Americas addiction to Violence - A Conservative Legacy

http://www.alternet.org/books/chris-hedges-americas-addiction-violence-war-vigilante-mobs-conservative-legacy?akid=13205.294211.ZogTln&rd=1&src=newsletter1037716&t=17

Chris Hedges: America's Addiction to Violence—From War to Vigilante Mobs—Is A Conservative Legacy

This may help to explain why so little of it has been used against state authority.

America has been formed and shaped by slave patrols, gunslingers, Pinkerton and Baldwin-Felts detectives, gangs of strikebreakers, hired gun thugs, company militias, and the American Legion—originally right-wing World War I veterans who attacked union agitators, especially those belonging to the Industrial Workers of the World (the “Wobblies”). The influence on the country of the White Citizens’ Council, the White League—which carried out public military drills and functioned as the armed wing of the Democratic Party in the South—the Knights of the White Camelia, and the Ku Klux Klan—which boasted more than 3 million members between 1915 and 1944 and took over the governance of some states—has been equally profound.6 More recently, heavily armed mercenary paramilitaries, violent Cuban exile groups, and armed militias such as the Oath Keepers and the anti-immigration extremist group Ranch Rescue have perpetuated America’s seamless tradition of vigilantism.

These vigilante groups have been tolerated, and often encouraged and utilized, by the ruling elite. And roaming the landscape along with these vigilante groups have been lone gunmen and mass killers who murder for money or power or to appease their own personal demons.