When Must We Kill Them?

Evil has come to America.

Evil has come to America. The present administration is engaged in barbarism; it has arbitrarily imprisoned its opponents, revoked the visas of thousands of students, imposed taxes upon us without our consent, and seeks to destroy the institutions which oppose it. Its leader has threatened those who produce unfavorable coverage, and suggested that their licenses be revoked. It has deprived us, in many cases, of trial by jury; it has subjected us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and has transported us beyond seas to be imprisoned for pretended offenses. It has scorned the orders of our courts, and threatens to alter fundamentally our form of government. It has pardoned its thugs, and extorted the lawyers who defended its opponents.

If these actions become normal, the government could arrest anyone and deport them to prison in a foreign land, without hope of redress, for no reason. It is nothing less than the total abdication of rule of law in this country. There is no guard or protection against it. If this theory prevails, then it is the end of America as a free nation.

I do not wish for this essay to be a mere catalogue of outrages. The conduct of the present administration is as well known to you as it is to myself, and can be understood by any sensible person. On it, no further comment is ventured.

What remains for us to decide is when we fight. If the present administration wills it, it could sweep away the courts, it could sweep away democracy, and it could sweep away freedom. Protest is useful only insofar as it can effect action. Our words might sway the hearts of men, but not of beasts.

If the present administration chooses this course, then the questions of the day can be settled not with legislation, but with blood and iron. In short, we must decide when we must kill them. None of us wish for war, but if the present administration wishes to destroy the nation I would accept war rather than see it perish. I hope that you would choose the same.

But what to do? The rot of the present administration runs deeper than one man. The sacrifice of a hero is insufficient to save our nation, and a gust of wind on a summer day would not have saved us. For let us make no mistake; the problem is not one man, but a whole class of people. If one head is cut off, another would take its place.

Violence only makes sense as part of coordinated strategy. This is why protests are important – not as a way of changing the present administration’s actions, but as a way to coordinate a group. There may come a time when we shall have no guarantee of freedom but the one which we make for ourselves. If it comes, I tell you that there is no greater honor than he who lays down his life for his friends. Until then, we must wait.

And when is that time? Your threshold may differ from mine, but you must have one. If the present administration should cancel elections; if it should engage in fraud in the electoral process; if it should suppress the speech of its opponents, and jail its political adversaries; if it ignores the will of Congress; if it should directly spurn the orders of the court; all these are reasons for revolution. It may be best to stave off, and wait for elections to throw out this scourge; but if it should threaten the ability to remove it, we shall have no choice. We will have to do the right thing. We will have to prepare ourselves to die. I hope that we should conduct ourselves with such courage that it will be our finest hour; I expect that we shall do our duty.

While we wait, we must not be like sheep to the slaughter. We cannot cooperate. We must hide those who are persecuted; we must foil the aims of their agents. The state and local governments which we control can litigate the actions of the present administration. Their police can refuse to share information or be deputized to do the work of the evil ones. If war is politics by other means, then politics is war by other means. There can be no surrender, for surrender means the oppression of all of us.

These are exceptional times! We have not faced such a threat in many years. I wish that it had not come. It is the sorrow of the world that these times have come, and it is we who shall have to bring woe unto those through whom it came.

The future is not certain. It may be that the present administration should flinch, and turn back in face of lighter action. I fondly hope that that may be the case. But if it comes, we must awaken from this ignorant dream. This evil will not pass without blood, sweat, toil, and tears. So harden your hearts, and be prepared to die.