In 2011, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised history’s longest occupation of a U.S. government structure — that of the Wisconsin Capitol building — as an “impressive show of democracy in action.” But if this means she believes it’s sometimes “justified for citizens to take violent action against the government,” well, then San Fran Nan is definitely in the minority. After all, only 34 percent of Americans recently polled took that position.
Yet, warn the mainstream (left-wing) media, this number is rising, as only 10 percent of respondents expressed this opinion in 2010.
This has been reported as “hard news” by many mainstream-media outlets. But consider the reportage, and ask yourself how hard it is, really.
First there’s CNN, the network recently rocked by two pedophilia scandals. “Thirty-four percent of Americans think violent action against the government is sometimes justified, according to a new poll from The Washington Post and the University of Maryland released days ahead of the one-year anniversary of the insurrection [sic] at the US Capitol,” writes the news organ.
“The new figure ‘is considerably higher than in past polls by the Post or other major news organizations dating back more than two decades,’ according to the newspaper,” CNN continues. “The survey, conducted between December 17 and 19, revealed stark partisan splits on the question: 40% of Republicans and 41% of independents said violence against government is sometimes justified, compared to 23% of Democrats.”
Of course, this simply means that 60 percent of Republicans, 59 percent of independents, and 77 percent of Democrats weren’t really thinking (or feared being honest). More on that and “Just War Doctrine” momentarily.
As for the Washington Post itself, it opened with the story technique. “Phil Spampinato had never contemplated the question of whether violence against the government might be justified — at least not in the United States,” the paper wrote. “But as he watched Republicans across the country move to reshape election laws in response to former president Donald Trump’s false fraud claims, the part-time engineering consultant from Dover, Del., said he began thinking differently about ‘defending your way of life.’”
Whether Mr. Spampinato’s “way of life” is vote fraud or if he also began thinking differently after 2020’s 600-plus violent left-wing riots, which caused billions in property damage, was not reported. (You see, I’m doing “hard news,” too!)
Then there’s Britain’s Guardian newspaper, which never actually reveals what it’s purportedly guarding. Similar to CNN, it informed that the poll was released just “short of a year since rioters attacked the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn Donald Trump’s election defeat by Joe Biden.”
The outlet then continued, “According to the authors of The Steal, a new book on Republican attempts to fulfill Trump’s aim through legal action in key states, the rioters of 6 January 2021 ‘had no more chance of overthrowing the US government than hippies in 1967 had trying to levitate the Pentagon.’”
Cute. A good analogy as well, but unmentioned by the Guardian, is that the Ashli Babbitt Day trespassers also had about as much chance of succeeding as Seattle’s CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) insurrectionists in 2020, even though the latter did actually have guns, did actually seize a neighborhood for three weeks, did actually compel the police to flee the area, and did actually have a mayor call their little endeavor a “summer of love” (though there was no word on how “impressive” Nancy Pelosi fancied it).
Nonetheless, the Guardian continued, Ashli Babbitt Day “was still by far the most serious attack on the seat of federal government since the British burned Washington in 1814 and the Post poll comes amid a sea of warnings of growing domestic strife, even of a second civil war.”
My, imbibing all this reportage, a cynical reader could get the impression the Wapo poll is being used to convince all and sundry that there’s a looming, burgeoning Right-wing Threat™ that the government, Hell’s bells and buckets of blood, just needs more power to protect us from — for our own good, of course (just like COVID restrictions!).
But returning to the poll question, here’s how it was actually phrased: “Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government, or is it never justified?”
Now, someone could respond to the above with “not enough data,” as in: too little specificity. After all, writing “violent action against the government” as opposed to just “government” could be interpreted as meaning “our government as it is now constituted and conducting itself.” Of course, that can change. But if the question is simply a generic one pertaining to “government,” per se, 100 percent of Americans should believe violence can be justified.
That’s the kind of action the Founding Fathers took against their government, do note, the crown of England. Then, was it wrong attempting to assassinate Adolf Hitler, à la Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, and overthrow his Nazi state?
Of course, there are those who certainly want us to believe violence against the government is wrong in principle (“ever and always”). The Chinese Communist Party autocrats come to mind.
In reality, violence here should be governed by Just War Doctrine. Its principles are:
- The cause must be just. The damage the victim party faces must be “lasting, grave, and certain.”
- The action must be a last resort, with other means of resolution having proven ineffective or unrealistic.
- There must be a reasonable chance of success.
- The means employed must not create harm greater than that caused by the evil targeted for elimination.
These criteria may be hard to satisfy, but they do translate into possible justification. Perhaps, however, the matter was summed up perfectly by G.K. Chesterton in 1915. “War is not ‘the best way of settling differences,’” he wrote — “it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.”
