It’s true. I am reducing my blogging. But the folllowing is a worthy exception.

I like to read obituaries in the New York Times. Not for macabre reasons, but because it’s a way to learn about people. The Times recently wrote about Gene Sharp. I didn’t know anything about him. It turns out he was the guru of nonviolent resistance in his generation. Not on religious grounds but on pragmatic grounds. He was widely read and admired around the world.

Here is the key takeaway:

“His philosophy could be reduced to two axioms:

“First, autocracies are vulnerable to being undermined because “dictators are never as strong as they tell you they are,” he said in Mr. Arrow’s film, “and people are never as weak as they think they are.”

“Second, while limited violence against dictatorial governments may sometimes be inevitable, violence provokes more violence, a strategy that gives dictators an advantage.”

Please remember these words as you resist unjust policies:

The strong ”are never as strong as they tell you they are and people are never as weak as they think they are.”