The shooting and subsequent police behavior and protests in
Ferguson, as well as the responses of so many to the crisis, including media
talking heads, ideologues, and racialized survey responses*, have gotten me to
thinking about the American and the French Revolutions.
Just to remind those of you whose history education was
insufficient or has faded, the American Revolution was a mere skirmish in
contrast to the French. They were not
remotely comparable in scale. By any
reasonable estimate, the death toll and the total devastation in the French
Revolution was at least 100 times that of the American. Further, what followed in France was decades
of war and then decades of deprivation.
It is of course not surprising that de Tocqueville devoted
one of his two major works (The Old Regime and the Revolution -- of course you
all remember the other, Democracy in America) to the contrast between the two.
One of Tocqueville's points stands out for me. He argued that one of the factors that made
the American Revolution vastly more benign was the strong proclivity on the
part of the American founding fathers to focus on The Rule of Law, while the
French revolutionists focused, instead, on The General Will of the People. Those of you who have read some political
theory may, as do I, recall the very moment that you read Rousseau and his
glowing account of the Noble Savage corrupted by civilization and became a
convert to the Liberal cause. I remember
the fall of 1971 and my 18 year old self convulsed in desperate and even
tearful relief that I could safely reject the brutish view of mankind presented
by Hobbes, and believe -- in good company -- that good and gentle humans could
rule themselves intelligently, gracefully, and peaceably.
I am no longer so enamored with mankind or Rousseau, nor so
rejecting of Hobbes, but that is not surprising, as I am now old. In any case, that is another matter.
To the point: in Ferguson we have true and erudite
Conservatives (I am not talking about run-of-the-mill Republicans, nor about
racists who care little about Michael Brown and his family and community or
worse, wish them ill) worrying aloud about the the apparent desire to try
Officer Wilson in The Court of Public Opinion. They think, and I think rightly,
that The Will of the People, being a Leftist impulse, shades just a bit too
easily into mob rule, and they wish to hold back against that tide and let The
Rule of Law have its say.
On the Left we have those who believe -- and I also think
rightly -- that we have systematized racism from the outset of this country,
merely formalizing it, hypocritically, in the Constitution; that the wisdom of
crowds, and not mob rule, is manifest in the street protests we see in Ferguson,
and that unless they speak truth to power, the blue line will envelop and
protect pathological, racist killers who hide behind a badge. In the end, trying Darren Wilson in the Court
of Public Opinion is thus more, not less, just than would be allowing a corrupt
and unjust legal and police system takes its normal course of action. But is this so?
The Center Left, what is called the Liberal class in the
USA, is so often insufferably accommodating and lacking in backbone, but in
this matter I think they are not only pragmatically, but even principally, correct. The American Liberal is
enamored of the American and not the French Revolution; gratified that we found
a way to replace Monarchy with Republicanism without regicide, separate Church
and State without the confiscation of Church lands and lives (as was the case
in Revolutionary France); and avoided enduring class and sectarian warfare that
led to wave after wave of victims at the guillotine. In the case of Michael Brown, Darren Wilson,
and Ferguson, the American Liberal says that the Will of the People is indeed
dangerously close to mob rule, but the Rule of Law, so proudly waved about by
Conservatives, is so poorly applied to black Americans that it is a farce. That is, the American Liberal, as I
understand him, says that the Just and Universal Application of Just Law should
take precedence over both the Conservative’s smug and deceitful view that the
Rule of Law in America (the Ghosts of John Locke and Hobbes) is justly applied
to people of color but also take precedence over the Leftist’s naïve view that
the General Will of the People (and the Ghost of Rousseau) will find justice in
the street.
Of course, as a man on the Left, I am immensely sympathetic
to the view that blacks in America should not have to wait another minute for
the promise of America to be redeemed, for the writing and enforcement of just
laws to be justly and universally applied.
But on this occasion, I do think the Centrists who understand that the
Leftist confidence in revolution is no more satisfying (nor safe) than the
Conservative’s willingness to let a systematically racist society ponderously
move toward justice without a kick in the pants.
Darren Wilson must be tried in a Court of Law, as must all
men who kill, even behind the protection of a badge. Our police, attorneys general, and judiciary
must cleanse themselves of racist sin – as fast as possible. But Wilson and others like him must be given
due process under the Law, or we risk losing everything. Many have lost patience with the American
experiment – and who can blame them?
Many wish to storm the American Bastille. But many millions of lives were
lost and generations were ruined because the French took that path two hundred years
ago, and the Soviet and Mao experiments were not gentle, either.
Can we do better? Is
the Center correct this time?
_____
*http://www.mediaite.com/online/poll-62-of-white-st-louisans-think-michael-brown-shooting-was-justified/
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