《伟大辩手》这部电影取材于上世纪30年代发生在美国的真实故事,讲的是德州一所黑人学院辩论队成长的故事。影片中有许多精彩的辩论片段。这里选用的与哈佛的辩论是虚构的,它的故事原型是威利学院辩论队与南加州大学的辩论,威利学院取得了这场辩论的胜利。
James Farmer: Resolved: Civil 1)disobedience is a moral weapon in the fight for justice. But how can disobedience ever be moral? Well, I guess that depends on one’s definition of the words. Word.
In 1919, in India, 10,000 people gathered in 2)Amritsar to protest the 3)tyranny of British rule. General Reginald Dyer trapped them in a courtyard and ordered his troops to fire into the crowd for ten minutes. Three hundred and seventy-nine died...men, women, children...shot down in cold blood. Dyer said he had taught them a moral lesson. Gandhi and his followers responded not with violence but with an organized campaign of non-cooperation. Government buildings were occupied. Streets were blocked with people who refused to rise, even when beaten by police. Gandhi was arrested, but the British were soon forced to release him. He called it a moral victory. The definition of moral: Dyer’s lesson or Gandhi’s victory? You choose. 
詹姆斯·法默:辩题:非暴力抵抗是维护正义的道德武器,但抵抗又怎么会是道德的呢?我想,那就要取决于你对这些词的定义了,这个词。
1919年,印度有一万人在阿姆利则集会,抗议英国的暴政统治。雷吉诺·戴尔将军将他们困在一个院子里,然后让军队向人群扫射十分钟,造成379人死亡。男人,女人,孩子……倒在血泊中。戴尔说他给他们上了一堂道德课。甘地和他的追随者没有用暴力回应,而采取了一场有序的不合作运动。他们占领了政府大楼,堵死道路,甚至被警察殴打也坚决不挪开。甘地被逮捕了,但是,没过多久,英国人就被迫将他释放。他说这是道德的胜利。道德的定义:戴尔的道德课还是甘地的胜利?你来选。
Harvard Debater A: From 1914 to 1918, for every single minute the world was at war, four men laid down their lives. Just think of it. Two hundred and forty brave young men were4)hurled into eternity every hour of every day, of every night, for four long years. Thirty-five thousand hours. Eight million two hundred and eighty one thousand casualties. Two hundred and forty. Two hundred and forty. Two hundred and forty.
Here was a 5)slaughter 6)immeasurably greater than what happened at Amritsar. Can there be anything moral about it? Nothing...except that it stopped Germany from 7)enslaving all of Europe.
Civil disobedience isn’t moral because it’s non-violent. Fighting for your country with violence can be deeply moral, demanding the greatest sacrifice of all: Life itself. Non-violence is the mask civil disobedience wears to conceal its true face: 8)anarchy.
哈佛辩手甲:从1914年到1918年,世界处于弥漫战火中,每一分钟就有四个人倒下。想想吧,长达四年的时间里,每一个昼夜的每一个小时,都有240个勇敢的生命坠入永恒的沉睡。一共是三千五百小时,八百二十八万一千人丧生。240人。240人。240啊。
这是一场屠杀。死亡人数之多是阿姆利则事件无法比拟的。此事有何道德可言吗?没有,除了此举让德国不再奴役欧洲。
消极抵抗并非因为其非暴力的特点而称得上道德。以暴力手段为国家而战也可以非常符合道德准则的,而且它要求人们为此作出终极的牺牲:生命。非暴力是消极抵抗佩戴的面具,用以遮掩它的真实面目:无政府主义。
Samantha Booke: Gandhi believes one must always act with love and respect for one’s opponents, even if they are Harvard debaters. Gandhi also believes that lawbreakers must accept the legal consequences for their actions. Does that sound like anarchy?
Civil disobedience is not something for us to fear. It is, after all, an American concept. You see, Gandhi draws his inspiration not from a Hindu 9)scripture, but from 10)Henry David Thoreau, who I believe graduated from Harvard and lived by a pond not too far from here.
萨曼莎·布克:甘地相信人必须对其对手充满爱和敬意,即使他们是哈佛的辩手。甘地也相信犯法之人须接受他们行为的后果。这是无政府主义吗?
