By Todd Lassa

If there is a more provocative debate topic than “Resolved: America is a racist nation,” it has yet to be written down. When liberal and conservative members of Braver Angels tackled the resolution in a national debate Thursday evening, they generally dug to the core of the issue, citing both American and personal history, with far less concentration than usual on current events. There was much more nuance than one might expect from this resolution.

Braver Angels debates are not held to declare a “winner” or to convince liberals or conservatives to switch sides. In fact, while the “affirmative” side of the resolution, that America is a racist nation, is generally associated with a left-side point of view, the first debater to speak on this side was Luke Nathan Phillips, a self-described conservative and Braver Angels staffer. As the first affirmative debater, he “urged fellow conservatives to take [the issue] more seriously.”

“Over the course of our history, it has [become] an even bigger deal than people make of it,” Phillips said.

Conversely, the debate’s third speaker in the negative, arguing that America is not a racist nation, was another Braver Angel staff member, Monica Guzman, who usually identifies as a liberal. 

“To me this is not just about a story, this is about a headline,” Guzman said. When I look at the resolution, (asking) ‘Is America a racist nation?’ I’m looking at a headline.”

While Guzman has “deep concerns about how seriously people are taking the racism that has (permeated) American society,” she believes the goal in raising the issue is progress against such racism.

In the end, affirmative and negative Braver Angels debaters almost rendered the resolution moot. Both sides seem to agree that the people of the United States have by a plurality always strived to reach for the ideals that our Founding Fathers wrote into the Constitution, even if most of those Founding Fathers owned enslaved men and women. They agree that the American experiment is a work-in-progress, and affirmatives and negatives alike believe we have come a long way since the Civil War, since Reconstruction and resulting Jim Crow, and since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

If you are at all interested in this debate topic – and why wouldn’t you be? – please watch the debate on Braver Angels’ YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtlZ4t6aS4rAJoPyYD9DGLA

Meanwhile, read the left column for a few select comments by affirmative debaters, and the right column for select comments by negative debaters on the subject of racism in America.

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Comments by negative debaters in the July 15 Braver Angels national debate:

“A lot of this discussion is a semantic one … [Citing a Pew Charitable Foundation study that 8% of Americans of all races and ethnicities are ‘bigots’:] “Lots of people are bigots because a lot of people are jerks and jackasses. But that doesn’t mean America is a racist nation.”

--Prof. Wilfred Reilly, Kentucky State University, and author, Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War

“The country has changed greatly. My kids have changed the country … [Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s former pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, who made many incendiary speeches about American racism] “spoke as if America is static. Racism is still present in this country, and every country in the world. I am a proud conservative, but I agree with Presidents Obama and Clinton when they say there is nothing wrong about America that cannot be cured by what’s right with America.”

--Steve Saltwick

“If we define ourselves by the worst thing we have done, we reduce our ability to rise above them. … America as a racist nation can be part of our story of redemption. … If America is a racist nation is argued as a headline, I’m afraid it will do us in.”

--Monica Guzman

“America is much more than can be contained in a single word. … Just because we are pluralistic does not mean we cannot be united. … America, my friend, cannot be a racist nation, because the natural condition of human equality can never be racist.”

--Christian Watson, Spokesman, Color Us United

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Whether or not you plan to participate in Braver Angels’ July 15 national debate on race in America, we want to know your opinions on this most contentious of issues. 

To register your opinion, please email editors@thehustings.news, or go to thehustings.substack.com and leave a comment. Please include your name and your home town, or region of a state. 

We will only post comments that adhere to our standards of civil discourse. Comments will be edited for length and clarity and will be published in this column and in the right column on Friday, July 16.

Scroll down using the vertical scrollbar on the far right of the page to read David Amaya's comments on critical race theory in the left column.

Subscribe to our newsletter posted weekdays, by going to thehustings.substack.com

(Please click on the date above for today's News & Notes.)

Race in America is the subject of constant argument in the U.S., and this year, it has touched nearly every political issue under discussion, from Thomas Jefferson’s slave ownership to removal of Confederate leaders’ statues, from the economy and the environment to policing and of course, voting rights. This Thursday, July 15, Braver Angels will hold its next national coliseum debate on the bold resolution: “America is a racist nation?” beginning 8 p.m. Eastern time via Zoom.

