The Most Violent Woman in America

Americans are used to hearing stories about violent men. The nightly news regularly carries reports of murder, armed robbery, kidnapping, assault, child molestation and sexual assault. Once in a great while, such reports are about a woman who is involved in such a crime, and even then she is often an accomplice to a man. According to the FBI’s Crime in the United States 2004 Uniform Crime Report, women committed 7.1% of the murders that year. On average, women “account for 14% of violent offenders,” according to the Department of Justice.

When one thinks about violent crimes, what image comes to mind? Is the person committing the crime using his own hand or body, whether to fire a weapon, stab with a knife, beat someone with a blunt object, or force himself sexually on a defenseless woman? The criminal who has multiple victims, like the infamous serial killers Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, or mass murderer Timothy McVeigh, are sensationalized through movies and documentaries. But in terms of the number of victims, personally committed crimes pale in comparison to those ordered or promoted by heads of state, like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Saddam Hussein.

However, violence sanctioned by the head or ruling party of a government may only involve bloodshed and physical pain if one resists. As long as the people under subjugation comply with the leaders’ wishes, violence seldom has to be inflicted. The threat of violence is usually sufficient to encourage almost complete obedience. While the threat is omnipresent, most people rarely stop to think about it. If the people of a country become so used to following the orders of the few at the top, only a small number may realize that control manifests itself through threats of actual violence. Once the government passes a law, no matter how arcane or silly, the masses feel obliged to obey. Such obedience, of course, is always backed up by the threat of violence and that threat must be made real against at least some of the violators. That is, violators must have their property seized (by violence if they resist), or their persons jailed (by violence if they resist). In fact, if a violator of the supposed crime resists sufficiently, he or she will be killed. This is true regardless of whether the “crime” involved any harm or threat of harm to anyone. Consider all the so-called crimes in the U.S. , such as not paying taxes, prostitution, drug use, or insider trading, to name just a few. These amount to the following: a government, i.e. a bunch of human beings, often given power through a democratic process, decide that if certain rules are violated, a crime is committed even though everyone knows that it involves no physical harm to anyone and threatens no one’s property.

Recently, the House of Representatives, under the guidance of Nancy Pelosi, The Speaker of the House, passed a health care bill. One provision of this bill requires that Americans meeting certain conditions must purchase health insurance for themselves. The penalty for failure is jail or a fine, or both. It goes without stating so directly in the bill that anyone found guilty of this so-called crime and who resists, will be killed if necessary. The sequence could unfold like this: Person X meets the conditions requiring him or her to purchase health insurance as stated in the law (if the bill becomes law); person X refuses to buy insurance; person X is charged with a crime; person X is found guilty in a courtroom; person X tries to flee by using his physical might and directs violence at AND ONLY AT his would-be captors. Finally, person X is killed by his would-be captors, ultimately because he (a) refused to buy health insurance and (b) refused to give up his freedom. This is the bill that Pelosi smiled about as it passed 220 to 215. Ms. Pelosi, along with those who voted for the bill, is knowingly threatening the kind of violence that would ensue for any person X described above. She is the most influential female in the United States Congress and made every effort to get this bill passed. In terms of the sheer number of people who will be forced through threat of violence to adhere to this (should it become) law to avoid the fate of any person X above, Ms. Pelosi is the most violent woman in America.

Peter McCandless — Strike The Root