Is Violence Never the Answer?

On January 6^th, Americans stormed the Capitol Building. They had no real agenda, and accomplished nothing. Every pundit, politician, and celebrity I’ve seen has decried the “violence” and demanded accountability for every person involved. I would agree that actions have consequences and these people need to be held accountable for their actions. But this display of frustration is not very different than the BLM and Antifa riots that have gripped this nation all year, except they didn’t burn Washington, D.C, to the ground. Every person displaced yesterday still got a paycheck. Their livelihoods weren’t ripped from their grasp. I can assure you, not a single lawmaker from the Capitol was financially harmed. Even Nancy Pelosi’s computer was paid for by the very people who took it. So why was this so heinous, but the riots of the summer rational and acceptable?

As usual, my biases: I am a registered Libertarian. I don’t subscribe to the notion that either the Democrats or the Republicans can fix the mess they created, and I certainly believe it’s in their best interest to keep the circus at status quo. I believe that violence is sometimes the answer. That’s not a good Stoic philosophy, but I also believe in the warrior-poet and in the right of all people to act as a sovereign estate, which sometimes requires defense against violence, which in turn requires the capability to be violent.

Let’s imagine a situation. A woman has been living with a man for seven years. They share finances, and he takes about 70% of her money. He pays for the house, but he also has a truck they could not afford which she is not allowed to drive, and spends over 50% of their income on beer, ATVs, his friends, and a bunch of stuff she’s not allowed to know about. They live decent lives, but there’s no way they can afford to have children, and their debt-to-income ratio is so high that they have to borrow money from friends and family, and sometimes the neighbor so long as the neighbor gets to use their yard and their equipment to run his business. The neighbor sells things they need, and he charges them full price, which they happily pay. The man threatens her every day with violence, but he only beats her on occasion, and he says she always deserves it. She willingly agrees that sometimes she deserves it. One day after over a year of complaining about his abuses, she decides not to hand him her paycheck, and he kills her in cold blood. The police don’t find anything wrong with the situation as long as he pays for the funeral (the police, after all are his friends and he spends a lot of money on them), and the man finds a new woman to take her place the next day.

Does this situation sound abhorrent? Now imagine that woman was sold into that situation by her parents, who in return were promised that the man would take 10% of her money and fix all their problems. He didn’t, and in fact made their problems worse for his own benefit, but the promise was made nonetheless. The man is your government. The United States Government; the same government that lies to you every day and touts itself as the defender of your freedom. The protector of the “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” is a farce. What should the woman have done? The man was clearly more powerful than she. He even refused to stand up for her when his friends told her to keep her offensive opinions to herself, and burned her letters to the newspaper editor. How was she to respond in order to preserve her life? Should she have taken action to defend herself? Could she have used violence to save her own life? Let’s say the man hadn’t taken away her ability to use a gun. Could she have saved herself with it? Would the police have looked upon her favorably after she killed their friend and benefactor? What about the fact that she was in love with who the man was supposed to be? His promises were amazing, and she wasn’t really a prisoner or anything. The only option she really had was to leave him for his twin brother. He would protect her. Strange thing, though…his twin brother had already been through three other women who died mysterious, unfortunate deaths.

Don’t be fooled. Your government has grown to a size and scope that far exceeds its authority. The Federal government uses itself to justify itself to itself, at your expense (and every future American forever). Frustration is not out of the question, and the right to redress is all but dead. Prove me wrong: write to your Congressional representation and see if the representative responds. No form letters, no staffers, but the actual representative. They will not, and I know this from a great deal of experience. They listen to lobbyists, who have money. They don’t listen to regular people who do not. This is why they should be shackled by the Constitution, not free to ignore it. But how does a People put their violent, petulant, insolvent government back in shackles where it belongs when it holds all the power? The Signers of the Declaration of Independence had no illusions about how this would be done, but I’ve previously written that their method is now out of the question. The other thing the Signers had no illusion over is my primary note of caution: 

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes…” 

Can our government right itself by political means, thereby making this horrifying current reality “light and transient,” or is the “long train of abuses” only getting longer?