The debate is free and open to the public, but you must register in advance at: https://braverangels.org/event/coliseum-debate-national-debate-racism-in-america/

As always, audience members are encouraged to participate as speakers and in the Q&A sessions. 

The Hustings will feature a preview of arguments, in the left and right columns prior to the debate. Come to this page Wednesday to prepare for the arguments. On Friday, we will post your comments on the debate in our left and right columns. [UPDATE: THE PREVIEW SCHEDULED AHEAD OF THURSDAY'S DEBATE HAS BEEN CANCELLED, BUT POST-DEBATE READERS'/AUDIENCE COMMENTS STILL WILL BE POSTED ON FRIDAY. PLEASE SEE BELOW FOR INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO SUBMIT COMMENTS.]

Teaching critical race theory is currently the most contentious issue within the subject of race in America. Scroll down this page to read the post on CRT, with Nic Woods’ explanation of what it is in the center column, and David Iwinski’s conservative opinion of it in the right column and David Amaya’s liberal opinion in the left column.

To submit your comments, email us at editors@thehustings.news or post a comment at thehustings.substack.com.

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Subscribe to our newsletter at thehustings.substack.com
For more information on Braver Angels, go to braver angels.org

Whether or not you plan to participate in Braver Angels’ July 15 national debate on race in America, we want to know your opinions on this most contentious of issues. 

To register your opinion, please email editors@thehustings.news, or go to thehustings.substack.com and leave a comment. Please include your name and your home town, or region of a state. 

We will only post comments that adhere to our standards of civil discourse. Comments will be edited for length and clarity and will be published in this column and in the left column on Friday, July 16.

Scroll down using the vertical scrollbar on the far right of the page to read David Iwinski's comments on critical race theory in the right column.

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Subscribe to our newsletter, published weekdays, at thehustings.substack.com

By Chase Wheaton

The United States was first founded on a number of different belief systems. These included the belief that people should have the freedom to practice any religion they’d like, the belief that people should have the freedom to criticize and speak out against their own government without fear of punishment, and sadly, yes, the belief that Black people were meant to be enslaved simply because of the color of their skin. That is an objective truth, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either not knowledgeable of American history or is deliberately trying to portray our nation as something it isn’t. Oddly enough, right now there are efforts being led by conservative legislators across the country to do just that by passing laws to ban teaching critical race theory (CRT) in K-12 schools.

These right-wing efforts to whitewash history books and the American education system more than it already is are unconscionable, and the legislators leading these efforts, as well as those in support of them, should be ashamed. Many of these legislators have made bogus claims that teaching CRT in K-12 schools is divisive and contentious, but I would instead argue that it’s their own white fragility and fear of being confronted with their privilege, that’s making them feel that way. 

In fact, there’s nothing divisive or contentious about CRT at all. CRT is simply an educational framework based on science and law that says that racism, and in turn, white supremacy, are woven into the fabric of America, and that Black Americans therefore continue to experience the effects of racism and white supremacy to this day. Again, I would consider this to be an objective truth. There are countless statistics that show the unfair treatment that Black Americans receive when it comes to finding equitable housing, jobs, health care, and education, and even more that show the clear racial bias present in the criminal justice system. But for some sad and hateful reason, instead of trying to pass legislation that would remove this bias from these different systems, or that would create a more equitable and just country for Black Americans, Republicans are focusing their efforts on this figurative “cleansing” of American history and the consistent gaslighting of Black Americans as they describe their experiences living in America. 

Furthermore, there are several layers of irony to this discussion that should not be lost on you. First, at the same time that Congress and President Biden passed, and signed into law, legislation marking Juneteenth as a federal holiday as a way to acknowledge that Black enslavement did not end in 1863, the conservative legislators behind these efforts are making it so that children in some states won’t even be able to learn that truth. Second, the fact that this group of legislators, who are trying to insert themselves into the American classroom and impose restrictions on those academic settings also claim to be the party for less government and regulation, is both astonishing and absurd at the same time. Finally, the fact that this is yet another example of white people telling Black people what they are and are not experiencing in their day-to-day lives, is sadly but almost quintessentially American.

