WWJD in Minneapolis

Live in Minneapolis: Because our live show on February 19 sold out, we’re adding a second show. Tickets will go on sale tomorrow; keep an eye on TheBulwark.com/events.

1. Militias

Yesterday we talked about reasons why protesters who oppose the regime might consider arming themselves and organizing: Because agents of the regime adhere more scrupulously to the law when the people they are policing represent an actual (rather than an imagined) threat.

That’s not a very nice idea, but it does seem basically true. And if what was happening in Minneapolis was a sectarian power struggle, then the resistance arming and organizing itself would be obviously correct.

But I submit to you that this isn’t really about power. It’s about legitimacy.

In America we have had both kinds of struggles. The Revolutionary and Civil Wars were decided by power, not persuasion. By the time the bullets started flying there were no people to convince (or very few); there was only force to be applied and an opponent to be driven into submission. On the other hand, the abolition movement and the civil rights struggle were about legitimacy. The power dynamic was real, but at the end of the day segregation could only be fully defeated by convincing people that it was illegitimate.¹ The argument was moral.

And in America, moral arguments have always flowed from Christian ideas.² For the biggest caveat in the world, here’s a footnote.³)

If you wanted a single shorthand for Christian belief, you could do worse than the Sermon on the Mount. And it maps on to the last two months in Minnesota almost perfectly. This is going to be a doozy.

Let’s go to church . . ...