Self-righteousness of Political Violence

SOURCE:  "An ex-Weather Underground Radical on the Tucson Shootings and Political Violence" by Mark Rudd.  Washington Post. January 16, 2011.
KEYWORD:  Kingdom of Man, self-righteousness,

My willingness to endorse and engage in violence had something to do with an exaggerated sense of my own importance. I wanted to prove myself as a man - a motive exploited by all armies and terrorist groups. I wanted to be a true revolutionary like my guerrilla hero, Ernesto "Che" Guevara. I wanted the chant we used at demonstrations defending the Black Panthers to be more than just words: "The revolution has come/Time to pick up the gun!"

...Violent actors in this country - whether James Earl Ray, Timothy McVeigh or Scott Roeder, who in 2009 killed a Kansas abortion provider - are always armed not just with weapons, but with the conviction that their grievances demand satisfaction and their violence is righteous.