Justifying Political Violence

POLITICAL VIOLENCE is a hot topic these days, and it may get hotter before it cools off. Perhaps this is what a full scale American civil war would or will look like in the mid twentty first century: steadily escalating numbers of well armed citizens randomly gunning down known members of "the other side". We might hope that we can all agree on one thing: that there is never any justification for violence of any kind, political violence in particular. violence is wrong, period. Your hope is dashed, for we cannot. We cannot and do not all agree that political violence is always undesirable. Surveys indicate that upwards of ten to twenty percent of the American people believe that there could be situations in which political violence is not only necessary, but desirable. Certain situations might require a violent response, (such as losing elections).The exact break down eludes me, but I distinctly recall reading that tolerance and acceptance and advocacy of political political violence is much higher among conservatives than liberals, perhaps unsurprisingly. But acceptance of it is generally on the rise in the United States. An overwhelmingly high percentage of it is enacted by white supremacists, conservative extremists. Political violence,likeallother forms of violence, is of course a long standing American tradition, an American "core value" if you will. The founding document, the "Declaration of Independence" that political violence on a large, organized, national scale was and would in the future be unavoidable in the new country being created.Whereas Jefferson poins out that a people should never engage in revolution against their own government for what he called "light and transient causes", that peope canonly tolerateso much abuse and government oppression, and therfore there comes a time when they have no choice but to riseu,and, as Jefferson wrote" alter and abolish" their government, and replace it with a better, nor suitable one, by any and all means necessary, including violence. Jefferson's rather reluctant approval of political violence on a large scale under certain circumstances he expressed in a letter in which he wrote: The tree of liberty shall,from time to time, require the nourishment of the blood of patriots and tyrants." Jefferson further reckoned that such a revolution to overthrow tyranny would be necessary about once every generation, as tyranny would always creep into the government and return with every new generation. We don't want dramatic, barbaric political assassiations in this country, or bloody large scale political violence. What we want is a society and a syttem of government which is flexible anddurable enough to allow for change and progress through peaceful,lawful means, and that is exactly what we in the United States seem to have,and have had, for the most part, throughout our history. Most of the tragedy in American history comes when the system and society are not sufficiently flexible and durable to facilitate and accomodate fundamental change. Perhaps Jefferson would today be impressed at the restraint of the american people in refraining from most of his hypothetical generational revolutions. He would probably be surprised that we have kept Madison's constitution, and still use it, and even venerate it, today. He might think it wise to replace it with an updated version, more suited to our modern world, nonviolently, if at all possible.