Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution

by Elie Mystal

Why can’t I punch a cop? Why can’t I punch a cop who is punching me? Why can’t I punch a cop who has broken into my home? Why do I, a grown-ass man writing my own damn book, feel compelled to use the word punch as a substitute for legitimate self-defense against armed agents of the state, whom this country will not stop from killing me because of the color of my skin? If the law will not protect me from the police, why can’t I protect myself? Students of Western political philosophy will reflexively reach for their copy of Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes to answer my questions. In 1651, Hobbes gave one of the best articulations for a government having a “monopoly of violence” over its subjects. If I may reduce one of the greatest works of political thought down to a sentence: If we let people kill each other, literally everybody would do it, so the only way we can have nice things is to let only one man kill people and hope he’s not a complete asshole. Hobbes is not wrong. It’s nearly impossible to imagine a functioning society where the state does not have a monopoly over the legitimate use of force. Indeed, our definition of a “failed state” is one where the nominal ruling government no longer has a monopoly on violence. If a local group or gang can maraud across a region, taking what they want and killing who they will, and the state cannot stop them even if it wants to, then that state no longer deserves or is owed any allegiance from its people. The area a government contr...