In recent months, race has risen to the front of American politics with a fervor unseen since the 1960’s. Many African Americans have taken to the streets to protest what they see as racist mistreatment by the government, in particular, the police force. In several cases such as in the town of Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland these protests have become suddenly violent. Many who favor the riots that these protests have become say they are the only way to achieve true social change in this country. Abraham Lincoln, the President who arguably did more for the African American community than any other, spoke at length on the merit of riots as a tool for social change. Lincoln argues, correctly, that not only are riots criminal and deserving of punishment but that they are in fact the greatest threat to the United States governments very existence.
Lincoln says that the United States will never fall to a foreign power because of geographic location and military strength. The real threat to the United States, argues Lincoln, is from within. Lincoln says that riots pose the greatest threat from within our borders. Riots are essentially the average citizen taking the law into their own hands, this is very dangerous. Aside from the fact that mobs are more likely to enforce the law more extremely than the government they are in their very nature illegal. Riots, though they hide under the guise of social justice, are really quite radical. Lincoln says that when the law is not enforced it makes it more likely for others to break the law. So a riot for social justice can quickly attract the criminally natured who will then turn the riot into a pure crime spree. Those citizens who are by their nature law abiding will become disgusted with this and lose faith in the government. This is the environment, according to Lincoln, in which a dictator can easily rise up and seize authority, as law abiding citizens are desperate to try anything to restore order to their country. The dictator under the guise of creating stability will suppress social freedom and destroy everything the United States stands for. This seems like a bleak and radical picture, yet history tells it is possible. Hitler, Napoleon and Julius Caesar arose in situations exacty like the one Lincoln creates for us, and these situations began exactly how the recent riots in America began as a protest to raise aware for legitimate concerns.
Lincoln however does not believe that we should just allow social justice to continue. In his speech he outlines a method of changing government policy remarkably similar to that used by Martin Luther King, Jr. more than seventy years later. He says that when the government creates bad laws or the system is broken we should never turn to violence to achieve that change instead we should continue to follow the law and work peacefully to reverse it. Lincoln argues that this is the only way true change has ever happened and will ever happen.