This general delusion and departure from reality is unfortunately just what I’ve come to expect from the modern Republican party. This is the same group of politicians who, to this day, claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, without any proof or evidence of the sort. The same group of politicians who nominated a racist proponent of the ‘Birther Movement’ to the Oval Office. And most despicably, the same group of politicians who say that All Lives Matter, but not that Black Lives Matter. Whether they like it or not, and whether they’ll say so or not, racism is embedded into the foundation of our country and is still very much prevalent in our nation today. But unless schools are able to teach children about this, and empower them with the knowledge to dismantle the racist systems in place, how can we hope to progress past this appalling reality?

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By Nic Woods

… (M)odern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.

If anything in 2021 fits George Orwell’s description above, it is “critical race theory.” 

To the right, based on recent media – both mainstream and social – discussions, critical race theory is 

1.) critical of America 

2.) centering racism, and 

3.) only a theory.

The left understand it no better. It’s something that should be seriously considered – how does America move forward as a nation without grappling with its past?

To many African Americans, both left and right, it’s a school of legal scholarship that academics have been studying, without incident, for about 40 years. The American Bar Association definition is a huge paragraph, but the gist is that it’s “a practice of interrogating the role of race and racism in society that has spread to other fields of scholarship from law” that “recognizes racism is not a bygone relic of the past” but “acknowledges the legacy of slavery, segregation, and the imposition of second-class citizenship” on people of color “continues to permeate the social fabric of the nation.”  

It was not diversity or inclusion training. It is not in the history, government, or social studies lanes, particularly not K-12, as it’s too complex for a sixth grader or a high school senior to understand. It’s also not about religion, although the recent Southern Baptist Convention spent an inordinate amount of time debating it, inviting a schism among themselves in the process. 

As a result, the recent explosion of the term in those circles is … rather confusing.   

But isn’t that the point?

Facts, and definitions, about CRT don’t matter. If it did, it would be defined whenever mentioned so there’s no confusion of what is being discussed. But that definition never comes.

It’s really not about facts – it’s just another contest of status, power, and wealth in an era rife with such contests. It’s really about angst that the people who have told the story for generations won’t get to exclusively tell the story anymore. And the story, viewed through other lenses that have existed all along, will go to places where they don’t want to go.

Thus, the opposing calls for “objective history.” 

This is more of a chimera, because outside of “The American Civil War was fought between 1861 and 1865,” there is not much we “know” about the American Civil War and its aftermath that isn’t from someone’s point of view. If you consider a POV, you leap from objective facts to history and, without that history, the current culture war makes no sense. 

That CRT and “The Lost Cause” – an ideology that advocates the belief that the cause of the Confederacy during the Civil War was heroic, and not just centered on slavery (despite the documentation from Confederate leaders) means so much right now that a vocal minority claim to be willing to start another Civil War over it means there is nothing at all objective about history.   

What people seem to fear about critical race theory is that history would be rewritten to exclude everything that “makes America great.” But the history we learned in school was never objective. We don’t learn how Manifest Destiny looks to the Native American. We don’t get the Mexican-American POV of the Treaty of Hidalgo. That all matters, and the exclusion of that to be “objective” does everyone a disservice. 

Whatever your feelings about The New York Times’ 1619 Project, that America for Blacks starts in 1619 when enslaved people from Africa were first brought to the colonies is probably more accurate and objective than that America was “discovered” when settlers from Britain landed at Plymouth Rock or Jamestown – the Portuguese, Spanish, French and Dutch who preceded the British might have something to say about that. 

And what most of us “learned” about the Reconstruction period of U.S. history is told from the POV of the U.S. South – so, in a way, they lost the battles but won the narrative of how the country views the war – and because of groups like the Daughters of the Confederacy, a substantial number of Americans believe that the enslaved enjoyed their bondage and what a shame it was that they were forced to leave their masters for lives unknown.

Maybe, the full terror – as some have expressed in public – is that their 10-year-old is going to come home and call them a racist. If that’s the fear, maybe spend less time railing at a four-decade-old legal strategy and start reassessing your life and priorities. 

