ONE SIDE OR THE OTHER WILL RIOT AND KILL

The mayor expected mayhem from either the TEA Party or youths. It's no longer funny how they avoid the obvious. There has never been a riot by the TEA Party and the violent national socialist types don't much come out to play when police shoot anybody, they side with police who shoot disarmed and unarmed people. I cannot actually recall the last time the majority Americans held a riot: maybe in New York City at the height of the Civil War.

Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III has said the city was making plans for the announcement for months. "Either way, somebody is going to be upset -- one side or another," he said. "We are obviously preparing for all worst-case scenarios."

Long ago the organized media got into the bad habit of describing believers in the Constitution in the same category that they used to describe "right wing death squads in South and Central America." Then, they all began to refer to them as tea baggers. Most democrats went along with the characterization. I do not.

The last time Republicans and true believers in our Constitution took to the streets was in Selma, Alabama when they went up against the vile Democrats running the plantations in the south. It's funny how all the thugs lost sight of who came out then to support the movement and just which party Lincoln was head of when he led the Union against slave holding separatists. He didn't act because of a moral principle about slavery. As you can see from his letter below, he acted to preserve the Union.

Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862. 

Hon. Horace Greeley: 

Dear Sir.
I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right. 

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. 

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. 

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.
Yours, 

A. Lincoln.

That last sentence summed up the man. When he took office he swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. That oath put his personal beliefs second to what he thought were his official duties. The world would be radically different if he decided that the Constitution also permitted States to shed their allegiance to the Union and go their own way as separate and individual countries. Needless to say, he didn't see it that way and so we fought the bloodiest war in American history.

I saw that Governor Nixon mobilized his State's Guard a week ago and then he and the mayor failed to deploy them to prevent the looters from burning down businesses they looted in Ferguson. Whatever else that was, it was a total failure of the Governor to uphold the oath he swore when he took office. He called the Guard and it responded as it always has and then he held his hand to block it from defending the innocents from the rioters, looters and arsonists he KNEW were going to come out to play.

It might very well be time to hold a conversation about race in America. I won't permit anybody to represent me in that conversation. One does not win by compromising with evil. At this point, evil has two feet, a gun, attitude and a militant indifference to life and humanity.

Compromise

I am grateful that my duties never put my personal beliefs at odds with what I perceived to be my official duties. I've written here about my feelings about men who used fire bombs and WMD on cities. I was a volunteer and I went where I did and did with a will, all the things that it was my duty to do. I count myself fortunate.

Civil authority has one job. Keep it civil or end it.