Re: Baton Rouge

[Martin Eden]

39. "John Brown's plot failed" is a fact.

The operative word being plot. Are you ignorant of the difference between a plot and a cause?

He sought to spark and arm a slave rebellion with a stronghold in the southern mountains. It didn't happen.

Slavery was a very divisive issue that motivated the South to secede, but ending slavery was not (at the outset) why the North conducted the war. Northern victory did of course make it possible to pass the 13th Amendment (abolishing slavery) in January 1865 and ratify it in December 1865.

I agree slavery would not have ended at the time it did without force of arms, and it's difficult to speculate when it ultimately would have ended in the United States and by what means if the South had not seceded.

All of which is pretty much besides the point made in the OP. To refresh your memory, here is the statement:

Gandhi knew it. MLK knew it. 99.99% of Black Lives Matter supporters know it now. Fighting brutality by the authorities with violent retribution always backfires.

Analogy to the Civil War is pretty thin, especially with the qualifier violent retribution. The Dallas shooter was committing an act of revenge, not conducting a potentially successful strategy in a cause for justice.

History has shown that peoples have sometimes prevailed against oppressors through force of arms. The United States was born of revolution against the tyranny of a king.

But to include the Dallas shooter in the company of patriots and freedom fighters requires elevating that killer to something he is not or demeaning others for their sacrifice in a worthy cause. I don't doubt the Dallas shooter believed he was striking against the injustice of police brutality and racial bias, but I'm willing to bet he will never be elevated to a martyr revered by millions. And deservedly so.