As I discussed in the last article, the city on Minneapolis is burning as people rendered impotent by the violence of the state have begun to vent their rage at their oppression. This rage, like all rage, has grown and grown until like all rage it has hurt the innocent as much as it has targeted the guilty. Those in power are even using the military directly against the people. You might expect those of us here at the Latter-day Liberator to write a scathing denunciation of such violence given our stance rooted in Christ’s example of nonviolent civil disobedience. And it is true that none of us here celebrate such destruction, but to focus on the destruction itself and ignore the context in which that violence has occurred, why it has occurred, is to ignore the real lesson here and what can truly be done to not just end the violence but take meaningful steps to keep it from happening again. As Dr. King put it:
Now I wanted to say something about the fact that we have lived over these last two or three summers with agony and we have seen our cities going up in flames. And I would be the first to say that I am still committed to militant, powerful, massive, non-violence as the most potent weapon in grappling with the problem from a direct action point of view. I’m absolutely convinced that a riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt. And I feel that we must always work with an effective, powerful weapon and method that brings about tangible results. But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention.
I highly suggest you read the entire speech because it is highly applicable to what is going on now.
Riots Everywhere
It is perhaps no surprise that the public execution of George Floyd sparked protests, even riots, in Minneapolis as it was the scene of the murder. What is more surprising is that these riots have broken out everywhere across the United States. These reports from CNN:
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has sent more than 1,500 officers to assist local police departments in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, the governor said in a statement Saturday.
Six Oakland Police Department officers and seven civilians were injured in protests in downtown Oakland, California, on Friday, according to a statement from the Oakland Police Department (OPD). OPD says 18 people were arrested by their agency while four others were arrested by outside agencies.
Gov. Tony Evers has activated the Wisconsin National Guard to support law enforcement in Milwaukee in their response to “agitators that have disrupted peaceful protests following the murder of George Floyd,” a news release from his office said. At least 125 members of the Wisconsin National Guard have been activated immediately to respond to Milwaukee, according to the release.
Four Atlanta Police Department officers were injured, one civilian was shot and authorities responded to several fires and looting across the city as protests broke out on Friday night, Sgt. John Chafee told CNN in a statement Saturday morning. Protesters damaged property at a popular Atlanta mall north of the city, looting several stores and clashing with police, Chafee said. The College Football Hall of Fame also sustained damage and the gift shop was looted, he said. The Atlanta Police Department received multiple calls about shots being fired by people participating in protests both in downtown Atlanta and in northern Atlanta near Lenox Mall.
The Columbus Ohio Police Department has declared an emergency in the downtown area “to manage protests near the statehouse,” the mayor of the city tweeted. “We are asking residents to avoid the area,” Mayor Andrew Ginther said.
DC Police Chief Peter Newsham said that protesters in DC last night exceeded 1,000 people. He detailed the trajectory of the main protest, and acknowledged that there were likely splinter groups off the main route. The Metro Police Department (MPD) made no arrests, had no reports of injuries and no reports of use of force.
Roughly 108 people were arrested in Chicago after protests broke out in the city Friday night, Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown said at a news conference Saturday morning. One person was arrested after allegedly breaking an officer’s wrist and is facing aggravated battery charges, Brown said. He said demonstrations “began peaceful and ended a little bit more aggressive and intense. Some in the crowd began confronting the police, so we had to take swift action so that the violence and property damage wouldn’t escalate,” Brown [added] that property damage was minimal.
Between 400 to 500 people were arrested during Friday night’s protests in Los Angeles, Los Angeles Police Department spokesperson Josh Rubenstein told CNN. Exact numbers of arrests is still being compiled as is the number of injuries suffered by civilian and police, Rubenstein said.
Protests in places as far apart as San Jose, CA and New York City have turned violent as well with thousands of people gathering from every race and background to vent their anger at the injustice and hatred that they face.
Instead of focusing on the riots themselves I want to talk about the “intolerable conditions that exist in our society” that have given rise to them, that make people all over the nation feel that the only way they can have their voice heard is by application of the torch and the rod to break, burn, and destroy. I want to talk about the State.
The War Of All Against All
The State is often lauded as the only means by which peace can be obtained. The argument goes something like this: People are no angels, therefore they must be controlled. The organ of control is the government. The government issues edicts (“laws”) that are designed to restrain the people and force them to observe good behavior. In order to make sure that people obey these edicts the government needs the power to punish the disobedient and needs officers -police- to hunt down the disobedient to punish them and scare everyone else into general compliance. The general outcome of this system is supposed to be the creation of a general peace that allows people to live successful, happy lives.
What nonsense. Here is what really happens.
