Anyone remember learning about John Brown? [View all]

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I was in Junior High and we were assigned two different articles to read about John Brown. The point of the lesson wasn't to learn history per se, but rather to understand how each article portrayed the man in question. One article was clearly approving of Brown, while the other just stopped short of calling him an out and out villain.

For those not familiar with his story, here's a passage from Wikipedia that comes close to being straight forward:

John Brown (May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859) was an American abolitionist in the decades preceding the Civil War. First reaching national prominence in the 1850s for his radical abolitionism and fighting in Bleeding Kansas, Brown was captured, tried, and executed by the Commonwealth of Virginia for a raid and incitement of a slave rebellion at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859.

I've been thinking about the man and the lesson our teacher offered my class ever since the murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare. Pam Bondi wants the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the suspect in this crime. I can't, in good conscience, condone such violent actions. However, I roundly condemn the pursuit of the death penalty in this case.

A century from now, if the world resembles anything like the world where I grew up and went to school, I wonder how people like Luigi Mangione and Kyle Rittenhouse will be described in the historical accounts.

Let's not forget the Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."