Failed Conservative Values: Violence and Brutality

Written by: Edwin Rutsch on Apr 23, 2008 12:26 PM EDT

 What a piece of work is man... the paragon of animals. The paragon of animals? Six thousand years of brutality, murder, and slavery. An animal does not do this to its own kind. Byron: [Hamlet]

This article is a rather harsh critique of deeper Failed Conservative Values.  In interviews, Richard Wagner told me he thinks thuggery is a failed conservative value and Herman Blackmon mentioned the lynch mob. I didn't think that either the lynch mob or thuggery were actually values. They seem more like manifestations of a value or perhaps of multiple values.

Sometime it's hard to know what is a value and what isn't.  The largest listing of values that I have found is the Union of International Associations - Human Values online.  They have a database of around 5,000 values. I checked and neither thuggery or the lynch mob are listed.

However, the dictionary definition of thuggery mentions both violence and brutality and they are listed as values.  Violence and brutality seem to work as the values behind the lynch mob as well.  We do see Failed Conservative Values of violence and brutality continuing to be  manifest in domestic violence, school yard bullies,  the beatings and killings of gays, the starting of an unnecessary war in Iraq and the ongoing conservatives support of torture.

Herman also talked about growing up in Texas and fighting against  violence backed segregation and working for the progressive value of justice. 

  Failed Conservative Values: Richard J Wagner on Thuggery

 Richard Wagner: Conservative values go back to the Romans, especially thuggery.  Those who are strong and can take what they want because they have the strength to do it.  This is a struggle going on for thousands of years. 

In the old Roman Republic, the elite, strong, wealthy took what they wanted.  They had slaves, enslaved whoever they wanted, who they could enslave they would enslave. 

If you want freedom you have to fight for it.  All the history and struggle against feudalism in the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment and awakening of people’s rights in the founding of this nation on democratic principles is all part of the progressive struggle – progress for everyone, for freedom and prosperity for all.

Thuggery Definition
 - A cutthroat or ruffian; a hoodlum.
 - The brutal or violent act of thugs.
 - One of a band of professional assassins formerly active in northern India who worshiped Kali and offered their victims to her.
http://www.onelook.com/?w=Thuggery 

."It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important." 
Martin Luther King, Jr

Failed Conservative Values: Herman Blackmon on Lynch Mobs

 Herman Blackmon: That’s a fairly easy one. If you look at the evolution of the true forms of social attitudes, conservatives are values which emanate from the lynch mobs and hysteria from the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries in this nation, based on a dehumanizing notion about any group other than whites.

Edwin: If justice is a progressive value, what do you contrast that with on the conservative side?

Answer: The conservative side has always been in opposition to the evolution towards a human and civilized integrated kind of society. They are almost diametrically opposed, despite what they say. So I don’t know how much sharper I can draw them.

Lynch Mob Definition
- a mob that kills a person for some presumed offense without legal authority

Progressive Values: Herman Blackmon on Justice

 

 My name is Herman Blackmon.  I've been on the central committee since  2000, prior to that I was active on the Hercules City Council as a member, as Vice Mayor for one term and as Mayor. 

Like most terms, progressive becomes somewhat hackneyed.  It means different things to different people.  For me, having been in politics ever since I can remember  back to the time I was a paperboy delivering the Houston Chronicle, it’s been pretty clear to me what progressive means, primarily as an African-American, to make progress in the real world, racial progress.

So if you can be progressive in that sense you pretty much can be progressive in most other senses of that word, economically, certainly socially, and politically.  More specifically, if you want talk about political progressivism, I believe that you’ve got to be willing to integrate and incorporate other cultures into your party.

I don’t know if you recall the 1964 convention which marked my beginning with progressive Democrats.  They weren’t seated by the regular blue-dog rightwing white racist Democrats out of the South.  And for a long time, that group has prevailed.  But for some reason there’s been a resurgence of reactionary elements within the Democratic Party.

Edwin:  In one word, would the value be diversity?

Answer:  More than that, I think it’s justice.  One word might be too much of a distillation – maybe social justice across the entire spectrum that a society by definition must be made of.  Certainly social justice, economic justice, full employment.

As a child, in Houston, which during the 50’s was very segregated and a very unjustly treated black community, and so I can recall long periods of strife, when the NAACP was always raising money at church to provide legal services for a black man who had somehow run afoul of white law, which was by definition unjust, because it had a duty to uphold the colored-white separation.  And every Sunday we were collecting to defend a black who was about to be railroaded through the racist criminal justice system.

Specifically, I remember around 1955 the Johnny Lee Marlees, where a black man was sentenced to die ultimately for killing a white bus driver, because he attempted to force him out of the all-white seats to give the seat to a white man or woman.  Incidents like that mark for me, they are riveting.

Edwin:   Were you personally involved?

Answer:  Well, he was a black man, and by definition. 

 I saw how people had to react and how they often had to go to extraordinary methods just to make sure that a black man received justice.  So by definition it has to be a willingness to include social justice and justice within the criminal justice system for everyone, because there’s a great deal of prejudice in that system.

Violence
 - a turbulent state resulting in injuries and destruction etc.;
 - The quality or state of being violent; highly excited action, whether physical or moral; vehemence; impetuosity; force.
http://onelook.com

Wikipedia
Violence is the exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse. The word is used broadly to describe the destructive action of natural phenomena like storms and earthquakes. More frequently the word describes forceful human destruction of property or injury to persons, usually intentional, and forceful verbal and emotional abuse that harms others. Johan Galtung defines violence as "avoidable insult to basic human needs": survival, well being, identity, and freedom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence

Brutality
 - grossly ruthless or unfeeling
 - the trait of extreme cruelty;
 - a brutal barbarous savage act;
 

Some Questions To Ponder:

- What do you feel the underlying values of thuggery and the lynch mob are?

- Are criminals that lack empathy for thier victums and that use violence conservatives?

-  Where do you presently see conservative violence and brutality manifesting itself?

-  How have conservative values failed?
 

Failed Conservative Values
I ask for your assistance to systematically build the arguments and tell the stories that reveal how Conservative Values have Failed. Join in our effort to create a documentary and book on the subject by contributing  articles, posts, chapters for the book and video clips. Check our website for more information and a growing outline of tasks that need to be done on this project. 
http://progressivespirit.com/Projects/FailedConservativeValues
 

More Progressive Values Stories:

Edwin Rutsch
What Are Progressive Values? Documentary Project
http://ProgressiveSpirit.com 
and Study Group

 

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