Centerfield

Creepy Romanticism About Rightist Militias

Here's a piece that seems overromantic about rightist militias. Few (including the ones in Latin America he's so rosy about) show a record of warring on behalf of civil society. In fact, their record, captured in numerous articles, books, and movies I'm at a loss to see how he missed them, is utterly awful. It's about equal to leftie or religious militias.

Highlight: o They do tend to kill the opposition killers, which is a plus, but they also:

Lowlights o Kill moderates, and just about any other non-member when they get bored. Or members, during power struggles.
o Form roadblocks, preventing travel and commerce.
o For entertainment, kill, mutilate, rape, burn, torture, and just about anything else nasty they can think of.
o They especially love to kill learned people like the author of the essay, just for the sense of power (e.g., he'd be first against the wall).

A choice quote:

But death squads are rational, in their own horrible way. They may prove, as they did in Latin America, to be a pretty effective method of wiping out implacable enemies of social order and preparing the way for democratic and law-abiding government. In living memory almost every decent and legal regime in Latin America was preceded by a chaotic period in which ordinary men armed themselves with guns, said goodnight to their families, and went out in groups to kill some local dissident. That period was a bit further back in the past for the French, the English, and the Americans. But no nation can be shown to have reached the rule of democratic law without it. The work of the vigilantes is the hideous and dark crime that Socrates and the Greek tragic dramatists hinted must underlie all civilization. That crime is indeed a crime, and its perpetrators must stand trial for it, whether before God or some human tribunal. But it is possible that true civil self-government can only be established with its aid.

"...kill some local dissident." He sounds a little unclear on how this democracy thing works. The key to civil society is not violence, but the establishment of nonviolent systems of competition and conflict resolution. E.g., courts, commercial competition, etc..

If death squads are so absolutely necessary, why can't he give even one specific example? As, for example, English subjects being given first court systems where the accused have basic rights, and England establishing a decent trade-based economy, both before going democratic. As in Athens.

Chester read it rather uncritically, I fear.

It's almost as if the US and Iraqi governments read Turner's article as a script:

Tank cannons boomed out over the city five times in rapid succession Wednesday, and U.S. F-16 jet fighters screamed low overhead as the conflict in Sadr City continued into the day.

There's a huge difference between a death squad and our army. With certain notable exceptions, that get addressed rather publicly, our army enforces civil rule. The militia just gets violent.