that compulsory military training was needed. I said the Ethiopians’ black flesh had been splattered against trees by bombs the Pope in Rome had blessed, and the Ethiopians would have thrown even their bare bodies at the airplanes because they had seen that they were fighting the devil incarnate.
"They yelled ‘foul,’ that I’d made the subject a race issue. I said it wasn’t race, it was a historical fact, that they ought to go and read Pierre van Paasen’s ‘Days of Our Years,’ and something not surprising to me, that book, right after the debate, disappeared from the prison library." – The Autobiography of Malcolm X; page 184.
When we debate controversial topics on DU, we should be aware of any tendency to try to remove certain glasses of water from the counter. I do not mean the removal of those things which obviously violate the rules here, such as attempts to disrupt, or efforts to promote non-democratic candidates. Those who administer the Democratic Underground do us all a favor by removing those types of posts, and sometimes, the posters.
In so large a forum as this, there are going to be a wide variety of points of view. I think it is great to have an opportunity to participate in the discussions here. Reading the various opinions expressed here, and the foundations that various DUers make to support their opinion, is a pleasure. Most of all, I am impressed by those DUers with a grasp of history, and an ability to show the connections between what happened in the past, to what is taking place today. And even in the case of those few DUers who hold opinions I have no respect for, I do not wish for their posts to be magically removed. Their glass of water has as much right to be placed on the counter, and held up to close examination, as my own. In fact, I like it that way.
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