It's obvious that John Brown has been on my mind lately; surely it's also been apparent that I find him a very sympathetic character. That's troubling, because John Brown's actions were, on the surface at least, more murderous than they were acts of war. The last thing I want is for my legitimate anger and disgust at the American south's sorry history to have me justify actions I find, in other contexts, to be immoral and even evil.
That's the basis, really, for my current mini-obsession with Brown. For most of this decade Americans have been performing actions that, previous to 9/11, most of the rest of us would have found to be immoral and evil. Yet not only have we seen the evidence of our soldiers and agents imprisoning people at random, denying them due process and even torturing them, we've gone from the infamous Yoo memos that justify such actions "even though we don't do them" to President Bush's recent blasé admission that yes, in fact, we do torture, and the President's inner circle not only knew about it, but micromanaged that just as much as they have every other aspect of this war: how many times a person could be slapped, what level and type of drug could be used, when and how often waterboarding was appropriate - my God! They've been doing this and lying about it, and there's no consequences.
Is this who we are? Was every single thing I was taught as a child about this nation just propaganda, colorful and comforting myths to ease the passage of childhood, just a pack of damned lies?
The answer, of course, is "yes." Yes, this is who we are, who we have always been. But we can also lay claim to "no." No, this is not America, not as it was envisioned, not what we were designed to be, and not what we have always been.
America has been blessed with people who are willing to say no to the above question. You know their names: Martin Luther King, Jr., Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Lincoln, of course, who was a better man than he was, and George Washington, whose greatest act, in my opinion, was refusing to run for a 3rd term as President. He could have stayed in that office until he died and established a tradition far different than the one that served as the inspiration for the 22nd Amendment.
There have been others, writers and other artists who were blacklisted during the McCarthy years, the men and women who ran the Underground Railroad, even the Founding Fathers, whose genius lay not in who they were - which was a group of rather privileged property owners who started a war because they wanted to reduce their taxes - but in the visions they had for government and the ordering of society, for the potential of what humans could become. They were slaveowners, but they set up a system of government to which abolitionists could point for justification for their positions, they denied the vote to women and those without property, but their writings and laws were bigger and greater than them and helped to inspire people to move beyond the original application of those laws and to use them to grant liberty to more and more people.
And there was John Brown. John Brown the revolutionary, the terrorist, the murderer. Had the events at Harper's Ferry followed the course Brown laid out, we would probably have a national holiday celebrating not only his birth but his death. But as they say, history is written by the victors, and Brown didn't win.
But as much as we're supposed to revile what he did, the fact remains that he saw a group of incredibly powerful people treating their fellow human beings like farm animals - sometimes even worse than farm animals, because horses and such are not expected to feed, clean and shelter themselves after their work is done, and very few mares lived in constant fear of rape. John Brown did what he did to free his fellow human beings from slavery. What I don't know is if even such a good intention is sufficient justification for his actions.
And today, American citizens are fighting, dying, getting injured and killing in an unjust and blatantly illegal war. The 4th Amendment has been declared as irrelevant as the Geneva Conventions, supposedly the law of the land. Associates of the President and his Cabinet are have been serving our soldiers in Iraq rotten food in order to increase their already obscene profits from the war, women soldiers and contractors live in constant danger of brutal sexual attacks, and when it happens - when it happens - they find no recourse in our legal system. The FBI has been investigating any group that might disagree with President Bush, Democrats have been targeted by US Attorneys all over the country during election years while corrupt Republicans have been ignored or given sweetheart deals, illegal immigrants are being deliberately scapegoated along with gays for all of America's problems - and if you think that the filthy rhetoric spewing from GOP elected officials and conservative media figures doesn't directly result in violence toward people who are either in those groups or appear to be so, you're blind.
Our economy is in serious danger. We couldn't be in worse shape if Bush had designed it to fail this year - and who knows, maybe he did. Disastrous tax cuts for the obscenely rich, disastrous spending on wars and pet projects like abstinence "education," disastrous decisions from Alan "Randian fan-fic" Greenspan, who knows where this chain of disaster will end?
And finally, does anyone know where Martin Luther King is? Where is the Ghandi of early 21st century America? For that matter, where is our Patrick Henry, our Thomas Jefferson, our George Washington? And dare I ask it -
Where is John Brown?
I am afraid that the MLKs and Gandhis of the world don't come along everyday -- it's why we revere them the way that we do I guess.
I don't think a John Brown figure would be helpful. The last thing we need today is someone to take violent action to protest against the actions of this administration. Morality aside, it would simply give them the excuse to engage in further curtailing of our liberties.
Twenty five years of mindless Republican politics, idiotic media complicity with them, and gutless responses by the Democrats, have left us in a place where it is even hard for people to imagine a bold, alternative politics. But I keep hoping.
Posted by: Sir Charles | April 14, 2008 at 01:05 PM
Two thoughts:
1) On this statement, Had the events at Harper's Ferry followed the course Brown laid out, we would probably have a national holiday celebrating not only his birth but his death, I offer more pedantry (would you like fries with that?): There is reason to believe that Brown expected the Harper's Ferry raid to fail, that he planned, in other words, to martyr himself. Why, then, he chose to take others to the grave with him is beyond me. Not to mention, his martyrdom would have been more powerful had he not killed, in cold blood, a bunch of folks back in Kansas.
2) And I think you've made this point in your post, which makes this part of my comment not so much pedantic as merely repetitive (a step up, I suppose -- I aspire to greatness). America is and always has been both of the things you identify: an epic experiment in liberty and a place in which freedom is always circumscribed and predicated on the suffering of others. This is the so-called American irony. Think of colonists coming for a better life -- either economic gain or religious freedom -- who dispossessed Indians, brought indentured servants along for labor, and later turned to African slaves to work their fields. Think of New England factory owners, often enlightened Whigs, who, again, enriched themselves by relying on cotton picked by slaves. Think of Lincoln, who only embraced emancipation in fits and starts, and who even then trod upon the Bill of Rights during his term in office. Think of Progressives in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries pushing through legislation that we all consider heroic -- pure food and drug laws, better living conditions for city dwellers, etc. -- and then juxtapose that reform impulse with their distrust of and hostility toward immigrants and people of color. Think of the suffragists fighting for the franchise, but allowing black women to be thrown under the bus along the way. Think of FDR, the architect of the New Deal, and his decision to place Asian Americans in concentration camps. And it goes on and on. Again, the American irony, as with so many other ironies, is profoundly discomfiting. But at least it's not unrelentingly bleak.
Posted by: Ari | April 14, 2008 at 05:21 PM
Also, John Brown is busy shooting doctors who perform abortions. That's where he is.
Posted by: Ari | April 14, 2008 at 05:27 PM
There is reason to believe that I intended to spell martyr correctly above.
Posted by: Ari | April 14, 2008 at 06:02 PM
Ari,
You are the man -- and you should comment here as often as possible.
Your contributions stand out in such a way that we are willing to concede the correct spelling of "martyr" to you -- however you choose to do so.
Posted by: Sir Charles | April 14, 2008 at 11:15 PM