非暴力抵抗不是我们应该惧怕的东西。说到底,它源于美国的思想,你看,甘地的思想源泉并不是来自于印度教的经文,而是来自亨利·大卫·梭罗。据我所知,他是从哈佛毕业的,曾经就住在离这里不远的小池塘边。
Harvard Debater B: My opponent is right about one thing. Thoreau was a Harvard grad, and, like many of us, a bit self-righteous. He once said, “Any man more right than his neighbors 11)constitutes a majority of one.” Thoreau the idealist could never know that Adolf Hitler would agree with his words. The beauty and the burden of democracy is this: No idea prevails without the support of the majority. The people decide the moral issues of the day, not a majority of one.
哈佛辩手乙:对方辩友有一件事说对了:梭罗确实是哈佛毕业生,而且他也像我们大多数人一样,有点自以为是。他说过,“任何一个比邻居更正确的人,都构成由一个人组成的大多数。”梭罗这个理想主义者永远也不会知道,希特勒会同意他的观点。民主之美及之重在于:任何观点都需获大多数通过才算成功,现今应由人民判断道德问题,而不是一个人的大多数。
Samantha: Majorities do not decide what is right or wrong. Your conscience does. So why should a citizen surrender his or her conscience to a legislator? No, we must never, ever kneel down before the tyranny of a majority.
萨曼莎:大多数并不能决定什么是对或错,这应由你的良心决定。那么为什么一个公民要将他的良知交由立法者支配?不,我们永远不能向一个有大多数人支持的暴政屈服。
Harvard Debater B: We can’t decide which laws to obey and which to ignore. If we could...I’d never stop for a red light. My father is one of those men that stands between us and chaos: A police officer. I remember the day his partner, his best friend, was gunned down in the line of duty. Most vividly of all, I remember the expression on my dad’s face. Nothing that erodes the rule of law can be moral, no matter what name we give it.
哈佛辩手乙:我们不能自行决定遵守或无视哪部法律。不然的话,遇到红灯我就不会停下来。我的父亲是一个处在我们和混乱之间的人,他是一名警察。我还记得他的搭档、他最好的朋友因公被枪杀的那天。我记得最清楚的是我爸爸脸上的神情。任何对法治的侵犯都是不道德的,不管它们的名字多么花哨。
James: In Texas...they 12)lynch Negroes. My teammates and I saw a man strung up by his neck and set on fire. We drove through a lynch mob, pressed our faces against the floorboard. I looked at my teammates. I saw the fear in their eyes...and worse...the shame.
詹姆斯:在德州,人们以私刑处死黑人。我和我的队友看到一个男人被绳系着脖子吊起来,然后被烧死。我们开车经过一群动私刑的暴民,我们把脸紧紧贴在车底板。我看着队友,在他们眼中我看到了恐惧。更悲哀的是我看到了羞耻。
What was this Negro’s crime that he should be hung, without trial, in a dark forest filled with fog? Was he a thief? Was he a killer? Or just a Negro? Was he a sharecropper? A preacher? Were his children waiting up for him? And who are we to just lie there and do nothing? No matter what he did, the mob was the criminal. But the law did nothing, just left us wondering: “Why?”
那个黑人犯了什么罪,让他没有经过审判,就在一个雾气弥漫的黑暗树林里直接被吊死?他是个贼?是个杀人犯?还是只因为他是黑人?他是个佃农?传道者?他的孩子在等着他吗?大家都躺着一动不动,眼睁睁地看着那一切发生,那我们又成为了什么呢?不管他做了什么,那群暴民才是罪犯,但是法律对此却毫无作为。让我们不禁思考其中的原因。
My opponent says nothing that erodes the rule of law can be moral. But there is no rule of law in the13)Jim Crow South, not when Negroes are denied housing, turned away from schools, hospitals, and not when we are lynched. 14)St. Augustine said, “An unjust law is no law at all,” which means I have a right, even a duty, to resist...with violence or civil disobedience. You should pray I choose the latter.
对方辩友说,任何对法治的侵犯都是不道德的。但是在施行种族隔离政策的南部,法治并不存在。至少在黑人被拒绝住房的时候,在被学校、医院拒收的时候,在我们被私刑处死的时候,法治并不存在。圣奥古斯丁说:“一个不公正的法律就不成为法律。”这意味着我有权力,甚至有责任,去用暴力或者非暴力方式来反抗。而你们应该庆幸我选择了后者。
翻译:丁一