Just because a concept effectively gets your blood boiling, doesn’t mean it should.

Note: Read the complete bibliography for Nic Woods’ column at thehustings.substack.com

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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news. For the bibliography on Nic Woods’ column, go to thehustings.substack.com

By David Iwinski

A stew that has been simmering for over 45 years and has, so it seems, all of a sudden boiled over is the liberal cause célèbre of critical race theory, or CRT. As a man in his late 50s, this acronym confuses me immediately since I always think of CRT as Cathode Ray Tube, the field name for a basic computer monitor on our desk before flatscreen and plasma became ubiquitous. Truth be told, however, I have some familiarity with the concept since critical theory was all the rage when I was in law school back at the University of Pittsburgh in 1984. 

Fast-forward to present day and we not only have the acronyms and buzzwords flying across social media, but now high school and even middle school curricula are being pressured to include teachings on critical race theory to youngsters. For most of the uninitiated, the biggest question and, it seems, the hardest one to get an answer for is: What is critical race theory? 

Even a basic Internet search trying to get a fundamental understanding is somewhat akin to trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. The definitions are long, complex, loaded with jargon and virtually never, ever have any sense of clarity or finality. The basic essence seems to be that race infuses everything without fail and that no human action is done not only without considerations of race but not without active suppression of one race and promotion of another. 

In an attempt to get a baseline grasp of the current understanding of CRT, last weekend I watched eight hours of recent on-line debates between supporters of CRT and those trying to stop the infiltration of this dogma into our schools. It was interesting and reminded me a lot of college debates arguing the application of communism and socialism. Whenever a person supporting democratic and capitalistic ideals would point out the failure of virtually every society organized around communist and socialist principles, which often resulted in mass deaths by government action or starvation of the populace (not to mention a suppression of freedom and terrible economic activity), the classic rejoinder was, “Oh, that wasn’t real communism, it was communism corrupted by someone who didn’t really understand it or practice it properly.” 

Uh huh, sure.

Whenever someone who is against CRT in these debates would bring up the damage that could be done to society by positing that everything is based on race, racism and discrimination and would cite examples about this would not build a more cohesive and fair society, the opposing side would immediately say, “Oh, that really isn’t critical race theory, what you are talking about is someone’s distorted application.” And there would then follow a long dissertation filled with jargon trying to essentially say that anything negative associated with CRT couldn’t be true.

I consider myself a fairly bright individual, but I couldn’t find anyone making a single case for how it would somehow improve the quality of our society and, more importantly, how something this complex and convoluted could possibly be taught to grade school and middle school students. Where are the genius communicators who will be able to distill the essence of this into young and malleable minds? Where are the textbooks age-appropriate that can explain it, because I would honestly love to read one so I can understand it.  

Unfortunately, we often see this kind of hyper-complicated deflection occurring on the left whenever digging into the details would reveal some uncomfortable truths. We all remember when Nancy Pelosi said of the Affordable Care Act, in 2010: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." That didn’t turn out so well since many of the touted “truths” of Obamacare turned out to be complete falsehoods. 

Maybe the folks on the left think we will be fine to subject our children and schools to the doctrines of critical race theory so we can only later find out what it’s all about. 

What I think they are going to find is that while middle-America and conservatives will tolerate a lot of baloney, experimenting on our children with radical, undocumented and nearly impossible-to-understand racial theories that may essentially teach them that they are flawed aggressors from the very beginning without redemption will not be warmly embraced or tolerated.

Teaching our youth the truth about slavery and the effect it had on people and our society -- absolutely an essential to a clear understanding of American and global history. Teaching our youth that if they are white that they are born racist and are destined to make all their decisions based on racism and that is infused into every aspect of their life -- not a good idea.

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By Stephen Macaulay

In responding to a concern vis-à-vis the term “pro-MAGA,” the writer used “IMHO.” Just as we have come to realize that “IMHO” is shorthand for a phrase, I think it is fair to say that “pro-MAGA” goes to the point of that crowd of people who stormed the Capitol on January 6. To be sure, this isn’t universally accepted, but it has become sufficiently germane. I mean, does anything think “IMHO” is “I Might Have Olives”?

