WORLD ON FIRE
Trevor K. McNeil & D. S. Mitchell
Better Angels
Humans are complex. Neither angels nor devils, but something in between. As with many things it is a continuum. Abraham Lincoln understood this perfectly and touched on it when he referred to “the better angels of our nature.” As with human nature, so with human action. Which assists in understanding our history of civil disobedience. Particularly when it happens to turn ugly. Such as when legitimate protests based on genuine grievances turn into deadly riots.
Rebels With A Cause
Henry David Thoreau was a vocal abolitionist, anti-expansionist and a conductor of the underground railroad. In 1849, Thoreau, an infamous proto-anarchist, published his essay “Resistance to Civil Government”. “Anarchist” in this case meaning classical Anarchism. A political ideology that accepts rules, but opposes the notion of rules in a top-down coercive system, where using lethal violence, or the threat thereof, to keep the populace under control. Thoreau advocated “resistance to an unjust state.” He said, “I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government”. Thoreau said “the government that governs best is that which governs least.” Though notice the phraseology. Government. To govern. There being a vital difference between a government and an administration.
Historical Perspective
America has a long, rich history of civil disobedience. “Fight the Power” being the unofficial national motto. Setting the American Revolution aside, one of the places this first came into focus was in lower Manhattan in 1863. From July 13th to July 16th, during the throes of the American Civil War, hundreds of citizens, many of them immigrants took to the streets to protest the draft that would send them to fight the Confederacy. What started out relatively peacefully soon grew into a large violent, three-day riot. In the end an estimated 120 people lay dead.
