Violence of Self-Defense
And that brings me to Camara's and Romero's second level of violence, the response of oppressed people to the first level.
Self-defense is a human right. Perhaps the heroic among us - like Gandhi, King and those who followed them - can forego its invocation. However, let's not fool ourselves; the vast majority of Americans - in fact the vast majority of Christians - is not and has never been pacifist.
Far from it, most of us - even religious people - are enthusiastic advocates of "just war," always rationalized as self-defense. (That $2 billion we allow our government to spend on "defense" each day is proof enough of that.)
Even more to the point, our nation's founding document, the Declaration of Independence, underlines the right of citizens to engage in the very type of violence displayed in Washington last week. Referring to the origins and aims of government, Jefferson and his co-signers declared: "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
Judging from the violent actions of our founders, those words arguably justify Americans' assuming arms, destroying property, and arresting criminally negligent officials administering a government as dysfunctional as the one described above.
Police Violence
The inevitable reactionary response of violent institutions to citizen rebellion constitutes the third level of violence. It's what we saw last summer in response to the (again) largely peaceful demonstrations of BLM activists precisely against out-of-control police forces.
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