More thoughts on the current civil unrest lumped under Ferguson: if you dont care for the subject, please stop reading. Ive been reading a lot about the American, French, and Russian revolution recently, and I find some correspondence to the current unrest. First, what separated the American from the French and Russian Revolutions, I have come to believe, is this: the Americans fought to establish the full rights that generations of English (thank you evil King John) had come to believe they held the right to be governed by law, equally applied rather than by capricious autocracy. France and Russia fomented revolutions from centuries old autocracy, and had to establish the concept of rights and liberties and the protections of law. Centuries of English evolution compressed into decades of French and Russian yearnings, a process that in Russia is still going on. Fast forward to today. Blacks as a group do not feel they have equal protection under the law, a belief not only evidenced by some recent police homicides but by strong statistics (check out naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet). They do not feel represented by the powers that be or by the laws, that, as applied, fall proportionately more severely on those who are black. This is not a feeling derived by simplistic anecdotal incidents, the weight of the numbers testify to the rightness of their belief. This is not a police issue, this is a societal issue. We have two choices between us. We can continue as is and attempt to subdue the unrest through force, or we can examine and try to define the problems, without recrimination but also without prejudice and an attempt to justify deficiencies in the past. The second way is more difficult and time consuming, but it is the only way to continue along the way of the American revolution, trying to assure justice and the protection of the law to everyone. If we take the first path, we are placing ourselves on the path taken by France and Russia, a path marked by violence and vengeance. I choose a new American Revolution.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 01:51:47 +0000
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