Crisis Magazine: A Coming Mobocracy?

Various commentators, mostly from the conservative side but also a few sober-minded liberals, are expressing concern that a mob mentality—coming especially from the political left—is taking hold in America. They point to the disturbing evidence: the clashes between groups in Charlottesville and Portland, Antifa commandeering busy streets in Portland and attacking motorists while the police look the other way; the hounding of Republican members of Congress and Trump administration officials in public establishments; the in-your-face confrontations in Congressional office buildings during the Kavanaugh hearings; outright physical attacks in a few cases—including a shooting—on members of Congress; the flood of threats of violence against prominent conservative politicians and their families; the shutting down of anyone but leftist speakers on many campuses; the excusing and urging on of such confrontational behavior by Democratic party figures like Hillary Clinton, Maxine Waters, and Eric Holder; the physical assaults on pro-life picketers and sidewalk counselors; mobs taking it upon themselves to tear down Confederate statues; the social media mobs that try to pressure and intimidate those who don’t tow the leftist line (something even I have experienced); and the list could go on and on.

Along with a rising mobocracy goes a rejection of the legally constituted means of making public decisions and of constitutional procedures to bestow and transfer political power. So, instead of going through the proper decision-making procedures to have Confederate statutes taken down and replaced, in some cases a lawless element decided to do it by itself, irrespective of the sentiments of the majority who live in the community. Some consider the Electoral College illegitimate because Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but still lost the election. Donald Trump can be impeached based on any partisan accusation, irrespective of what the Framers thought and American constitutional history indicates. Instead of wanting to wait for the next national election, one witnesses a figure such as Rosie O’Donnell—one of your typical self-appointed Hollywood moral teachers and political guiding lights—calling for a military coup d’etat to oust Trump from power….continue reading…crisismagazine.com/2018/a-coming-mobocracy