A Cure Always Requires a Correct Diagnosis
All Americans alive in 1967, of all races, called Detroit’s five day long spasm of violence, arson, and looting in July 1967 a riot. Some labeled it a race riot, others just a riot. Not for long. Within a year, government and media were plying the public with a long list of racial grievances said to be responsible and an even longer list of expensive liberal programs which promised to cure them.
The Detroit riots were deceitfully recast as an insurrection, rebellion, or an uprising to drive those liberal programs, but ultimately this revisionism just glamorized base criminality, Fifty years later, billions have been doled out in Detroit through those liberal programs and Detroit is in even worse shape by every metric.
Let’s start with some definitions from Merriam-Webster:
- archaic a : profligate behavior : debauchery b : unrestrained revelry c : noise, uproar, or disturbance made by revelers
- a : public violence, tumult, or disorder b : a violent public disorder; specifically : a tumultuous disturbance of the public peace by three or more persons assembled together and acting with a common intent
- a random or disorderly profusion the woods were a riot of color
- one that is wildly amusing the new comedy is a riot
- an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government
- opposition to one in authority or dominance
- a : open, armed, and usually unsuccessful defiance of or resistance to an established government b : an instance of such defiance or resistance
- an act or instance of rising up; especially : a usually localized act of popular violence in defiance usually of an established government
Note that the definitions of insurrection, rebellion, and uprising all state that these events are a defiance of established government, while the definition riot does not.
Were the events in Detroit from 23 to 27 July 1967 a defiance of established government?