Conclusion
Adler, Hill, Armstrong, and McVeigh turned to violence after becoming frustrated with democratic methods. Adler had watched his father, Victor Adler, spend years leading the Austrian Social Democrats against war.
In 1914 the senior Adler, then a member of the Austrian Parliament, began to support and justify the war. Listening to his father rationalizing the abandonment of his “war against war” rhetoric, Friedrich felt his “whole life plans and life work had been wrecked.”50 Hence, Friedrich resolved to oppose the war as an individual and began planning the assassination of the prime minister.When Hill learned about a 1993 killing of an abortion doctor in Pensacola, Dr. David Gunn, by Michael Griffin, Hill said his own inaction gnawed at him each Friday when he protested outside the same abortion clinic. One day he confronted Dr. Gunn’s successor, Dr. Britton, by shouting, “You know the wrath of God abides in everyone who persists in killing innocent human beings.” He resolved that he had to act.51
Although he did not articulate it, McVeigh’s frustration, judging from the evidence presented at his trial, seemed to derive from his sense of duty to his country, as demonstrated by his Gulf War experience, his disappointment at not making it into the elite Green Berets, and his subsequent strong interest in the survivalist movement with its distrust of the federal government.
Armstrong had participated in various demonstrations against the Vietnam War, but his experiences at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago convinced him that nonviolent demonstrations would not stop the war. The trials of Adler and Armstrong confronted society with dissenters who maintained that a selective act of violence was morally right in order to halt war’s wholesale killing. The state, on the other hand, naturally drew the public’s attention to the violent acts and the consequences for society if those who commit them receive a light punishment.
Violence wipes away the persuasive argument of conscience. It is difficult to convince a judge, jury, or the public that an act of dissent was morally justified when someone is killed, whether that someone is directly involved like the Austrian prime minister, or an innocent bystander like Robert Fassnacht, Armstrong’s victim. The position of conscience is powerful when, as in the case of Thomas More or the Berrigan brothers, the acts are symbolic. In the long run, society responds to an appeal to conscience, just as in the short run it reacts against violence. Law evolves, and the rule of law is strengthened by the one type of dissent, as law and the rule of law are undermined by the other.