But let’s go a little further. There is an issue about referring to what took place on January 6 as an “insurrection.” The straight-up dictionary definition of “insurrection” is “a violent uprising against an authority or government.”

Was it violent? Yes.

Was it against the law enforcement officials, authority, who were at the Capitol? Yes.

Was it meant to stop the certification of the presidential election by Congress, the government? Yes.

Seems to tick all the boxes.

What I take exception to is the adverb in the phrase “Make America Great Again.”

Again? Really?

His dystopian American-carnage style inaugural address notwithstanding, Trump inherited an economy on the upswing and a country that had respect and stature around the world.

What did he do? There was the debasement of public discourse such that anything goes. He demeaned and belittled people whether they were disabled or victims of a natural disaster or happened to live under heinous conditions (e.g., “shithole countries”). He said he believed Vladimir Putin more than his intelligence agencies. He met with the dictator of North Korea for no apparent purpose besides a photo op.

He had an epic fail when it came to dealing with COVID-19.

Great Again?

Sad.

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By Todd Lassa

Editors who write for this center column work diligently to be fair and accurate, to provide facts that clearly describe current political news and issues that leave the opinions to the pundits in the left and right columns. 

It’s not an effort to make sure “both sides” of a political issue are evenly described.

Instead, it’s our earnest attempt to give you, the reader, perspectives that are both similar to, and different from, your own. 

Besides offering this range of views from two columns flanking the center-column facts and analysis -- all on the same page -- in order to give you an out-of-the-echo-chamber look at our nation’s politics, another advantage is that the left and right columns can “call out” the center column if the writers in either feel the journalist in the center is swerving out of her or his lane. It’s a kind of check on our balance.

Recently, a constant reader (who follows us assiduously on Twitter @NewsHustings), and not one of the pundits, objected to a sentence in our home page debate on the role of violence in our political system, [https://thehustings.news/does-oppression-justify-political-violence/).

“Most #MAGA Republicans bristle at ‘the pro-MAGA insurrection’ terminology … just as I assume most Democrats aren’t looters and rioters?

“If the reference was just ‘right-wing insurrectionists,” he continued, “that would be fine with me … associating with the #MAGA movement is tainting a lot of peaceful American patriots, IMHO.”

We asked two of our pundits to weigh in on the matter; David Iwinski, our latest addition to our contributors On the Right, and Stephen Macaulay, our pundit-at-large, for the left column.

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By David Iwinski

Although I thoroughly understand the position the reader has raised with regards to “trigger words” that he might feel unfairly describes parties on the right, I’ve become somewhat insensitive to the minutia of these issues, as I’m now conditioned to expect most mainstream media descriptions of folks on our side of the political spectrum to contain pejoratives. These descriptions often attempt, in ways not-so-subtle, to stain conservatives with negativity about our acts and intentions. 

This is particularly true whenever there is any reference to President Trump or the catchphrase first used in his 2016 campaign, “Make America Great Again” – MAGA. In the matter of The Hustings’ center column previewing the Braver Angels’ June 17 debate on violence in our political system [https://thehustings.news/braver-angels-debate-the-place-of-violence-in-our-political-system/] which referred to what happened at the Capitol January 6 event as a “pro-MAGA insurrection” I am frankly less irritated by the insertion of the MAGA connection than I am about describing the event as an “insurrection.” But such hyperbole has become commonplace and says much more about the embarrassing lack of media neutrality and emphasis on factual reporting than anything else. 

It is unfortunate, yes, but I do not wish to become obsessed with the triviality of triggers as many on left have become, and I do not need the center column of The Hustings to be a safe place. While perhaps irritating, these are essentially small matters and I am generally very pleased at the center column’s neutrality.

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Note that lead speakers and other debaters in Braver Angels’ debate on the role of violence in our political system did not necessarily align with liberal vs. conservative opinions. To delineate the two sides of the argument, this debate-page of The Hustings posts “negatives” – opinions in opposition to the resolution regarding violence in our political system – in the left column, and “affirmatives” – those in favor of the resolution, in the right column. 

Here are some additional opinions in the negative regarding the resolution:

“I’m surprised by the resolution, which makes it seem as if the language of violence were part of the Constitution. … That’s not part of the American political system.

