Vigilante Man

As a descendant of Irish immigrants (and of a Revolutionary War Veteran) and as a person who worked long and hard for civil rights in the 60's, this article spoke volumes to me. Our society seems to be excellent at singling out groups to discriminate against. Now immigrants (legal and illegal) and gays are in society's sights, and bear the brunt of persecution. At what point will we wake up and see our own faults? We, as a nation, seem to be able to point out the splinters in other country's eyes, but not the log in our own.

Vigilante Man
By Mike Davis

"The local people whipped themselves into a mold of cruelty. Then they formed units, squads, and armed them -- armed them with clubs, with gas, with guns. We own the country. We can't let these Okies get out of hand." -- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

The vigilantes are back. In the 1850s, they lynched Irishmen; in the 1870s, they terrorized the Chinese; in the first decade of the twentieth century, they murdered striking Wobblies; in the 1920s, they organized "Bash a Jap" campaigns; and in the 1930s, they welcomed the Joads and other Dust Bowl refugees with tear gas and buckshot.

Vigilantes have always been to the American West what the Ku Klux Klan was to the South: vicious and cowardly bigotry organized into a self-righteous mob. Almost every decade, some sinister group of self-proclaimed patriots mobilizes to repel a new invasion from some subversive threat or other.

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