It’s no shock these days that when liberals and leftists don’t get their way, they ignore facts, shrug off civilized debate, and revel like spoiled children in hyperbole, intimidation, threats of violence, and actual violence. Given how dangerous this stuff is, they’ve ignored history, too.
“Men have been barbarians much longer than they have been civilized,” wrote journalist Walter Lippman in The Public Philosophy (1955). “They are only precariously civilized, and with us there is the propensity, persistence as the force of gravity, to revert under stress and strain, under neglect or temptation, to our first natures.”
Democrats have butchered that lesson, today. The abortion kerfuffle is just the latest example. But as much as they scream about protecting America’s marginalized groups; their “shut up, or else” tactics are the same ones that pro-slavery Democrats used for decades before the Civil War: Threaten the anti-slavery side with violence so they keep quiet.
Many did, especially politicians, because pro-slavers were dead serious about using votes and violence to protect their right to own men as property. So, even in the early 1800s, no matter how deep the anti-slavery sentiment was, the sentiment that hung heaviest in the air was “shut up, or else.”
That was until Representative James Tallmadge broke his silence in 1819 by proposing that Missouri – next in line to join the Union – be “born free.” The response he got was like what you’d expect today if someone proposed, say, overturning Roe v. Wade.
“If you persist, the Union will be dissolved,” threatened Representative Thomas Cobb of Georgia. “You have kindled a fire which all the waters of the ocean cannot put out, which seas of blood can only extinguish.”
Mob justice, in effect, censured the media, too. But in journalist-abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy, in 1837, was the type to back down. He spoke his conscience and paid dearly for it. He was fired, ridiculed, chased out of town, vandalized, and shot dead by a pro-slavery mob, that was never charged. Justice and politics failed. Lovejoy’s murder became the extreme event that pushed the country’s momentum toward civil war.
The lesson? Wars of words (noisy but civilized debate) are proxies for wars of violence. When words fail, primitive responses – like a force of gravity – become inevitable, at some point.
Modern liberals, as Robert H. Bork pointed out in his book, Slouching Toward Gomorrah (1996), politicize everything in culture and look to cure diseased politicized culture with the medicine more politics.
Bork saw the dangers early.
“Large chunks of the moral life of the United States,” Bork wrote, “major features of its culture, have disappeared altogether, and more are in the process of extinction. These are being, or have already been, replaced by new modes of conduct, ways of thought, and standards of morality that are unwelcome to many of us.”
Abortion, specifically “partial birth” abortion, was one of those “chunks of moral life” which Bork said helped to brutalize the culture.
“These abortions are performed late in the pregnancy,” Bork wrote. “The baby is delivered feet first until only the head remains within the mother. The aborting physician inserts scissors into the back of the infant’s skull and opens the blades to produce a hole. The child’s brains are then vacuumed out, the skull collapse, and the rest of the newly-made corpse is removed.”
Late-term abortions don’t make up most abortions, but one is far too many. It’s outright murder. But as brutal as late-term abortion is, there’s no room for debate with the pro-abortion crowd. With them, it’s all or nothing, as we’ve been seeing this week.
The same super fragile crowd who gave an eerie “Mary Poppins” police powers to thwart political dissent, unleashed a whirlwind of dissent when some traitorous imp leaked Justice Alito’s draft opinion, last week.
Like every other issue that ticks them off, a mob of liberals and leftists responded in the usual way – with intimidation, threats of violence, and violence. Their message: “Shut up, or else!”
The wiggly-haired Elizabeth Warren was “madder than hell,” telling The View that when Roe is gutted, morning after pills will disappear, in vitro fertilization will be limited, women’s “most personal choices” will be criminalized, police could investigate miscarriages, and women could be punished by accidently injuring their unborn babies while picking up the mail.
“… you could be monitored – that you lifted a package that was too heavy and threatened a pregnancy,” she said.
Militant pro-abortionist group Ruth Sent Us posted a map on the Internet with the addresses of six justices, inviting protesters to picket their homes, an explicit violation of federal law (Title 18, Section 1507 of the United States Code).
Peter Doocy, Fox News, asked Press Secretary Jen Psaki what the president thought about doxxing the justices.
“Look, I think the president’s view is that there’s a lot of passion, a lot of fear, a lot of sadness from many, many people across this country about what they saw in that leaked document,” said Psaki.
Sure enough, protesters showed up at the homes of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, on Saturday.
The maniacal response to the leaked opinion is just one more issue in the Democrat party’s parade of horribles. The insanity has, unfortunately, become normal. It’s now fallen under what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan referred to as the “Durkheim constant.”
It says that since there’s a limit to the amount of deviant behavior any community can “afford to recognize,” when deviance gets worse, standards are adjusted so that reprehensible behavior becomes acceptable. Moynihan called it defining deviancy down, as he famously wrote in 1993.
On top of that, as Charles Krauthammer pointed out in an essay that same year, they’re also defining deviancy up, where behavior we once deemed to be innocent, is now condemned as deviant.
“The net effect is to show that deviancy is not the province of criminals and crazies,” wrote Krauthammer, “but thrives in the heart of the great middle class. The real deviants of society stand unmasked. What are they? Not Bonnie and Clyde but Ozzie and Harriet.”
Wickedly, Democrats deliberately defined deviancy both up and down – using race, COVID, Russian collusion, two impeachments, riots, illegal immigration, group division, and Orwellian double-speak – to get and keep political power.
And as deviant and incompetent as they are, it’s worked. But a primal response to what’s working for Democrats is also at work on the other side. A smothering frustration from sitting by and hearing “shut up, or else” for far too long – with all the real suffering that goes with it. Given Democrats’ ruthlessness in the face of that suffering, I don’t have an ounce of faith that this bunch will ever change course.
A resounding result in November’s would be nice, but something far more extreme – short of actual civil war – seems inevitable to really turn things around. That’s not a threat. It’s just gravity.
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