The good news in all of this is that I highly doubt we will be on a barricade any time soon. There are better ways and methods we have to use, and should use when determining how we fight injustices today. The thing about our barricade and what we had to do there is that it is rooted in the 19th century. In a place where only violent insurrection would be heard, we were forced to use it, and I think none of us took any glory in it, least of all myself. There is no glory in the horror of the barricade, only the glory of love that drives someone to stand and fight there for a greater purpose and the sacrifice they take upon themselves to do so as les amis did there.
Today, thankfully, we have better ways in our developed countries and I do not see a barricade or violence as an option that we should even have to consider, and I am glad of it. I would not risk or waste any of their lives needlessly. I would sooner, if I could, protect them at the barricade, and give my life to have them live. I would sooner have not resorted to the gun, the sword, the death, but when it was the only way to be heard, then it was what we had to do. I can't take joy in the destruction or the death, but only in the knowing that we'd risen to combat the tides of the injustices that bound the people there.
Today, though, there are better ways. Ways which we had dreamed might at some time be possible to use instead. I can't forsee our work for justice in this time going to a new barricade, but rather to the places where we're needed most, to do the things that are needed most. I would right the wrongs of all this world if I could, but I know that is impossible, so I will stick to what can reasonably be done and done in ways that ensure a few things I wished for even then. As I told Les Amis there, and meant:
the law of progress is, that monsters shall disappear before the angels, and that Fatality shall vanish before Fraternity. It is a bad moment to pronounce the word love. No matter, I do pronounce it. And I glorify it. Love, the future is thine. Death, I make use of thee, but I hate thee. “
“Citizens, in the future there will be neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither ferocious ignorance, nor bloody retaliation. As there will be no more Satan, there will be no more Michael. In the future no one will kill any one else, the earth will beam with radiance, the human race will love. The day will come, citizens, when all will be concord, harmony, light, joy and life;
That is why, if we die there, that we are dying. I can't see repaying that sacrifice in this future when there are means to bring about all of those things by asking them to die again. Were there not those means, things would be different, and I'd continue, but thankfully we have them, so we can focus on the rest now. I, for one, am glad of that.