When is armed struggle against the state justified?

Great Debates
41

I am confident that will not happen, so I do not worry about it.

During the late 1960s and the early 1970s a lot of youthful “revolutionaries” had lurid fantasies of something similar to the Russian Revolution happening in the United States. While they were dreaming of storming the Winter Palace the United States was moving to the right. The main reasons for this movement were the black ghetto riots that happened from 1964 to 1968, and violent protests against the War in Vietnam.

Any armed struggle by the left against the U.S. government will lead to a right wing backlash that will make everything in the United States much worse by left wing standards.

42

I think Duckster nailed it.

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.”

Democracy makes it far easier to alter government to prevent it from being destructive, than reach the stage where abolishing it altogether. Every major democracy has seen some form of armed struggle by those who perceived the government as a threat, but most of those struggles resulted in altering those governments.

Armed struggle does not mean a huge army of rebels or revolutionaries trying to overthrow the regime. But like the Labor and Civil Rights movements, it means a willingness to engage in violence against a state that uses violence, but victory is more often won at the ballot box or in a judge’s chambers than on any battlefield.

Any case where the government uses violence - be it physical or political, such as jailing dissidents or suppressing speech and peaceful assemblies, then those oppressed have the right to engage in equal tactics. (It is being shown that non-violent methods are more effective in modern societies though.)

Government cannot hide behind the shield of laws and legitimacy when it swings its sword for illegitimate and destructive goals. Plus the first stage is often using thugs to do its dirty work, supported either passively or actively, and so the first conflicts are rarely against the state.

And modern democracy is not solely ‘majority rules’, but also explicit protections of individuals and minorities against abuse by the majority. If the former are threatened by the latter, they certainly have the right to struggle against those threats in equal proportion.

[QUOTE=New Deal Democrat]
Any armed struggle by the left against the U.S. government will lead to a right wing backlash that will make everything in the United States much worse by left wing standards.
[/QUOTE]
History does not support this conclusion. One important by-product of Kent State and similar events is that lethal force is heavily frowned upon and outright discouraged when law enforcement officers confront demonstrators, no matter how many rocks or bottles they throw. Kent State was one of the main reasons for developing or deploying less than lethal weapons such as tear gas and tasers.

As noted above, the Labor and Civil Rights movements did see most of their agenda adopted, partly because they were willing to use violence, even if in most instances they did not.

43

The labor movement was unpopular with most of the voters until the unusual conditions of the Great Depression. A major reason was that people associated the labor movement with violence.

The civil rights movement was only successful as long as it was non violent, and when violence was used against it by segregationists.

Public opinion surveys demonstrated that most Americans blamed the demonstrators, rather than the police for the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago during 1968.

As far as Kent State is concerned:

A Gallup Poll taken immediately after the shootings showed that 58 percent of respondents blamed the students, 11 percent blamed the National Guard and 31 percent expressed no opinion.[33]

Don’t forget that two years after the Kent State killings Richard Nixon was reelected in a landslide.

44

We got it, we got it, we just took it as said.

45

[QUOTE=New Deal Democrat]
The labor movement was unpopular with most of the voters until the unusual conditions of the Great Depression. A major reason was that people associated the labor movement with violence.
[/QUOTE]

Labor made substantial gains long before federal action as part of the New Deal. Actions that would not have been taken without the long struggle by Labor, where violence on their part was mostly in self-defense.

[QUOTE=New Deal Democrat]
The civil rights movement was only successful as long as it was non violent, and when violence was used against it by segregationists.
[/QUOTE]
Such is the new dynamic that I referred to, but part and parcel of the Civil Rights movement was the Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers, who helped make the establishment realize they had best cater to the non-violent leaders such as King Jr., since the alternative would be far worse.

[QUOTE=New Deal Democrat]
Public opinion surveys demonstrated that most Americans blamed the demonstrators, rather than the police for the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago during 1968.

As far as Kent State is concerned:

A Gallup Poll taken immediately after the shootings showed that 58 percent of respondents blamed the students, 11 percent blamed the National Guard and 31 percent expressed no opinion

Don’t forget that two years after the Kent State killings Richard Nixon was reelected in a landslide.
[/QUOTE]
Rarely does armed struggle immediately capture the imagination of the majority (which was not even the case during the American Revolution). Lack of public support is hardly a reason to state that those fighting the government equally lack justification of their efforts.

And bias in media reporting is hardly a new phenomena as well. The public is often ignorant of the causes of an event in the immediate aftermath. In regards to Kent State (and Jackson State and Orangeburg and Stonewall and …) history has shown that the demonstrators are rarely the cause of violence.

Riots certainly do happen, but that is rarely intended as an attempt to overthrow a government so much as the boiling over of the anger and resentment with the intent to engage in some destructive means themselves, rather than be continue to be the victims of the government.

46

This would be a pretty simple flowchart. Does a state exist y/n –> violently oppose it.

No one cared (outside radical liberals) until black people started to riot and threaten to burn down every Southern city until their demands were met. That got the white’s attention right quick.

