One of the things I found striking in the previous article (the one on evangelicals) was the claim that people involved in anti-abortion groups don’t see their activities as political, and claim that most of what they do is religious, like praying about abortion or Bible-reading. That reminded me rather strongly of the depiction of abolitionists in a book (historical fiction) I just read. Most of what abolitionists did probably amounted to little more than talking, praying, singing, and Bible-studying about the evils of slavery. Useless? Or consciousness-raising? Does it require a large army of people who say they agree with you to inspire a small % of people to actually get stuff done? Or does stuff get done by people just gradually changing what they believe, even without anyone doing big, “effective” things?
I recently encountered a petition to Honor the Children of Pakistan (Note: this was written immediately after the massacre of a hundred Pakistani children by the Taliban.)
On its face, the petition seems utterly useless (and possibly slightly insulting to Pakistan.) Signing a petition about how children deserve educations does nothing about the security situation in Pakistan. It’s not like the problem here is that Pakistan just hasn’t bothered to build schools, or cranky parents won’t let their girls go to school, or the kids are too busy sewing soccer balls to go to class, or any other practical impediment to which we can imagine fairly easy solutions, like Americans donating money to build schools or laws that fine parents for not sending their kids to school. The problem is that there’s a war going on, and one side is massacring the other side’s children. And I can’t think of any easy solutions to that, other than building a wall around the Taliban and shooting anyone who comes over, which may not be feasible.
(Given the circumstances, I wouldn’t blame Pakistani parents if they all started homeschoolong.)
Anyway, me signing a petition or not is clearly useless–but in the long run, can it actually be useful?
