Guy Fawkes is Executed January 31, 1606 (Julian Calendar)

Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November, Gunpowder, Treason and Plot… 

Everyone remembers the infamous day (or should) when Guy Fawkes attempted to violently overthrow King and Parliament with 36 barrels of gunpowder and a lit fuse.  Few people remember that this was the beginning of Fawkes demise not the end.  He and his conspirators, Robert Catesby, Thomas Winter, Thomas Percy, John Wright and Robert Keyes, were tried for high treason in Westminster Hall on 27 January 1606 and all were convicted and sentenced to death. The executions took place on 30 and 31 January.  Execution was by hanging (but not until dead), drawing (cutting the belly and pulling out the organs while the victim is still alive) and quartering (tying the arms and legs to horses who are driven in different directions), then the carcasses (except for the head) were burned. The severed heads of these criminals were then set upon pikes at different points around Westminster and London to show people that crimes have consequences.

I can’t help thinking that if those who invaded the Capitol on January 6 of last year faced a similar fate, the protest marches would have remained peaceful and outside. 

“A pity they let the old punishment die… Was a time detention found you hanging by your thumbs in the dungeons…”

Argus Filch (fictional character in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)

Real revolutionaries know that violence is only the preferred means the ignorant, stupid, and arrogant.  Most people who espouse violence as a means of creating change are really the puppets of powerful people who (like Lord North during the American Revolution) will never suffer the consequences of that violence should it fail to achieve its goal.  True revolutionaries, stand and march with their followers and fight their battles with ideals and morals rather than slings and arrows.

“We have come a long way in America because of Martin Luther King, Jr. He led a disciplined, nonviolent revolution under the rule of law, a revolution of values, a revolution of ideas. We’ve come a long way, but we still have a distance to go before all of our citizens embrace the idea of a truly interracial democracy, what I like to call the Beloved Community, a nation at peace with itself. “

John Lewis

Marching and picketing outside, no matter how disruptive, is free speech.  Breaking in and attempting to harm others is war.  War criminals should be hung (drawing, quartering and burning is optional)!