47

Gains like what?

48

I do not see the Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers as doing anything but scaring whites into voting Republican.

49

An important principle that hasn’t been emphasized enough is proportionality. That is, it isn’t worth it to start a bloody revolution over an unfair parking ticket.

If you’ve got a list of grievances that demand redress, you have to balance that against the cost of revolution, including the likelihood that even if you win, the resulting government is only going to be a marginal improvement on the last one.

Also is the confusion of ends and means. People are confused because they imagine that ends and means are different things. Except, every end is a means and every means is an end. Democracy is both an end and a means, as is violence. The purpose of living your life is to live your life. The purpose of any choice in your life is to improve your life and the lives of others. So if you decide to, you know, slaughter millions of peasants to create a perfect utopia the problem is, what if it doesn’t work?

50

From the Tet Offensive on, most leading organs of the American media were critical of the War in Vietnam, and sympathetic toward the anti-war movement.

Gallup September 29, 2010

Nearly half of Americans (48%) say the media are too liberal, tying the high end of the narrow 44% to 48% range recorded over the past decade. One-third say the media are just about right while 15% say they are too conservative.

51

A two-thirds plus one majority is the standard for most of the legislatures in the US, and a three-quarters standard for ratifying an amendment to the Constitution. Which perhaps not coincidentally is about the supermajority necessary to win a civil war. So if a 75% majority elect governement representatives to enact their desires to arrest, imprison, and execute the 25% minority, the minority may well indeed be out of luck. That is a big problem with establishing democracy in Iraq- the Sunni minority supported Saddam Hussein, because in any winner-take-all pure democracy they would be perpetually outvoted, and in any uprising they’d be massacred. African-Americans faced a similar problem for nearly a century after the Civil War. What changed was the gradual establishment of the idea that democracy includes safeguarding the human rights of the minority.

52

I thought I would post this here since it seems relevant. It probably deserves its own Pit thread…

Indiana prosecutor resigns after email exposed encouraging a false flag operation to stir opposition against the Wisconsin protesters.

For the legal minds on this board, this seems to me to be stepping very close if not over the line of engaging in terrorist activities, but I really don’t know the specifics of those laws. Are these actions prosecutable? Could we at least scare the crap out of these idiots with indictments so they realize that even suggestions of these tactics are unacceptable.

Because I get the feeling that sooner or later one of the idiots in office will take up the offers.

Can we let violence be purview of lone nut jobs like in Tuscon, and not part of any elected officials playbook. I would also suggest that any of them that even discuss such actions as a hypothetical should be invited to spend a weekend or so at Guantanamo or used in a case study as to whether water-boarding is actually torture or not.

53

Reminds me a bit of this case in the UK. Although that seems way more heinous than anything the UK guy did.

54

I love the statement by the Indiana Attorney General’s office: “We respect individuals’ First Amendment right to express their personal views on private online forums, but as public servants we are held by the public to a higher standard, and we should strive for civility.”

Boy, they really nailed it on the head. Because when a government official is recommending shooting people for protesting the government, the critical issue is the lack of civility.

55

Every Southern city? The truly destructive race riots, like Watts and Detroit, took place outside the South.

56

Rebel, n. A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish it. – Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

57

Yeah, it’s not at all like progs pretending to be Tea Partiers and trying to stir up trouble at Tea Party gatherings, or SEIU members occupying the capitol building of Wisconsin, or the death threats made against Wisconsin’s governor and Republican members of the state legislature, or the harassment and death threats made against a young white woman who dared to criticize the bad manners of Asians in her college library in a Youtube video. None of that is cause for concern at all.

58

Never.
(Unless you win.)

:slight_smile:

59

When you can win.

60

I was born here.

The national political structure in charge of this territory never asked for my endorsement, approval, or input.

On the other hand, I am allowed to vote, and I can run for office if I so choose.

I can rise up in armed struggle against the United States of America any damn time I feel like it. It’s my prerogative. I don’t have to defend the ethics of doing so. The damn government exists as long as it pleases me to allow it to continue to exist.

There may be situations where I am ethically compelled to try to overthrow the government of the United States of America. Tommy said it is not only my right but my duty to do so if they become destructive of the ends of ensuring my safety and happiness and start embarking on a campaign of imposing a despotism.

I myself tend to think in terms of the most effective tactic and how the role of violence itself plays against the egregious situations I may have cause against. Military operations, by their very nature, tend to concentrate authority into the hands of a few. In all honesty, as critical as I am of this packaged, communication-orchestrated, climate-controlled life of consumer passivity, I don’t see revolutionary violence as the most likely or most necessary solution. They’ve attained social control with a minimum of overt physical coercion. They’ve left a lot of free-market communication opportunities wide open, and communication is better power than armed might when you can have it.

So although I claim the right to violent overthrow of the government any time I see fit, I really can’t see it as a likely necessity unless a lot of things change very dramatically. As long as I can make posts like this to an open forum such as the Straight Dope Message Board, I have far better weapons than armed struggle can supply me with.