"I don't believe in anarchist violence but in directed violence. That would be violence directed at the institutions which perpetuate capitalism, racism, sexism, and at the people who are the appointed guardians of those institutions and accompanied by popular support." --Lynne Stewart
On Feb 10, 2005 lawyer Lynne Stewart was convicted of helping pass messages between Sheik Omar Abdel el-Rahman and his fellow terrorists in Egypt. El-Rahman was the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
If Stewart's appeal is denied, it will mean the end of her career as a tireless defender of those who have committed violence in the name of anti-American revolution.
Lynne Stewart began her legal career defending 60's-style radicals like the Ohio Seven and members of the Black Liberation Army. When these groups evaporated, or their members were incarcerated, she moved on to defending drug dealers, mobsters and cop killers, including Richard Williams, a leftist radical who set off bombs during the 1980s in a war on capitalism, and Larry Davis, a drug dealer who shot at and wounded several police, who were trying to arrest him in the Bronx. Stewart got Davis off, by leaning heavily on the race card, and using a plea of self defense against the cops who were trying to arrest Davis.
Obviously, there are many ethical lawyers who defend criminals. Putting forth the best defense for one's client doesn't normally imply agreement with criminal activity.
But Lynne Stewart, who spent a lifetime skirting a razor-thin line between client defense and client advocacy, got caught far on the advocacy side of the line in the Sheikh el-Rahman matter.
Stewart spent much of her lifetime, railing against the very country that provided her the freedom and opportunity to work towards its destruction.
Every personal account I've read about Lynne Stewart, indicates she's a warm, engaging and highly intelligent person and brilliant lawyer.
What drives people like her, to become so enamoured of a political movement, in this case the radical left's, that they openly advocate for violence to be used against their own country?
In reference to her radical-left philosophy, Lynne Stewart recently said, and I paraphrase, "I always wanted to be on the right side of history." The right side of history to her, was being involved in the dismantling of capitalism and America by any means necessary.
In my opinion, people like Stewart, and for that matter all true believers in radical causes, suffer from an abnormal lack of self- fulfillment, and seek to fill that hole in their souls by indulging in the amphetamine high of radical activity.
How elating it must be to mask the intrinsic flaws of one's humanity by becoming part of a movement that promises to end all suffering, privation and injustice. How exciting it must be, how important one must feel, to give one's self to a movement that avows to sweep away man's painful history, all that was before, and start fresh at "year zero."
Like all Utopian ideologies, the promise of radical leftism is a false one, and those who drink deeply from its poisoned well inevitably become disillusioned, when its fatal flaw becomes obvious and it fails in its promise to save mankind from itself. At that point, the decent walk away.
Those who put far-left theory into practice on a grand scale, must eventually reach the same horrible conclusion: the promise of salvation it appears to offer, can't possibly be kept. If they choose to continue chasing the grand illusion of a perfect and just world instead of facing the fact of its unattainability, they soon become death.
The movement then turns on itself, blaming those within its folds for its failure. In that process, its members, at the hands of its leadership, become the oppressed, the hunted, the victims of injustice. Soon afterward, the ultimate horror begins: justice itself is killed, and the bodies of those the movement promised to save, start piling up.
What was trumpeted as mankind's salvation, becomes its destroyer.
By aiding the terrorist cause of Sheikh el-Rahman, Lynne Stewart dove head-first into the chasm of violent left-wing radicalism. She'd spent most of her life preparing for that moment. She fired a gun, so to speak, and it was pointed at her head and those of her countrymen. By doing so, she had become death.
Lucky for us, the gun was empty, her wishes unfulfilled.
