Threatening to kill people isn’t civil disobedience. Your argument is invalid.
I guess you’re really disappointed in BoingBoing, huh?
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I guess we will all have to wait for the video to see exactly how it went down.
I hear Cliven Bundy still has over a million dollars that he stole from the American public, perhaps he’ll step in and clean up his son’s mess…
…or perhaps personal responsibility is just too important?
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For all the oh-so-bright people decrying the bad terrorists and their axis of evil intentions I would point to this wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience#Violent_vs._nonviolent
Violent vs. nonviolent
There have been debates as to whether civil disobedience must necessarily be non-violent. Black’s Law Dictionary
includes nonviolence in its definition of civil disobedience. Christian
Bay’s encyclopedia article states that civil disobedience requires
“carefully chosen and legitimate means,” but holds that they do not have
to be nonviolent.[25] It has been argued that, while both civil disobedience and civil rebellion are justified by appeal to constitutional defects,
rebellion is much more destructive; therefore, the defects justifying
rebellion must be much more serious than those justifying disobedience,
and if one cannot justify civil rebellion, then one cannot justify a
civil disobedients’ use of force and violence and refusal to submit to
arrest. Civil disobedients’ refraining from violence is also said to
help preserve society’s tolerance of civil disobedience.[26]
Philosopher H.J. McCloskey argues that “if violent, intimidatory,
coercive disobedience is more effective, it is, other things being
equal, more justified than less effective, nonviolent disobedience.”[27] In his best-selling Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fallacies on Law and Order,[28] Howard Zinn takes a similar position; Zinn states that while the goals of civil disobedience are generally nonviolent,
in the inevitable tension accompanying the transition from a violent
world to a nonviolent one, the choice of means will almost never be
pure, and will involve such complexities that the simple distinction
between violence and nonviolence does not suffice as a guide … the
very acts with which we seek to do good cannot escape the imperfections
of the world we are trying to change.[29]
Zinn rejects any “easy and righteous dismissal of violence,” noting that Henry Thoreau, the popularizer of the term civil disobedience, approved of the armed insurrection of John Brown. He also notes that some major civil disobedience campaigns which have been classified as nonviolent, such as the Birmingham campaign, have actually included elements of violence.[30] [31]
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uh, bro…
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What about the not-super-bright-just-normal people decrying the militants they don’t refer to as terrorists and their ignorant and unacceptable intentions? Why open your persuasive essay with something guaranteed to make the reader assume you’re a shallow, dishonest, angry, venting toad?
Regardless, if we were in the society John Brown was living in I might reconsider. Sometimes people live in uniquely extreme situations of ongoing open and extreme physical and moral violence against large swaths of the population with no peaceful remediation in sight. Contemporary American society has serious ills, but is nowhere near anything like that in any respect whatsoever, the problems we have do have paths to remediation that don’t involve violence, and there’s not a single current social problem in contemporary society that I am aware of where political violence wouldn’t just make everything worse.
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it’s almost as if I called someone a terrorist thereby guaranteeing that the reader assumes things not in fact.
I’m sticking with shallow, dishonest, angry, venting toad.
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I’m sure you are. Assume the worst. Don’t question it. You’ll be fine.
That’s not what you did there, just FYI. If that was your intent, you get a 3/10.
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Did you read what you quoted?
the defects justifying rebellion must be much more serious than those justifying disobedience, and if one cannot justify civil rebellion, then one cannot justify a civil disobedients’ use of force and violence and refusal to submit to arrest.
if violent, intimidatory, coercive disobedience is more effective, it is, other things being equal, more justified than less effective, nonviolent disobedience.
Since the actions of the Malheur militiamen are an act of rebellion by their own words, seeking to wrest authority from the federal government, and commenters here would likely agree that even the worst accusations against the federal government and the Bureau of Land Management that these guys have leveled, even if 100% true, do not even nearly rise to the height of justifiable cause for rebellion, “then one cannot justify a civil disobedient’s use of force and violence and refusal to submit to arrest.”
And since their “violent, intimidatory, coercive disobedience” is not more effective than nonviolent disobedience, and really only good at getting them arrested and/or killed, then it is not justified.
And that’s if we even choose to accept the opinions of those you’ve cited. Quoting Wikipedia or even famous writers on a topic doesn’t render your assertions correct or your criticisms relevant.
And on the issue of semantics, you calling them activists or protesters or whatever innocuous term you prefer is not necessarily mutually exclusive with them being labelled terrorists. Activists and protesters can be terrorists and vice versa. It’s not common, but it is possible. Most people are inclined to use singular terms to describe a group or a person, but multiple definitions will apply. I’m sure some Muslim extremists or white supremacists probably think they’re just protesters, even when they “protest” with violent means and threats that fit the legal definition of terrorism.
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This is what you sound like. Please try harder or go away.
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I’m no lawyer but section 18 USC 2331 of the United States Code defines “domestic terrorism” to be:
(5) the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that-
(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended-
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.
Part C is obvious; Oregon is part of the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.
Part B item ii seems pretty clear to me; they’ve stated they want the United States government to cede ownership of the refuge. That sounds like a US government policy decision.
The second part of Part A also seems pretty obvious to me; at the very least they’re trespassing and that’s a crime.
So the real question is whether their acts are dangerous to human life. They’ve certainly made threats of violence, but so far they haven’t carried out those threats. To me, they’re at most one punch or shot away from satisfying all thee parts. So calling them terrorists may be a little premature from a legal standpoint, but I can certainly understand why people are doing so.
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Have you tried Beano?
Lol! The fun part about definitions of terrorism is making one where everyone you don’t like is on the wrong side of that definition, and everyone you do like is on the right side.
Just take a look at the sea of adopted and discarded definitions most governments have gone through to to define and redefine terrorism.
They change the definition every time someone points out that they, or their allies, are by their own definition are certainly a terrorist state.
So they change the definitions a lot! The US certainly does.
I’m positive these wackadoodles with guns in the asslands of Oregon don’t match every definition of terrorists.
And I’m positive you and I and every other boingboing reader both match some definitions of terrorists.
Heck. Even the dudes sending dick flavored Pringles via Amazon to these guys are terrorists… Because they’ve provided material aid and support to terrorists.
But luckily we did away with all that stuff and now we just hold people without charging them and things work a whole lot more smoothly.
I wonder if at some point the government decided to watch all the telecom traffic related to this incident and the social networks around these jokers and a bunch of Christian family value loving know whats right cause the good book says it folks are now on their own extra special domestic terrorist watch lists. One can dream.
Your lack of any substantive opinion is all that is necessary. Maybe it’s you who should learn a bit about civil discourse. But yeah, I know it’s BoingBoing.
Well, there is that bit about one of them being shot, and the only witnesses being decidedly on the side of the insurrectionists, describing the violence as one sided.
But you cannot seize land by force, guard it with guns and berms, and then claim a non violent status quo once you got yours by violence.
I mean, you can, but you’re going to deserve the dildos sent your way.
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Maybe. But I’m not so bright, so why lower yourself?
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How exactly does one bring an AR-15 to a blog forum?
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