Pillars of American Life
As violence against police, political figures, and politically vocal individuals escalates, it is worth noting the way in which such violence departs from the roots of the Western and American tradition.
America has been characterized by the ten commandments and by the rule of law and free speech. We may characterize essential elements of American social and political tradition then as:
- The freedom to speak or dissent from political views, excepting the inciting of violence
- A prohibition against murder (one which does not prohibit self-defense, the power of police or the military to protect a nation or punish its enemies and law breakers)
- The rule of a consistent law rather than a ad hoc or post facto rule by an individual, party, or social attitude that may shift with time.
- Due process of law, such a fair trial and equality under the law
We might also include the significance here of anti-defamation, the honesty of the press, respect for authority, etc.
What these elements uniquely establish is that America is uniquely interested not in controlling its people or forcing them to espouse a particular political position or social plan, but in the social self-determination, freedom, moral well-being, and dignity of each individual. This dignity even includes the fact that a person will receive punishment when they break the law. In doing so, we state that they are to be treated not as a mere psychological pathology nor paternalistically but with the full dignity and weight of their human nature.
These elements also entail that we insist on living together and in political respect with those with whom we disagree. The other option is social control in which those with whom we disagree are eliminated, ‘reeducated,’ imprisoned, or shunned.
To imprison, murder, or forcibly reeducate or silence such individuals has typically been understood to be tyrannical and almost definitely fascist in the lose sense and to represent the practices of a long tradition of non-western states who regimes have been deeply oppressive and responsible for the murder, torture, and imprisonment of millions. This is in fact not hyperbolic language but simply the historically verifiable fact as a text like the Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn. China, Russia, Cambodia, Germany in WWII all bear this out and bear out the link between the destruction of free speech and tyrannical rule.
Germany is in fact a further reminder of the manner in which the politization of the university becomes a tool to radically shift a nations culture and why the college campus remains central to the structure of American society.1 It is not this we are exploring here, that is, the roots of such a radical shift in Western or American thought and how the university sold out this nation. Rather we are simply noting that a radical departure has occurred, such that the following phrase, once virtually ridiculous has no become something implicitly accepted by many new commentators and politicians:
Your Words Made Me Kill You
“Your words made me kill you,” would once have been understood to be absurd excepting under the immediately and literal threat of violence. But in our political climate, in the very context of American freedom and democracy, and even in some Christian circles, we have come to play with the idea that some who says words which we disagree with, even words which suggest political agendas we find heinous permit us to murder or assassinate them. It should be obvious that I am referring to Charlie Kirk’s murder as a chief example.
The deep irony we face is that Charlie Kirk is accused of being a fascist even while he welcomed peaceful dialogue with those with whom he deeply disagreed. While those who call him fascist take up precisely the tactics of fascist and tyrannical parties throughout history and suggest that those who disagree with them deserve the violence the receive. That is, if you disagree with them and vocalize this, you will be killed or deserve to be killed.
Those who accuse Kirk of being a Nazi take up Nazi tactics and further often side with the antisemitic sentiments of the Nazi party.
What does all this mean? It means that the leftist deployment of language and political tactics has become deeply subversive. The facts are themselves regularly falsified, as this post and this one both show. But perhaps more significantly the meaning of words (such as fascist) and the meaning of the American political tradition, that is, American society itself, is being subverted. In no ordinary use of language is Charlie Kirk a fascist and in no ordinary use of language is his murder just or part of our political tradition.
This is not the rule of law but the exercise of power apart from law, not law but the will to power. Perhaps even more problematic is the way in which the Christian tradition has been leveraged to support such unwarranted and evil action, which again include fear mongering, the subversion of justice, murder, deception in media practice, the subversion of language, and disrespect of human life.
John Brown’s Final Speech & The Christian Tradtion
We can only touch on this briefly. Traditional Christian teaching has rejected the idea that murder is lawful. Further, tradition Christian teaching has understood that political rulers are not to be assassinated. But allowing for civil disobedience and radical civil disobedience.
