Donald Morrison: Again, America is at war with itself | Columnists

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A monument marks the site of the last battle of the Shays’ Rebellion, which took place in 1787 in Sheffield. The author says that the Americans are once again fighting each other, even if not yet in open warfare.

EAGLE FILE PHOTO

Work on the new U.S. Constitution had hardly begun when, in September 1786, Western Massachusetts erupted into violence.

In what became known as the Shays Rebellion, peasants and traders took up arms against what they saw as the economic policies of a plutocratic regime in Boston.

One of the sparkles that propelled the battle was a pamphlet by Dr. William Whiting, a physician and judge at Great Barrington. Whenever there was any encroachment on the freedoms or property of the people, he wrote, if the response could not be achieved without, It would be Good to disturb the government.

A few days after his words appeared, armed men from the Berkshires stormed the Whitings Great Barrington court to disrupt the government. Soon a Massachusetts militia group arrived to confront them. To spread the situation, Whiting and his fellow judges suggested the troops vote on the matter.

To the general surprise, most of the militiamen sided with the rebels. Bloodshed was avoided.

A few days later, however, a farmer and former Continental soldier named Daniel Shays led an attack by 2,300 rebels on the Springfield Armory that killed and wounded dozens. Just three years after the British expulsion, the Americans were fighting with each other.

Now, history seems to be repeating itself. Violence as a political tool appears poised for a resurgence as a new, violent partisan rage spreads. Consider:

On January 6, a crowd of Donald Trump supporters entered the U.S. Capitol to prevent the presidential election from being certified. Hundreds of people were injured, hundreds more were arrested.

Since then, local election officials across the country have reported a tidal wave of verbal abuse and death threats, mostly from Republicans angry at the election result.

Threats of violence against members of Congress have risen 107 percent from this period last year.

Members of Congress still face death threats. Rep. Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican, recently tweeted an animated image of his assassination of New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This week, Gosar was criticized and removed from his committee duties.

School board meetings across the country have been violently disrupted by conservatives protesting COVID’s mandates and the way history is taught.

Public health officials and even nurses are regularly threatened with violence by opponents of vaccines and masks.

What is happening? A YouGov poll in 2020 found that 41 percent of Republicans believe the time will come when patriotic Americans will have to take the law into their own hands. This year, 56 percent of Republicans agreed they may need to protect America itself even if it requires violent action. Most Democrats disagree.

Political violence is not new in the lives of Americans. Four of our 46 presidents were assassinated, and 12 others suffered attempts on their lives. We fought a Civil War because of slavery and endured tremendous violence afterwards, during the Jim Crow era. We had anarchist violence in the early 1900s, racial violence during the civil rights movement and bloody violence ever since, on issues like immigration, abortion and police killings.

The awkwardness is different now. In recent years, our two major parties have organized themselves into two conflicting camps, each with clearly interconnected ideological and demographic identities. None of the party’s policies were much supportive of voters on the other side, and the party’s identity became increasingly tribal.

A poll earlier this year by Bright Line Watch found that two-thirds of Republicans and half of Democrats view the opposite side as really bad.

At the same time, one of those two parties is misleading the idea of ​​violence, especially to control the electoral system. Having long defended the expansion of gun rights, that party has been hiding from people who seem eager to use those weapons in politics. At a recent Republican rally in Idaho, a man stood up to ask, When can we use guns?

They are already in use. Last year, 90 percent of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil were committed by armed Americans, mostly white supremacists and other forms of anti-government. In the recent trial of a young conservative named Kyle Rittenhouse for killing two people and injuring a third in Kenosha, Wis., Defense attorneys argued, in fact, the right to carry guns in a protest march.

It becomes ridiculous. We need to start lowering the national temperature of rhetoric, it’s hard now. We must also use the legal system more firmly to punish political violence, its sponsors, its enablers and anyone who tries to take the law into its own hands. Otherwise, the US will go into chaos and tyranny that the Constitution intends to prevent.

The Shays Rebellion collapsed a few months after the confrontation at Great Barrington. Hundreds of participants in the movement were persecuted, though most were eventually recovered. Shays fled to Vermont.

Whiting remained at Great Barrington, but he was convicted of sedition for his writings and removed from his sentence. Until his death five years later, he argued against violence and for the right to protest.

The uprising of 1787 encouraged Alexander Hamilton and other Federalists in those Constitutional Convention years to discard the weak Articles of Confederation and push a strong federal government to control state autocracies such as one in Massachusetts.

The resulting Constitution and its Bill of Rights guarantee free speech, as well as the right to assemble peacefully, not violently. It is time for us to respect that distinction, as Drs. William Whiting.

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