vandals destroy michael brown memorial less than 24 hours after it is dedicated

[The Mikado]

What does it matter what a person did in life to affect the rights of the grieving bereaved relatives of that person? Even your Lee Harvey Oswalds and Timothy McVeighs have relatives and loved ones, and while you might justifiably think that the world is a better place for not containing Timothy McVeigh, that doesn't affect his loved one's equally valid right to mourn.

In this case, an alleged petty criminal who was never brought to trial or convicted was extrajudicially killed by law enforcement, even if out of self defense. We'll never know for sure if he was actually guilty under the rules of our criminal justice system because Michael Brown never got his day in court. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm not aware of "shot by law enforcement without a trial" as a valid punishment for theft in the United States.

Anyway, I thought the whole debate about the mourning of a loved one vs. society's hatred of that loved one's actions was solved way back with Antigone, Sophocles' amazing dramatic tale of the daughter of Oedipus going out of her way to give her half-brother a proper burial despite his status as a traitor and Thebes' king Creon decisions that Antigone's brother Polynices' corpse should be exposed and eaten by animals. Antigone's moving respect for her loved ones and family over all the rules of society, risking death itself to show the proper veneration of her family even in direct contravention of all the rules of the world she lived in, is directly relevant to this case. Does it matter what Michael Brown did? Does it matter who he may or may not have tried to kill? He is the child of mourning parents who have the right and even the duty to mourn publicly. Mourning and grief are fundamental and bedrock principles of any decent society, and even the wicked dead are truly unfortunate indeed if not even one person wails and moans about their passing.