California Equality Summit: Transparency vs. Good Strategy
Filed by: Patricia Nell Warren
January 17, 2009 10:00 AM
http://www.bilerico.com/2009/01/the_equality_summit_transparency_vs_stra.php (http://www.bilerico.com/2009/01/the_equality_summit_transparency_vs_stra.php)
"In war, practice dissimulation, and you will succeed. Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt." Those words were written 2500 years ago by a great Chinese general, Sun Tzu, who laid out some principles of winning strategy so brilliant that they are still used today, not only by the military but also by politicians and marketers and yes, religious leaders. In any kind of conflict, good strategy is the difference between victory and defeat.
As I follow the uproars around the California Equality summit coming up in L.A. on January 24, and watch the organizers buckling to public pressures about media access, I wonder whether they are thinking about that old caveat to keep your plans "dark and impenetrable."
Patricia Nell Warren is one of the most consistently sane bloggers-politiques anywhere in the LTBG world.
I believe in progressive ideals. But I also have the pragmatism to know that progressive idealism is a defensless lamb amongst hungry wolves.
Idealistic-only progressives are their own worst enemy. Equality will not be given freely, it will be wrested from the iron grasp of the bigots.
Karen