Monday, January 17, 2005
Our Enduring Violent Legacy or "Fill Your Hands You "Sonofabitch"
Having dinner with friends the other night, one of the participants was a woman from England who has lived here in the United States for many years and finally decided to become a citizen after driving the “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” for quite a while on a test drive and giving each of our principles a swift kick. I have been anxious to get her perspective on America as someone that has viewed our culture from without and within. The question of the difference in the societies of America and Canada came up and the question of why Canada had so few murders per capita witht their population having a large gunownership and we as a nation seem to live in a violent gun ridden society where we gun each other down in the streets. What has made the difference? Why are we as a nation prone to settling differences with violence? Why as a nation do we believe that we can do anything that we set our minds to as long as we use such terms as conquer, the fight against, the struggle for, etc, etc. It is a basic underlying influence to our national daily lexicon as we use it to conquer, space, the War on Poverty, the battle against cancer, or the struggle against, whatever cause you care to end that phrase with. Where did this come from and why is it so American? This embedded use of violence defines us around the world in other people’s eyes as and paints us as both Satan and a Savior.
My argument is that entered and the won the Revolutionary War, this was the beginning of this national identity of violence and an embracing of violence as the ultimate legitimate and accepted adjudicator of human conflict. Our Forefathers were stirred by the words of John Locke, who in his Second Treatise offered the following observation to all people for the justification of violence in securing, individual peace, liberty and freedom. “Men living together according to reason without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of Nature. But force, or a declared design of force upon the person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war; and it is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even against an aggressor, though he be in society and a fellow-subject. Thus, a thief whom I cannot harm, but by appeal to the law, for having stolen all that I am worth, I may kill when he sets on me to rob me but of my horse or coat, because the law, which was made for my preservation, where it cannot interpose to secure my life from present force, which if lost is capable of no reparation, permits me my own defence and the right of war, a liberty to kill the aggressor, because the aggressor allows not time to appeal to our common judge, nor the decision of the law, for remedy in a case where the mischief may be irreparable. Want of a common judge with authority puts all men in a state of Nature; force without right upon a man's person makes a state of war both where there is, and is not, a common judge”.
This is one of the main thoughts behind the statement that all men are created equal for it states that there is no “common superior” to judge who is right or wrong.
What American child has not heard the words, of Patrick Henry, when he rose to make his speech and stated a principle that would guide us and our thinking as a nation for nearly two and a half centuries? “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
A group of farmers, merchants, backwoods scholars and philosophers had risen up and beaten the most powerful nation the greatest army on earth. No other colony of any European Nation had ever accomplished this feat using our tactics of open rebellion and armed not only resistance, but aggression had their independence been obtained. The Americans had not only accomplished this, but did it soundly, albeit with assistance from Britain’s bitter rival France.
This victory became the muse by which we would aspire to greatness in this nation. With the rallying cry’s of our Forefathers and even written authority in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights we moved forward towards building a society of acceptable levels of violence to insure our personal freedoms.
Even the simple priority placement in the Bill of Rights of the topic in the form of the Second Amendment, The Right to keep and bear arms, indicates in twenty-seven words, the shortest of any amendment, the acceptance and even expectation continued violence within our society. With the urgings of national leaders like Thomas Jefferson that ” Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. " And of course the other famous pronouncements such as,” A little rebellion now and then...is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government” to be followed by, “The tree of Liberty needs to be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”. Even outside observers of the American society commented on our acceptance of this paradigm as a nation. Alexis de Tocqueville noted in his observations of America that, “The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle”.
The Bill of Rights when read in a different light is a fascinating document from the perspective that in the First Amendment we establish who we are and what we will allow. The right to a free press, the right to assembly, the right to your religion, the right to voice your opinion, this declares at the absolute start that are and what we are going to be all about.
The Second Amendment is the directions for how to maintain the principles of the First and the following eight outline what we were not as a people put up with from anyone, let alone our government. Beyond the right to bear arms is the basic principle that was one stated so eloquently by Rodney Dangerfield. "I don't have to take shit from no one!
This ideal that Might Makes Right and the might has to be retained by the people was the paradigm we chose because it was the one that people had experienced which actually gave them the Individual Freedoms that people had never be granted by any government to its people. Now it was the people granting government certain powers, an unheard of proposition up until this point in the annals of civilization.
