Lots of remember-remembering today

Well, if nothing else V for Vendetta the movie made more of a household word out of Guy Fawkes in the US of A. He is cause of much reflection today, from my buddies Sunni and Wally to psychic twin Uncle Warren, as well as Guy Luongo who drew a good response from Wendy McElroy. Over at Strike the Root we find Glen Allport writing approvingly of the Ron Paul campaign's choosing the Fifth of November for a big one-day campaign contribution splash.

I actually think Uncle Warren's iMac said it best, although I suspect the words were penned by the uncle himself (wink, wink) - "This week we're celebrating Guy Fawkes Day, which is the anniversary of an attempted violent attack that Fawkes believed would end oppression in England. He was a little batty, of course, because the answer to violent oppression is never more violence. That just creates a newgroup of oppressors. Nope, the counter to violence is nonviolence. But I digress."

Actually, I don't think that's a digression at all. I think that's the whole point. As Allport says in an essay that's brilliant until he starts passing out the Paul Kool-Aid,

Even had Fawkes succeeded, the result would have been the deaths of perhaps hundreds in the Parliament building and the resumption of British tyranny under new leadership. Killing or driving out a tyrant almost never results in anything one could call "freedom," but instead sparks an often-bloody power struggle as varying factions fight for control of the coercive State apparatus.

I raise a toast to Guy Fawkes for the narrow purpose of saluting a man who recognized the brutality of the state and was willing to take a stand to change things. His plan, to meet brutality with brutality, was fatally flawed, but in his failure he called attention to the tyranny.

Remember, remember.