--Alistair McLeod

“I feel very strongly that violence begets violence. I feel very worried about today’s weaponry.”

--Thomas Mayer

“To quote Gandhi, ‘An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.’”

--Aimee Deconick

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[Please click on the date tab, above for today's News & Notes.]

By Todd Lassa

Blue and red speakers in Braver Angels’ National Community Debate Thursday, “Resolved: Citizens threatening violence against oppression is a crucial part of our political process” were not as far apart -- and a bit more nuanced -- than The Hustingspreview might have predicted. [Go to https://thehustings.news/braver-angels-debate-the-place-of-violence-in-our-political-system/, https://thehustings.news/life-liberty-and-please-no-violence/, https://thehustings.news/peace-through-strength/.]

“We must reserve the right to use violence against the most extreme oppression only,” Mike Morton began, as the first-affirmative (in favor of the resolution) in the debate. “

His comments led to the obvious question: Who gets to decide what oppression is worthy of violence? A tough question, Morton acknowledged, noting that leaders in the American Revolution had to convince many fellow colonists to resist King George III. 

The first negative, Russian immigrant Michael Abramson, spoke of how nearly 30 years ago he participated in anti-Kremlin demonstrations in his hometown of Yetkaterinburg, as the USSR was crumbling. 

“Resistance can be useful, and even necessary,” he began. “Yet I have serious doubts.”

There are not many examples of violent resistance in the U.S. In other countries, pro-resistance demonstrators did not achieve their goals, Abramson said; the French Revolution resulted in the Emperor Napoleon taking power, and the October Revolution in Russia led to the Red era and Joseph Stalin.

The second affirmative debater, identified only as “Stefani,” said that “Oppressed people should have the right to react with violence if they’re very oppressed by the government. That said, you have to take a long and hard look before you take up arms and start shooting people.”

Stefani called last summer’s riots and what she called Black Lives Matter lootings “appalling.” And although George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer was “terrible,” she said, “But that’s no reason to burn your neighbor’s business down.”

Asked for her opinion on the January 6 Capitol Hill insurrection, Stefani said: “Obviously, a group of people stomping around the halls of Congress was ridiculous,” she replied, but went on to say it was no comparison with what she called last summer’s “riots.”

Erika Munson, the second negative, cited icons of non-violence, Buddha, Thoreau, Gandhi and King. 

“Non-violence asks for an active resistance to evil, without resorting to it yourself.”

Affirmative Bill Altmeier said the threat of violence is an early warning that a nation’s politics is not going well. “We need to … conclude that the fight between the right and the left is taking the country to a bad place.”

Luke Nathan Phillips, a negative on the resolution from Stafford County, Virginia (which was central during the Civil War, including the Battle of Fredericksburg) said he is “haunted by the fact that a generation of Americans in the most honorable war … left 600,000 dead and shell-shocked a generation. … The result [ending slavery in the U.S.] was great but left us with many wounds we’re still working on.”

Silas Kulkarni, like Phillips, a Braver Angels staffer, said those who knew him would be surprised that he was an affirmative on the debate resolution. 

“I’m a committed believer in non-violence resistance,” morally and philosophically, but he noted, Gandhi was not an absolutist on non-violence; he offered a hierarchy. At the top was non-violent resistance, Kulkarni noted, and next was violent resistance. Lowest was “passivity and acceptance” to repression.

Perhaps counter-intuitive regarding the January 6 Capitol Hill riots, and violence in some demonstrations last year, the fourth negative, Harry Hirsch, said the pandemic shutdown has made non-violence resistance easier.

“Peaceful methods have a better chance of succeeding, as of last year,” he said.

What do you think? Email The Hustings with your thoughts, at editors@thehustings.news, or leave a comment at thehustings.substack.com.

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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news

Note that lead speakers and other debaters in Braver Angels’ debate on the role of violence in our political system did not necessarily align with conservative vs. liberal opinions. To delineate the two sides of the argument, this debate-page of The Hustings posts ”affirmatives” – opinions aligned with the resolution regarding violence in our political system – in the right column, and “negatives” – those opinions voiced against the resolution, in the left column. 