With these basic beliefs in hand, we as a nation turned inward towards our continent and began the Western Expansion that was to extend for over a century without serious note of the European Powers. During this time we utilized this Might Makes Right philosophy to stretch across the unsettled lands with our mandate of Manifest Destiny and the Rallying Points of The War of 1812, Remember the Alamo, The Indian Wars, The cry of “Fifty-four Forty or Fight” in our relationship with Canada regarding our mutual borders, The War With Mexico, The Range Wars of the West, The Kansas-Nebraska Act, The Missouri Compromise, and the bloodiest and most uniquely American high principled dispute, The American Civil War, Remember The Maine, The War to End All Wars and the Greatest Generation.
Abraham Lincoln, at the beginning of his first campaign for the Presidency as a Republican in a Speech in New York City addressed the position of the Southern States on the issue of slavery and States Rights. In this speech he posed the question and offered the following thoughts, …”Thinking that it is right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition as right; but thinking it as wrong, as we do can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view and against our own moral, social, and political responsibilities? Can we do this?”
“If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively…neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government nor of the dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty and understand it.”
Here again was the call to sacrifice upon the altar of freedom and justice in keeping with the early thoughts of the Founding Fathers the firm conviction that whoever wins the gunfight is the one that had the blessings of God and they were correct in their thinking. Even into his second term, after 4 years of bloody confrontation, the belief of the country can be summed up by this passage in his inaugural speech, “Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." The fact that the Union emerged victorious and the institution of slavery, which by any stretch of the imagination is repugnant and the securing of freedom, liberty and preservation of the United States did nothing, more than reaffirm our convictions that violence was the absolute judge between right and wrong, and was the true path of righteousness.
We accept the violence that accompanied these events. We accepted the violence that accompanied the Civil Rights Movement. We even accepted the violence of the Anti-War Movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s, for these were “Righteous Causes”. On the outside as a nation we wrung our hands in despair and decried the violence that was taking place, but deep in our national psyche we accepted that this violence was necessary for our culture to make a definitive statement that we would all understand. “For the tree of Liberty still needs to be watered from time to time with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants.” God may have created man, but it finally was Sam Colt that made them equal and righteous in America and in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr conflict resolution through violence will go on and the ood or the bad will continue. But one must consider violence is a passion and passion while in the pursuit of freedom and liberty cannot be determined evil.
We are Americans! Be not ashamed of our image, for it is a righteous one. We stand in the dust of the Main Streets of the world and face tyranny and wrong. We stand with the sun to our backs and our hats pulled low our guns tied down, talking loud and drawing a crowd and saying in a clear loud voice to those that oppose us and exploit the innocent, "Fill your hands, you son of a bitch!*
This is our legacy.
* John Wayne in the movie Rooster Cogburn
My argument is that entered and the won the Revolutionary War, this was the beginning of this national identity of violence and an embracing of violence as the ultimate legitimate and accepted adjudicator of human conflict. Our Forefathers were stirred by the words of John Locke, who in his Second Treatise offered the following observation to all people for the justification of violence in securing, individual peace, liberty and freedom. “Men living together according to reason without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of Nature. But force, or a declared design of force upon the person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war; and it is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even against an aggressor, though he be in society and a fellow-subject. Thus, a thief whom I cannot harm, but by appeal to the law, for having stolen all that I am worth, I may kill when he sets on me to rob me but of my horse or coat, because the law, which was made for my preservation, where it cannot interpose to secure my life from present force, which if lost is capable of no reparation, permits me my own defence and the right of war, a liberty to kill the aggressor, because the aggressor allows not time to appeal to our common judge, nor the decision of the law, for remedy in a case where the mischief may be irreparable. Want of a common judge with authority puts all men in a state of Nature; force without right upon a man's person makes a state of war both where there is, and is not, a common judge”.
This is one of the main thoughts behind the statement that all men are created equal for it states that there is no “common superior” to judge who is right or wrong.
What American child has not heard the words, of Patrick Henry, when he rose to make his speech and stated a principle that would guide us and our thinking as a nation for nearly two and a half centuries? “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
A group of farmers, merchants, backwoods scholars and philosophers had risen up and beaten the most powerful nation the greatest army on earth. No other colony of any European Nation had ever accomplished this feat using our tactics of open rebellion and armed not only resistance, but aggression had their independence been obtained. The Americans had not only accomplished this, but did it soundly, albeit with assistance from Britain’s bitter rival France.
