In the case of slavery, it was legitimate for slaves to escape, and for others to help them. It was legitimate for slaves to rebel, violently.
Democracy had totally failed them, and they had no duty to respect it. Nor did any free or white person who wanted to help them. To hell with “the law” when it is used for tyranny, even in a democracy.
It was an extreme example, of course, to make a point. Not all laws made in democracies are just or legitimate or worthy of respect.
Well, the slaves were not citizens, and the American democracy wasn’t meant to serve them in any case. So this is really outside the point Bricker was arguing.
THE POINT is that our democracy wasn’t mean to serve slaves. That’s why it was corrupt! That’s the reason ignoring it’s laws and rebelling was justified!
It’s not really an argument, just a commentary. Just saying that the principle (that I take Bricker to be upholding) of a citizen having a duty to abide the law of a democratic society has nothing to do with enslaved persons. By definition, chattel slaves are outside the terms of the citizen, without stake or voice. Of course they have a natural right to fight back, or run.
A citizen doesn’t have a duty to respect a law that allows for slavery either. A white free man was justified in rebelling to free slaves as much as a slave was. John Brown was right.
Well, TG, IANAL, but seems to me that a crime involving violence ought to disqualify a person from possessing a lethal weapon, or at least be subject to strict scrutiny. Crime is still crime, I suppose, but crime against property doesn’t rate as much as crimes of violence, since property does not bleed or suffer. Leastwise, not any more.
Also seems to me that “Justice” Thomas is deploying legal semantic nitpickery about Constitutional rights to defend an odious and downright stupid distinction. That he broke a ten year silence to advance this repulsive sophistry only confirms that my low opinion of him might yet be too generous. “Law above fear” is my first principle for law. I understand, even without the Counselor’s generous condescension, that semantic precision is a requirement, but remain firm in my opinion that we can do a damn sight better than this.
It’s a fine distinction to draw, maybe. My question is: if that’s the distinction that we use to separate the serious ones from the well it’s bad, but… ones, how the fuck come assaulting your romantic partner isn’t one of the serious ones?
By this argument, I suppose any citizen is right to use violence (even against innocent bystanders, per Brown) to oppose any law they believe is immoral.
There are philosophers and political scientists who think this stuff through. But all I can say is you can’t possibly believe the opposite - that there are NEVER cases where violence against unjust, immoral laws is justified. It’s somewhere in the middle. And slavery was a very clearcut case of an evil that is so wrong that it justified violent rebellion. What more evil can there be, except perhaps genocide?
There are people who apply this same analysis to the great evil they believe abortion to be.
I agree there is a line, and I have no problem placing abortion in the section of “wrong, but not justifying violent response.” But it illustrates the problem of accepting violence as a tool, knowing that not everyone accepts your definitions of good and evil.
In a secular society, we surrender some of our autonomy to the society. We need not become automatons, accepting any societal dictate – but our first recourse should always be to use our representative democracy to effect change. There should be a very high bar for extra-legal methods of resistance.
Of course. But it can’t be avoided. You can’t possibly say that there is never a situation where violence is not justified. I can easily find some vast evil that anyone would agree justifies violent resistance. Heck, that’s the reason Godwin’s Law exists.
Obviously. Nobody believes that violence is always justified. Obviously there should be a high bar.
Slavery is above that bar. John Brown was right. To hell with any democracy that allows slavery. It doesn’t deserve to exist. One would hope it could be reformed without violence and slavery ended without violence, of course, but nobody should shed a tear of slaves fight to be free or someone helps them, just because they let the white people vote on stuff.
Except that looking back through the recorded history of our race, such a blindingly obvious truth as “slavery is evil,” seems to have been remarkably difficult for us to discern.
So while I agree with you that slavery is an unmitigated evil, I am constrained to point out that we have roughly ten thousand years of clues to suggest that the reasonable human didn’t agree until fairly recently that this was so.
In other words, you are not stating some law of nature here.
It isn’t necessary to talk “absolute evil” when we are toiling over “bad” and “worse”. Nor does the date on the receipt make any difference, if its wrong today, pretty good bet it was wrong yesterday.
Also, the situation underlines, once again, the absurdly preferential treatment accorded to firearms in our, ah, “culture”.
You would benefit from writing one hundred times on the blackboard a sentence that conveyed your acceptance that your mere opinion was not the same thing as an unalloyed fact.
IN YOUR OPINION, firearms are accorded absurdly preferential treatment. Not my opinion.
And as ever you fail you comprehend that when there is disagreement in a representative democracy about what is wise social policy, we resolve those differences through the democratic process, not by reading Mother Jones and parroting back their views as fact.
Sure. Because throughout recorded history, those people, if they escaped slavery, had little compunction about taking slaves themselves if the opportunity arose.