Iran and the Right to Bare Arms
Reports on Iran describe crowds in green or black. Oddly enough, what has impressed me most is not the green or black demonstrators are wearing, but the amount of flesh showing. Picture after picture on Andrew Sullivan's blog seems like little more than a vast sea of bare arms, with Mousavi's long sleeves standing out as highly conspicuous.
Granted, it is June, and the streets of Tehran are presumably hot. Long sleeves would be uncomfortable. Still, Islamists are notoriously prudish about such matters and, after all, many of the demonstrators are women. Presumably in the eyes of many traditionalists, a bare-armed woman would be indecent. Yet there they are, chadors (at least partly) in place, arms bared. Freedom in action.
posted by Essayist-Laywer at
10:40 PM
2 Comments:
Hello there!
You are officially my first blogging friend. If I may call you that. :-)
Great to see your take on Iran. Although personally gun adverse, I really do wish some of those protesters were armed to the teeth!!! But then, they would not quite evoke such sympathy would they.
Andrew has really been great on this. Somehow it doesn't surprise me that you follow the Daily Dish. I have always felt Andrew's collateral damage of not allowing comments was the lack of connection amongst readers, who judging from the e-mails he posts must be interesting people.
Hello, Alice. Good to see you back. As for bearing arms, I'm sure NRA types will be saying see, if only the protesters had guns, they would quickly overthrow their government.
The trouble with the NRA is that they always assume that political violence is something benign -- just liberty at its most exuberent, and that good guys always win in an armed showdown. And yes, I agree, armed resistence is sometimes justified. But it is not a thing to be undertaken lightly. If the protestors started shooting, most likely a civil war would ensue. Civil wars have a strong tendancy to brutalize the participants and bring the very to the forefront. So lets stick to baring arms and be very cautious about bearing arms.
As for Andrew Sullivan, his coverage has been, I think, the best around.
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