In the name of securing the “general welfare” a system of control is organized that uses blunt force violence to control the populace through outright force and terror. The levers of power, always exercised by the social and aristocratical elites, are used to secure and increase the wealth and power of those elites through “legalized” theft and extortion (taxes and fines). In order to ensure their power and wealth extract is maintained the elites in power use their stolen money to hire domestic military and foreign military forces (the police and the armed forces) to force people at home and abroad to comply with the dictates of those in power or suffer. This is why, tragically, George Floyd is one among hundreds already killed by police this year. That is why the State has given its policing agents -the police, the cops- near carte blanche to do as they please and face little to no legal consequences. The State can be summed up simply: “Comply or Die.“
It is also no accident that this same organization controls the educational system. What better way to indoctrinate the masses, ensure compliance, and convince them of your necessity than to train them from childhood to love and obey the state itself? If you can control how they conceive of the world and how if functions then you do not need to constantly exercise the overt means of political oppression, you will have constructed a prison of the mind where people will mostly obey because they assume the system is simply a fact of reality and their obedience is automatically assumed as a general moral good. Those in power well understand the wisdom of Solomon:
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)
In this system of coercion and violence, it is inevitable that the people will be set at war with one another. It is rather the point, actually. To paraphrase Jeffrey Tucker, the more we have violence as the underpinnings of our society, the more we are in conflict with one another. The more we have laws governing how we live and go about our day to day lives, the more we will inevitably be in conflict with one another. The system of taxation alone ensures this as it extorts money from the unwilling and spends it on projects or organizations the individual taxpayer would not support. The more we can use the law to compel others to live in a manner that we believe they should live but they oppose, the more we fear that the law will in turn be used against us to force us to do the same. This in turn makes us suspect of others, causing us to see everyone as a potential or actual enemy, which in turn generates within us a hatred for them.
Being subject to such violence and compulsion breeds within those subject to it hatred for those who they feel are the ones imposing their ideals through the violence of the government. The statist (state-ist) system itself is never the target, after all it merely represents “the people.” So people end up hating not the system which allows authoritarianism, totalitarianism, racism, sexism, nationalism, and all other forms of oppression to exist and function; instead their hatred is re-directed against some other target group -a Them– and the goal becomes assuming the reigns of power to punish Them. Therefore the actual system of oppression, the cause of the hatred and anger, escapes being held accountable. Instead its existence is strengthened as it becomes the goal of all groups to seize control of it so that they can escape its oppression and use its tools to oppress others. The result of this is that the State, through its very function, creates an unending war between the parts of society over the power and plunder to be gained by controlling the reins of power, all justified by the ideology of the State. The result is social chaos where hatred is increased as political limits narrow and everyone who isn’t aligned with you is your enemy trying to destroy you- an Endless War of All Against All where the only victors are the politicians in power and their politically connected friends.
Methods of The State Applied Privately
So, how are riots an outcome of this system? It is rather straightforward. Riots are merely the methods of the State applied by private persons. The robbery, death, and destruction wrought by a mob is merely the small scale private enacting of the methods and ideas that people have been taught to exercise through political methods. Looters are merely taxing the stores for the good of the public- themselves. The beating and killing of people by the mob is merely a repetition of the State’s willingness to hunt down and kill any and all who threaten it under the guise of “treason” or “crime.” From childhood we as a people have been taught that “the People” have the right to enact violence and brutality through mass action. There is no difference between the right or wrong of that violence whether it first goes through the convoluted rituals of the state or the masses merely act for themselves directly. Truly, the children have not departed from the ways they’ve been raised to adore, merely the forms most commonly followed.
That the police are the targets of such violence is unsurprising, as well. As the main occupying forces of the State, they’re the ones with boots on the ground, enforcing the edicts of the State, including the corresponding theft and extortion involved, with brutal efficiency. They, as opposed to the Presidents, Governors, and Mayors, become the symbol of the State and end up being the targets of the rage of the populace, and not unjustly so. The issue is that this is all a shell game because when the riots have ended, the protests are over, and the people in the streets go home, they will go right back to being cows on the tax farm.
Why? Because the police will be the scapegoats that will be sacrificed for the continued preservation of the system of statist oppression. Indeed, its power will likely grow without abatement as the latest rounds of violence are co-opted by it to justify its continued growth as an example of why it needs to exist. To paraphrase Dr. King, a riot merely intensifies the fears of the community while relieving its guilt at having engaged in such oppression to start with. Though a result of oppression -of the War of All Against All created by the State’s unending war and robbery that pits society against itself- the riots will only be used to justify even more oppression. And, most likely, the majority of people will celebrate such oppression as a sign that things are being “set right.” Thus the cycle that justifies the State’s apparatus of robbery and oppression, continues.
Breaking The Cycle
Famed French theorist Frédéric Bastiat once observed:
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
The State continues because it is an ideological and moral system that people have not only been taught to embrace since childhood but which they are incentivized to embrace because they hope to be the ones to benefit most from the wealth it has plundered through legal violence. Knowing this helps us to recognize why riots, though they be outgrowths of the Unending Warfare engendered by the State, only end up empowering the State in the long run. Knowing this also helps us to see the way to break the cycle and move forward towards a truly better future.
We must end the State. We must embrace decentralization, nonviolence, and voluntaryism. This path is possible for all people, no matter what religious belief or lack thereof. All people can come out the State and embrace voluntarism, human dignity, and liberty.
For the Latter-day Saints though this is a special call, the call to come out of Babylon and embrace Zion. Not tomorrow, not when things are easier, not when the State has been shrunk. Now. This very minute. Zion is not the envisioned better tomorrow. Zion is the path to that tomorrow. That mythical better tomorrow will never come until we embrace its antecedent, Zion, and abandon Statism as the Whore of Babylon that it truly is.
This means rejecting the legal system that justifies the State in all its forms -Progressivism, Conservatism, Tribalism, Nationalism, Minarchism, Constitutionalism, et al.– as well as the moral system that justifies the State- the belief that violence can be used as a tool to force people to be good and make society better. We best do this by embracing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, with its teaching that Christ alone is King and leader of the people and that all moral interactions between people should be based on love, service, mercy, nonviolence, noncompliance with evil, and even the willingness to suffer evil instead of seeking vengeance. These are the foundation stones for the Kingdom of God and for Zion. Thus, by living them is the better tomorrow made real, tangible, today.