This victory became the muse by which we would aspire to greatness in this nation. With the rallying cry’s of our Forefathers and even written authority in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights we moved forward towards building a society of acceptable levels of violence to insure our personal freedoms.
Even the simple priority placement in the Bill of Rights of the topic in the form of the Second Amendment, The Right to keep and bear arms, indicates in twenty-seven words, the shortest of any amendment, the acceptance and even expectation continued violence within our society. With the urgings of national leaders like Thomas Jefferson that ” Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. " And of course the other famous pronouncements such as,” A little rebellion now and then...is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government” to be followed by, “The tree of Liberty needs to be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”. Even outside observers of the American society commented on our acceptance of this paradigm as a nation. Alexis de Tocqueville noted in his observations of America that, “The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle”.
The Bill of Rights when read in a different light is a fascinating document from the perspective that in the First Amendment we establish who we are and what we will allow. The right to a free press, the right to assembly, the right to your religion, the right to voice your opinion, this declares at the absolute start that are and what we are going to be all about.
The Second Amendment is the directions for how to maintain the principles of the First and the following eight outline what we were not as a people put up with from anyone, let alone our government. Beyond the right to bear arms is the basic principle that was one stated so eloquently by Rodney Dangerfield. "I don't have to take shit from no one!
This ideal that Might Makes Right and the might has to be retained by the people was the paradigm we chose because it was the one that people had experienced which actually gave them the Individual Freedoms that people had never be granted by any government to its people. Now it was the people granting government certain powers, an unheard of proposition up until this point in the annals of civilization.
With these basic beliefs in hand, we as a nation turned inward towards our continent and began the Western Expansion that was to extend for over a century without serious note of the European Powers. During this time we utilized this Might Makes Right philosophy to stretch across the unsettled lands with our mandate of Manifest Destiny and the Rallying Points of The War of 1812, Remember the Alamo, The Indian Wars, The cry of “Fifty-four Forty or Fight” in our relationship with Canada regarding our mutual borders, The War With Mexico, The Range Wars of the West, The Kansas-Nebraska Act, The Missouri Compromise, and the bloodiest and most uniquely American high principled dispute, The American Civil War, Remember The Maine, The War to End All Wars and the Greatest Generation.
Abraham Lincoln, at the beginning of his first campaign for the Presidency as a Republican in a Speech in New York City addressed the position of the Southern States on the issue of slavery and States Rights. In this speech he posed the question and offered the following thoughts, …”Thinking that it is right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition as right; but thinking it as wrong, as we do can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view and against our own moral, social, and political responsibilities? Can we do this?”
“If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively…neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government nor of the dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty and understand it.”
Here again was the call to sacrifice upon the altar of freedom and justice in keeping with the early thoughts of the Founding Fathers the firm conviction that whoever wins the gunfight is the one that had the blessings of God and they were correct in their thinking. Even into his second term, after 4 years of bloody confrontation, the belief of the country can be summed up by this passage in his inaugural speech, “Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." The fact that the Union emerged victorious and the institution of slavery, which by any stretch of the imagination is repugnant and the securing of freedom, liberty and preservation of the United States did nothing, more than reaffirm our convictions that violence was the absolute judge between right and wrong, and was the true path of righteousness.
We accept the violence that accompanied these events. We accepted the violence that accompanied the Civil Rights Movement. We even accepted the violence of the Anti-War Movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s, for these were “Righteous Causes”. On the outside as a nation we wrung our hands in despair and decried the violence that was taking place, but deep in our national psyche we accepted that this violence was necessary for our culture to make a definitive statement that we would all understand. “For the tree of Liberty still needs to be watered from time to time with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants.” God may have created man, but it finally was Sam Colt that made them equal and righteous in America and in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr conflict resolution through violence will go on and the ood or the bad will continue. But one must consider violence is a passion and passion while in the pursuit of freedom and liberty cannot be determined evil.
We are Americans! Be not ashamed of our image, for it is a righteous one. We stand in the dust of the Main Streets of the world and face tyranny and wrong. We stand with the sun to our backs and our hats pulled low our guns tied down, talking loud and drawing a crowd and saying in a clear loud voice to those that oppose us and exploit the innocent, "Fill your hands, you son of a bitch!*
This is our legacy.
* John Wayne in the movie Rooster Cogburn