Other opinions in the affirmative on the Braver Angels Community Debate resolution on the role of violent resistance in our political system …

“The question assumes we have an option of violence or non-violence. It is an illusion. A person looking to change the political system would be a fool not to use every tool at his disposal.”

--Fabian

“If convincing people really doesn’t work, what’s the point of non-violence? (There is also the threat of) economic violence, social violence, not just government – cancel culture.”

--Kirk

“If slaves had violently revolted against their owners, I might have supported that.”

--Joe Pratt

“The non-violent movement is only non-violent on one end. [Martin Luther King, Jr., and other Black civil rights leaders met with violent ends.] How do you balance it out?”

--Commander Solarmind

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By David Amaya

The founding documents of the United States of America are glorious because they enshrine the Enlightenment ideals that liberated us from the oppression of authoritarian governments. There are many forms of oppression that include restrictions of civil liberties and rights, inaccessibility to resources, as well as physical coercion. In our nation, we have inalienable rights that promote life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When our ability to achieve these ends are obstructed by the state, Thomas Jefferson says in the Declaration of Independence, we have a right to revolution. That is because the state derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed; constituents are the government. If the constituents are not healthy in mind or body, then the government is not a healthy democracy. 

When we think of violence in the political system, myriad issues come to mind, including hate crimes, gun rights issues, police brutality, riots and crimes against the government (e.g. the insurrection of January 6, 2021). These issues are all derived from our nature’s capacity to be selfish, which leads to other problems such as greed or an inability to respectfully air out grievances. Inevitably, one may resort to violence; a state of nature in the Hobbesian sense. 

The truth of the matter is that verbal violence precedes physical violence — mental health affects our physical health. Consequently, when the ailments of the body politic manifest themselves in violent ways, it is an indication we are not in a healthy democracy despite living in a government where we celebrate peaceful transitions of power. We are living in an age where we know the antonym of violence is kindness, yet most civically engaged citizens opt to tune in to news sources that profit enormously off divisiveness. 

Violence in politics is not a novel phenomenon, but its appearance this decade has been magnified, especially through the leadership of our previous president, Donald Trump. This man, who led the country that was the first to use Enlightenment ideals in its Constitution, promoted violence (e.g. offers to pay legal fees of someone who will “knock the crap out” of a dissenter at one of his rallies) and suppressed speech (e.g. impromptu photo-op to get rid of George Floyd protests in front of St. John’s Church). As the man with the most powerful microphone in the world, Mr. Trump infamously silenced and punished those outside his frame of thinking; concurrently, hate crimes went up by 20% under his presidency, according to the FBI. 

The threat of violence is obvious and conspicuous because although we may live in the safest times in history, we also live in the age with the most exposure to violence through news and media. The pinnacle of this paradox can be seen at how close America was to having the American flag removed atop Capitol Hill and replaced with a Trump flag at the January 6 insurrection. The Big Lie, as it is called, moved radicalized people to storm into our legislative halls and vandalize our democracy’s House over perceived oppression (that is, purported voter fraud that silenced the Republican vote). This example of violence was different from what we had seen before because it was a personal attack on not only the culture of democracy but on democracy itself— a noose was allegedly prepared for Vice President Mike Pence and there were reports of attempted kidnapping plots of our elected representatives. 

Naturally, we must ask ourselves: when our fragile democracy is doubted instead of reinforced, is violence a legitimate means to achieve a just end (or just intention)? I say this is a natural question that follows the insurrection because we are headed towards more institutional conundrums and dilemmas that must heed our past. For example: what will happen when 30% of the U.S. population controls 70% of the Senate and 70% of the U.S. population controls 30% of the Senate? Questions like these are worrisome and prophesize a decline in American democracy when authoritarianism is on the rise around the world. 

To ensure the longevity of our U.S. Constitution and our democracy, we must not resort to violence to rectify the anomalies of our political system —  this is why we have civil debates, free and fair elections, a legislative process, and grassroots organizing. The tools to mitigate violence are present, as are the tools for compassion and unity. Instead of destroying our democracy’s reputation, we should build up our capacity to communicate effectively; including holding accountable the for-profit business of divisive rhetoric. 

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