On the eve of Lansing's third anti-shutdown protest in a month, a national magazine commentary says that rifle-carriers calling Gov. Gretchen Whitmer a tyrant display "the height of stupidity."
"Real tyrants do not tolerate protest, much less armed protest," philosopher Firmin DeBrabander writes at The Atlantic. He's a Baltimore professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art and the author of "Do Guns Make Us Free? / Democracy and the Armed Society."
The Atlantic's post Wednesday.
DeBrabander derides camo-wearing men and women who brought rifles to April 15 and 30 demonstrations at Michigan's Capitol, as well as those staging simiar displays in other states.
What did the lockdown protesters hope to add to their message with ominous assault rifles that they could not otherwise convey? Were they unsure that onlookers would appreciate the intensity of their anger?
Looking at these images, my reaction is not fear but its opposite: an overwhelming sense of the protesters’ impotence. That they carried guns suggests they were less than confident in the manifest justice of their cause or the seriousness of their passion, which they needed to amplify. ...
They either don’t know about the tradition and practice of civic protest, or decided to largely abandon it. ... The point of democracy is precisely to dispense with violence in policy negotiations. In that respect, many were right to dub the armed protesters "terrorists." Though they might object to the title, the protesters certainly seemed to relish the intimidation they caused—they wanted to issue a threat of violence, and, indeed, armed insurrection.
The protesters complained of government tyranny—as they saw it, the governor was making univocal decisions contrary to the public interest. But ... under real tyranny, you don’t march around with your assault rifles, yelling into policemen’s faces. That is a death wish—the height of stupidity.
Under real tyranny, you don’t reveal your weapons at all—and you don’t identify yourself as a threat. A real tyrant will dispatch armed threats out of hand.
Fermin DeBrabander: "They knew full well that they live in no tyranny." (Photo: Maryland Institute College of Art)
Act III of anti-Whitmer street theater is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 1 a.m. Thursday on the Capitol lawn and billed as a "Judgement Day" demonstration organized again by a group called Michigan United for Liberty.
The Maryland scholar sees a "great irony" in the fact that weapon-carrying dissidents entered the domed government building during a legislative session, were allowed to leave and now are coming back.
That the protesters were so brazen suggests they they knew full well that they live in no tyranny. They were respected, and left unharmed, because we have the rule of law.
Put otherwise: These men could angrily shake their weapons in the air, and play the role of armed insurrectionists—costumes and all—because their government actually protects them.
