Apologies. I was thinking of violence working as it related to ethically positive occurrences, rather than conquest and murder. Also, you'll notice that I did not suggest that violence did not work, just that his statement did not provide any specific examples to uphold his stated fact.
Clearly, violence does have an impact on individual lives and the history of this planet. However, usually the "violence never works" argument is meant in the sense that initiating violence against another is not a positive act and that, in most cases outside of self-defense, there are other preferable alternatives. It is not meant to say that violence never helped anyone gain power or success, but rather that it is not necessarily a Good Thing to do so.
But like the "violence never works" crowd, as long as they insist on platitudes that are demonstrably untrue (and they deny basic physiological/psychological principles), they will have a big fight on their hands.
Please give examples. You may be right, but giving this statement as fact without providing any concrete examples to show its factual correctness (or mentioning what these basic physiological/psychological principles or demonstrably true facts are) does not help in furthering your argument. "Violence never works" may be a clear fallacy to you, but it probably isn't to a lot of people, including myself. I would love to hear the argument against it.
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There's a five minute courtesy time??? And all this time I've been showing up early like a sucker ;)
Clearly, violence does have an impact on individual lives and the history of this planet. However, usually the "violence never works" argument is meant in the sense that initiating violence against another is not a positive act and that, in most cases outside of self-defense, there are other preferable alternatives. It is not meant to say that violence never helped anyone gain power or success, but rather that it is not necessarily a Good Thing to do so.
Please give examples. You may be right, but giving this statement as fact without providing any concrete examples to show its factual correctness (or mentioning what these basic physiological/psychological principles or demonstrably true facts are) does not help in furthering your argument. "Violence never works" may be a clear fallacy to you, but it probably isn't to a lot of people, including myself. I would love to hear the argument against it.