This post is a result of a question posed to me by a friend of mine of a number of years. Like most Americans, she’s troubled by what she sees going on in our country and in our government.
Her question was one that I’ve been thinking about for a few days now… Was it Ashley Babbitt’s fault that she got killed by the DC cop?
I told her that first of all that her death was certainly an application of the law. Then I went on from there…
But to my mind this is more of a moral question. Since when is the law of the final arbiter of right and wrong? (If there is such a thing as an unjust law then the law cannot be the final say in such matters.)
As for who’s to blame for her death, I have mixed feelings on that point.
Revolutionaries… Which she doubtless saw herself… occasionally die. As I say, her death was an application of the law. But was the law just in that case?
The reason you’re having a problem identifying who’s at fault for her death is because there’s a good part of you (and, of me, for what it’s worth) feeling that her cause was more moral and just than the cause of the government, which at that point was to silence opposition. I think at the end of the day there’s a lot of blame to go around for death. She bears partial responsibility.
I fear that we are all going to face questions like that in the near future… Forcing us to choose between what is morally right and what is easy. Certainly an application of the law is easy, and can be treated as if it’s cut and dried.
Morality, however, seldom is cut and dried, and I believe we will be forced into that decision making process, by an immoral government.
Personally I find the Democrats call for national unity and a peaceful transition and their appeals to morality, to be totally unconvincing, particularly given what we saw over the last summer and for that matter, over the last four years.
(As an aside, ponder this question…Does the removal of southern monuments and all reference to the Confederate States tell us anything about the treatment that Republicans are going to receive, particularly Trump supporters?)
In their zeal to shut down any and all opposing voices, they have succeeded in doing what John Kennedy warned us about, they’ve made peaceful revolution impossible, therefore making violent revolution inevitable.
I’m afraid it’s my read that the question comes down to what the trigger will be… And what we see in the agenda of the new administration, is a trigger-rich field.