George Floyd's brother, Terrence, pleaded on Monday for peace in the streets of our nation.  His passionate request came as cities throughout the U.S. saw another night of violent protests and looting, though it is interesting how COVID-19 is no longer a problem for the hooligans wearing masks to conceal their identities while not maintaining social distancing.  The perpetrators, composed of thugs, Antifa, left-wingers, and Trump-haters, have justified their actions, arguing they are doing so to restore racial equality in America.

Throughout the country, rioters have been smashing storefronts and looting businesses, from Targets to high-end handbag stores to mom-and-pop shops, even to the burning of the historic St. John's Church in Washington, D.C. and the vandalizing of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.

Yet Terrence's appeal condemned the hoodlums taking up the so-called banner of justice to further divide our society:

I understand y'all are upset.  I doubt y'all are half as upset as I am.  So if I'm not over here blowing up stuff, if I'm not over here messing up my community, then what are y'all doing?  What are y'all doing?  Y'all doing nothing.  Because that's not going to bring my brother back at all.

The criminals and their supporters' pretension is that they are striking back at the elite, which compels racial discrimination.  It shows how infantile they are since insurance will not cover the costs of loss or damage, not to mention that rates will rise in the impacted neighborhoods, adding to their economic struggle, especially since the elites mostly do not live in the neighborhoods that riots ravage.  Why do they then carry on, even to the point of blaming this chaos on President Donald Trump?

[I]n spite of these spectacular strides in science and technology, and [t]he richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.  We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers[.] ... This problem of spiritual and moral lag, which constitutes modern man's chief dilemma, expresses itself in three larger problems which grow out of man's ethical infantilism."

So were the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on December 11, 1964.  His civil rights movement of nonviolence — not relying on arms and weapons of struggle, instead meaning non-cooperation with customs and laws that are institutional aspects of a regime of discrimination and enslavement — observed the gospel verse of turning the other cheek: "If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also."  This was not a pacifist fundamental prescription; rather, it was an appeal not to stoop down to injustice with acts of injustice. 

Dr. King's approach was just the opposite of those of the Black Panthers or the "by any means necessary" movement of Malcolm X and his former Nation of Islam (NOI) that justified the use of violence for social recognition or separatism instead of equality.  The NOI still calls for black Americans to have a separate state.  King's action "[did] not seek to liberate Negroes at the expense of the humiliation and enslavement of whites, [but sought] to redeem the spiritual and moral lag."

"Violence," King said, "as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral[.]

It solves no social problem; it merely creates new and more complicated ones.  Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all.  It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.  It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible.  It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue.  Violence ends up defeating itself.  It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

Regrettably, President Trump appears to have no alternative other than to rely on the use of force to stop the violence and restore peace and security.  It seems as if that is the only language the true enemies of our society can understand.  I am sure that the liberals and NeverTrumps will pounce on him for that, as if he were at fault for the killing of George Floyd.

As Peter Van Buren of the American Conservative sarcastically stated:

If that Minnesota cop was a violent racist, he certainly didn't take the red pill from Trump's hand, not with two decades of personal complaints and two decades of signature national violence and two decades of prosecutorial somnolence behind him.  Remind us again, who was the black Democratic president of the United States during most of that time?  Who was his black Democratic attorney general?  And someone is trying to use racism in 2020 to take down Trump?

Someone told me a couple of days ago that she hopes the violence will change the system of racial hatred in the U.S.  But as already explained, the domestic terrorism achieves just the extreme opposite: laws cannot change what is in the heart of a person.  If "I don't like that man," as President Abraham Lincoln once said, "I must get to know him better."

President Richard Nixon, for what the nation underwent under his administration, in his farwell speech gave us perhaps some of the most inspirational words that would put any racist, as well as the rioters and their supporters, to shame:

"Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty; always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself."

Photo credit: YouTube screen grab.