Force

As much as anyone wishes it to be otherwise, as much as it goes against everything you're taught in kindergarten, Mr. Dubois' assertion that force has settled more issues is completely true.

I'd like to begin by posing a question. Do you honestly believe that the way we live today was not directly affected by the use of force? Without force we wouldn't be the dominant country we are today (WWII), we wouldn't be a true independent people, or at least we wouldn't have gained our independence until much later (Revolutionary war), and we definitely wouldn't have as stable a state as we do now. The definition of sovereignty, as thrown about in my world politics class, is the legitimized use of force within a certain area.

Of course, there are several cases of nonviolence working in a perfectly effective way: examples such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr cannot go unnamed in this argument. And I say that those solutions are fantastic and should be strived towards at all cost when problem solving, but the question here is not morality, it is a question of the overall effectiveness. Obviously, throughout all of human history, more grand, important issues have been settled through the use of force, moral or not. Look at the Romans! Look at the British! Every great empire began spreading and maintaing influence and order through the use of force. You can argue all day over whether or not it is right, but it is undoubtedly effective.