"Too many bureaucrats with guns, too many laws, too many regulations, too many prisons—all designed to protect the state. The people’s liberties are forgotten." Ron PaulNo one is innocent. Whether or not Michael Brown was shot dead in an arbitrary manner, it is clear that he wasn't entirely blameless despite the postmortem effusions about what a wonderful human being he was.
No one is innocent. So, whether or not Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown eight times (according to one witness) and was justified in doing so, the bottom line is that the violence that the police use and their right to exercise it flows directly from the State. The death of Michael Brown cuts straight to the heart of just what the police are – the embodiment and sometimes the enactment of violence in order to maintain order.
The use of violence against citizens is encoded in the essence of the State, regardless of political party, economic model or ideological orientation, so the death of Michael Brown also forces us to confront this reality.
No one is innocent, but there is a fact that cannot be ignored: Michael Brown was black, and Darren Wilson is White.
No one is innocent in his actions, but the guilt of those actions is offset to some degree when they are the result of causes outside the individual, especially when those causes cannot be avoided.
The spate of racial riots we have seen since the death of Michael Brown has been unleashed by race and the paradox it creates for the essence of democracy. Regardless of whether Michael Brown was or wasn't attacking a police officer in the moment of his death, Blacks instinctively took to the streets to manifest their anger, simply because it was one of their own who had been killed.
In my opinion, a city where the majority of its citizens belong to the Black race, should also have Black authorities. This is because the equation of violence, on which authority and the State is based, is upset by internal racial divisions, as we see in Ferguson, where we have a situation that, in essence, echoes the stand-off between the Jewish and Palestinian entities in Gaza. If there is only one race in the equation, then whatever problems arise can be solved as merely an internal dispute.
That is what democracy is all about: completing the circle between the necessary violence on which the State stands and the People who both endorse the violence and, when necessary, endure it. This is what is meant by "The Will of the People." But when we talk about "The Will of the People," this People should be homogeneous. If not, it is not a People and the circle is broken, ergo it cannot sustain true democracy.
"Every actual democracy rests on the principle that not only are equals equal but unequals will not be treated equally. Democracy requires, therefore, first homogeneity and second—if the need arises—elimination or eradication of heterogeneity."As Brett Stevens points out, diversity simply does not work, and one doesn't need a university diploma to realize that all Liberal hopes are doomed when different peoples are forced by laws enacted since the 1960s to stay together. Even if it is a case of rainbows and unicorns, with "vibrant" multicolored communities of diverse people and creeds coexisting in peace, the truth is that sooner of later reality will puncture such illusions.
Carl Schmitt, “The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy”. (1923)
Even though these days we are accustomed to the word "genocide," supposedly perpetrated by the Nazi regime and, lately, the State of Israel, there have been many other genocides, which, for one reason or another, have been largely ignored. Such acts of violence and death are preventable through unity, but what happens when the basis of group unity is not there, when the circle is broken, and when the inherent violence on which all societies are based is make increasingly explicit through increasing internal divisions? The militarization of the police that so many are now speaking of is perhaps the least of it.
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| Genocide in Rwanda, where the ethnic groups of the Hutu and the Tutsi kill each other. |
