PrintJanuary 18, 2011
Mobs, Lynchings, and Psychos
You tell me: is the attempted killing of a member of Congress for the first time in thirty years a reflection of the violence of our political rhetoric or a reminder of the remarkable peacefulness of modern life? Our liberal friends like to think of the United States as uniquely violent, primarily because of its racist gun culture. That's what the recurrent liberal meme of "Violence in America" is all about. But in A Secular Age, liberal philosopher Charles Taylor offers the idea that Western culture has been rapidly reducing violence over the last millennium, in particular between 1400 and 1800. At the beginning of the period, he writes, things were pretty violent.Young nobles were capable of outbursts of mayhem, carnivals teetered on the thin line between mock and real violence, brigands were rife, vagabonds could be dangerous, city riots and peasant uprisings, provoked by unbearable conditions of life, were recurrent.You only have to sample a...(Read Full Article)