We might look upon the words of John Brown. John Brown is not a favorite with most conservatives for good reason. His violent attempt to free slaves presents certain problems to the rule of law. Nevertheless, I take him up because he has become associated with a radical leftists ANTIFA group.
It is worth noting how John Brown himself understood law, due process, and his relation to God. Even more importantly, if we can take his word for it, it was not his intention to murder. Therefore, I reproduce in full his speech before the court which found him guilty and sentences him to death, a speech some have placed among of the greatest in American History:
I have, may it please the court, a few words to say.
In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted, the design on my part to free the slaves. I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter, when I went into Missouri and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moved them through the country, and finally left them in Canada. I designed to have done the same thing again, on a larger scale. That was all I intended. I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection.
I have another objection; and that is, it is unjust that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved (for I admire the truthfulness and candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in this case), had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.
This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that “all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them” [Matthew 7:12]. It teaches me, further, to “remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them” [Hebrews 13:3]. I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit; so let it be done!
Let me say one word further.
I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have received on my trial. Considering all the circumstances, it has been more generous than I expected. But I feel no consciousness of guilt. I have stated from the first what was my intention and what was not. I never had any design against the life of any person, nor any disposition to commit treason, or excite slaves to rebel, or make any general insurrection. I never encouraged any man to do so, but always discouraged any idea of that kind.
Let me say, also, a word in regard to the statements made by some of those connected with me. I hear it has been stated by some of them that I have induced them to join me. But the contrary is true. I do not say this to injure them, but as regretting their weakness. There is not one of them but joined me of his own accord, and the greater part of them at their own expense. A number of them I never saw, and never had a word of conversation with, till the day they came to me; and that was for the purpose I have stated.
Now I have done.[2]: 340–342
We are a far cry from John Brown, however mistaken (or not) that he may have been. This is a man who acknowledges the rule of law, the right of the state, and who recognizes that murder was not a lawful intent. Thus John Brown did not understand himself to be treasonous or to be inciting insurrection.
It is may claim that those who have recently attacked police, who have attacked and threatended judges, who have murdered men and women, and who have incited such murders by rhetoric and lies, are indeed treasonous. There treason however is not merely against the American goverment or the American people which indeed it is, but against God who will one day bring them under judgment
Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;
forget not the afflicted.
13Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?
14But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation,
that you may take it into your hands;
to you the helpless commits himself;
you have been the helper of the fatherless.
15Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;
call his wickedness to account till you find none.
16The Lord is king forever and ever;
the nations perish from his land.
17O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted;
you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear
18to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.
—-Psalm 10:12-18
1 See Paul Johnson’s Modern Times . Here I provide an excerpt from from page 127:
“The notion that the
student body is in some constitutional way a depository of humanitarian
idealism will not survive a study of the Weimar period. Next to
the ex-servicemen, the students provided the chief manpower reservoir
of the violent extremists, especially of the Right. Student
politics were dominated by the right-wing Hochschulring movement
throughout the 1920s until it was replaced by the Nazis.5 5 The Right
extremists proceeded by converting half a dozen students on a
campus, turning them into full-time activists, paid not to study. The
activists could then swing the mass of the student body behind them.
The Nazis did consistently better among the students than among the
population as a whole and their electoral gains were always preceded
by advances on the campus, students proving their best proselytizers.
Students saw Nazism as a radical movement. They liked its egalitarianism.
They liked its anti-Semitism too. Indeed, the students were
more anti-Semitic than either the working class or the bourgeoisie.
Most German student societies had excluded Jews even before 1914.
In 1919 the fraternities subscribed to the ‘Eisenach Resolution’,
which stated that the racial objection to Jews was insuperable and
could not be removed by baptism. The next year they deprived
Jewish students of the ‘honour’ of duelling. In 1922 the authorities at
Berlin University cancelled a memorial service in honour of the
murdered Walther Rathenau rather than risk a violent student
demonstration. This policy of appeasement towards student violence
became the pattern of the 1920s, the rectors and faculties always
capitulating to the most outrageous demands of student leaders
rather than risk trouble. By 1929 the universities had passed almost
wholly into the Easterner camp.
“
Same & Other 