2008 Woodie Awards
SectionsLetter: Goal of protester indefensible morally and instrumentally
Issue date: 1/18/08 Section: Opinion
The United States government, on all levels, uses violence - or more often and more effectively the threat of violence - to support one economic system and to limit our freedoms in such a way as to serve that economic system.
In morally indifferent matters, such as a person's decision to take drugs or a person's decision not to pay taxes, a violent response to such state-sponsored violence is ethically justified by sheer self-defense.
To make this concrete: If, while I am smoking marijuana in my house and three well-armed policemen break in and try to haul me off to a jail cell, I have the same moral right to resist as I would if, while I was eating Skittles in my house, three well-armed thugs who decided nobody was going to eat Skittles in their neighborhood broke in and tried to stuff me in a car trunk.
While some may argue that the democratically elected nature of the government somehow justifies the first case but not the second, an equally supercilious but ultimately bogus justification could be invented for the second case as well.
The same goes for someone's attempt to take money from me by force, whether it is a federal marshal or a mugger; again, given enough time, either one could come up with a bogus explanation of why their robbery is purportedly justified.
Thus, though we may have arrived at our conclusions by different means, both Mr. Culbertson-Faegre and I agree, correctly, that, in at least some cases, violence against the state is morally justified.
I thus hope that I now have his attention and the attention of others just by the fact that I'm not trying to dissuade him from the use of violence on ethical grounds and certainly not trying to say, quite fatuously, that tout court or prima facie (look them up) violence is wrong.
I am also not trying to dissuade him from the use of violence on the grounds that it would be ineffective and lead to consequences much worse than the status quo, i.e. the "you-just-can't-win" argument.
In morally indifferent matters, such as a person's decision to take drugs or a person's decision not to pay taxes, a violent response to such state-sponsored violence is ethically justified by sheer self-defense.
To make this concrete: If, while I am smoking marijuana in my house and three well-armed policemen break in and try to haul me off to a jail cell, I have the same moral right to resist as I would if, while I was eating Skittles in my house, three well-armed thugs who decided nobody was going to eat Skittles in their neighborhood broke in and tried to stuff me in a car trunk.
While some may argue that the democratically elected nature of the government somehow justifies the first case but not the second, an equally supercilious but ultimately bogus justification could be invented for the second case as well.
The same goes for someone's attempt to take money from me by force, whether it is a federal marshal or a mugger; again, given enough time, either one could come up with a bogus explanation of why their robbery is purportedly justified.
Thus, though we may have arrived at our conclusions by different means, both Mr. Culbertson-Faegre and I agree, correctly, that, in at least some cases, violence against the state is morally justified.
I thus hope that I now have his attention and the attention of others just by the fact that I'm not trying to dissuade him from the use of violence on ethical grounds and certainly not trying to say, quite fatuously, that tout court or prima facie (look them up) violence is wrong.
I am also not trying to dissuade him from the use of violence on the grounds that it would be ineffective and lead to consequences much worse than the status quo, i.e. the "you-just-can't-win" argument.
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Ryan Culbertson-Faegre
posted 1/18/08 @ 5:02 PM CST
Mr/Mrs Duff,
I must congratulate you on posting one of the only responses that is not a personal attack on what is assumed to be my character. You have laid out your argument in a philosophically sound manner, and for this I applaud you. (Continued…)
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