Uncivil disobedience

There has never been a great movie about John Brown. Seriously, hard as it is to believe, no one has ever created a real blockbuster about America's most famous abolitionist. Amazing.

Quentin Tarantino says he'd like to. "John Brown is my favorite American who ever lived," he told Jay Leno a couple of years ago. "He basically . . . single-handedly started the road to end slavery, and the fact that he killed people to do it, you know, he decided, 'OK, we start spilling white blood, then they're going to start getting the idea.'"

All of that is true—all of it.