Unreasonable Things

What will you do when you are pushed to the extreme?

On June 4th, 2004, auto shop owner Marvin Heemeyer of Granby, Colorado had had enough. Years of disputes with the city council and neighbors convinced him that he was never going to get a fair deal, so he decided to take matters into his own hands. He modified a bulldozer with concrete armor plating, welded himself inside, and drove into town.

Despite his vehicle becoming known to history as Killdozer, Mr. Heemeyer did not kill anyone in his rampage. He targeted thirteen buildings for destruction, including the Granby Town Hall, each of which had earned Heemeyer’s ire. In the end, the only casualty was Heemeyer himself, who committed suicide after getting stuck in the basement of a hardware store he had demolished. Marvin Heemeyer knew from the start that this would be his blaze of glory. Investigators later discovered a manifesto where Heemeyer explicated his list of grudges. “Sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things,” he wrote.

We can certainly criticize Mr. Heemeyer for his choices that day. While nobody else was hurt, it was partly luck that nobody was crushed. Did destroying those buildings make anything better? Probably not. On the other hand, we know his name today, eighteen years after his rampage, and many still sympathize with his plight.

Sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things. Those of us with social and political opinions that were considered mainstream, even moderate, just twenty years ago are derided as extremists today. It is not just the left who uses this epithet, but some on the right as well, in a misguided attempt to attack their political opponents. If moderates from twenty years ago are extremists today, what descriptor would you apply to our grandfathers who fought World War II, our ancestors who settled the prairies, and our Founding Fathers who created this nation?

On the night of Tuesday, April 18th, 1775, British regulars set out from Boston to seize a cache of illegal weapons in nearby Concord. The Massachusetts Bay Colony had become a flashpoint for anti-government violence. In 1770, a mob accosted British guards, and when the soldiers fired on the crowd it became known as the Boston Massacre. In 1773, colonists dumped tea overboard to protest Parliament’s tax schemes. Eventually, King George III appointed General Thomas Gage as military governor of the colony to try to restore order. When Gage learned of the weapons he sent a detachment of regulars to capture them.

Learning of the march, William Dawes and Paul Revere set out to warn the colonists and raise the militia. By dawn, a few dozen men stood their ground at Lexington, blocking the road to Concord. Captain John Parker instructed his men to “Stand your ground; don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.” Major John Pitcairn ordered the militia to disperse, but they refused. Nobody knows who fired the first shot. When the smoke cleared, eight colonists were dead.

Imagine the reaction of both left and right if anything like this happened today. We already saw politicians on both sides unequivocally condemn the January 6th protestors for what was barely more than an unauthorized tour of the Capitol. What would Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, or your average conservative pundit have said about the Battle of Lexington? “The Massachusetts Militia is nothing more than a band of far-right extremists. They committed insurrection against the government and attacked our brave law enforcement personnel. This kind of violence has no place in America. God save the king!”

We honor our Founding Fathers, but anyone who even thinks of doing what they did 250 years ago is quickly condemned, even though our grievances with Washington DC are just as valid as theirs with London. The dispute that our ancestors had with King George and his Parliament were not merely about taxation or regulation, but something much deeper: they were fighting for their fundamental rights as Englishmen. They appealed to the same natural law as their own ancestors did in the Glorious Revolution of 1689 and Magna Carta in 1215. The abrogation of their natural rights pushed our Founding Fathers to the point where reasonable men were forced to do unreasonable things.

By the time the British regulars arrived in Concord, the bulk of the Massachusetts Militia had assembled, and this time it was not so easy. The minutemen defeated the regulars at Concord, chasing them back to Boston and besieging the city. General Gage won a tactical victory at Bunker Hill but lost so many men that he could not break the siege. George Washington arrived in July to take command of the growing Continental Army, and by January 1776 he had driven the British out of Boston entirely.

The American Revolution began because good men were pushed to the point where they had had enough. The United States of America was born because reasonable men took it upon themselves to do unreasonable things. Today, we face the same assaults on our own God-given liberties and natural rights, and so we too have choices to make. Our destiny is not necessarily to assemble the militia, or to destroy buildings in an armored bulldozers, but we can and must speak boldly in defense of our values. They will call us unreasonable. They will call us extremists. But they will not stop us.