In light of yesterday’s tragic events, I am posting an excerpt here from Randy Kennedy’s essay we published earlier this week at the NYU Democracy Project:

Because proponents of democracy are constantly battling its enemies, the ethics of fighting should be an important subject for its champions….

The arguments over the ethics of political struggle in which I have been involved have often taken place, figuratively or sometimes literally, under posters picturing a stern-looking Malcolm X alongside the slogan “By Any Means Necessary!” I object to that slogan if it means abjuring limits that morally bind dissidents. I insist upon recognizing boundaries by which to judge even terribly oppressed rebels as they struggle against repression. Acquiescing to a practice of no judgment when it involves oppressed people entails condoning a destructive sentimentality regarding the humanity of the deprived. It involves overlooking the all too obvious fact that oppressed people, too, can engage in conduct that is foolish, selfish, cruel, and otherwise reprehensible. It also involves overlooking strengths latent in people condemned to the most desperate, degraded circumstances.

Thinking back upon Nat Turner’s struggle against an absolute nullification of democracy, I insist upon holding him and his comrades accountable. I do not know precisely what the moral judgment should be, though I find it difficult to imagine an excuse for decapitating the infant. My main point, though, focuses not on the substance of any particular judgment but on the imperative that there be some judgment. The morality or immorality of figures caught up in struggles over democracy should not be overlooked either because of their downtrodden status or because of the desperate circumstances in which they find themselves. Decent struggle for democracy – the only sort of struggle that can produce decent democracy – requires that everyone’s conduct be subject to judgment – those on the bottom as well as those on top. No one should receive a pass insulating their conduct from moral assessment. The abject deprivations imposed upon Palestinians in Gaza does not free them and their allies to do anything they want in the name of resistance. Nor do the atrocities that gave rise to the State of Israel and that have been visited upon Israelis for decades free them and their allies to do anything they want in the name of self-defense. There must be limits that must be respected. Setting forth precisely the coordinates of those limits is beyond my ken, at least at this moment in this forum. For now, all I can manage is to urge those fighting for democracy to forswear the uninhibited ruthlessness connoted by boasts of being willing to use all means necessary to attain one’s aims.