Threats against the judiciary did not come suddenly. The slouch toward selective law enforcement and politicized violence has a history. //

The violent bear it away. That title of Flannery O’Connor’s 1960 novel still resonates. Some relentless atavism is at work in our culture, a monstrous irrationality that awakens what O’Connor called “the stuff of which madmen and fanatics are made.” Violence, no longer shunned, is now an accepted political tool.

The attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh—preceded by U.S Attorney General Merrick Garland’s refusal to enforce federal law against protesters at justices’ homes—exposed the fragile divide between constituted order and willed anarchy. In effect, the attorney general’s inaction acquiesced to mob intimidation and signaled a willingness to risk further lawlessness.

The descent into Third World-like threats against the judiciary did not come suddenly. The slouch toward selective law enforcement and politicized violence has a history. By whatever name we call it—wokeism nowadays—adversary culture has been loosening essential restraints for some six decades. Like the lifecycle of a parasite, the passion for repudiating established order mutates and reappears in successive stages. Today’s recurrence of the New Left virus keeps the inherited infection alive in a new generation of hosts. //

In “Notes on Nationalism” (1945) George Orwell wrote that the key to political judgments—who is guilty? who is the victim?—is apt to lie in the identities of the parties involved instead of in the nature of the wrongdoing: “Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage … which does not change its moral when it is committed by ‘our side.’”

His comment was a counter ahead of time to Jean-Paul Sartre’s glorification of “Wretched of the Earth.” In his preface to Fanon’s text, Sartre spoke for the revolutionary side: “No gentleness can efface the marks of violence; only violence itself can destroy them.” He made a romance of it: “irrepressible violence” against a perceived enemy is “man recreating himself.” //

Frederic Kremer
19 days ago
It is a necessary condition for the victims to sanction the supposed morality of their destroyer in order for a culture such as ours to be swept into the library of failed cultures. Guilt is a powerful dis-arming tool. The intellectuals have led the charge to impose guilt, destroy defense and lay open the field to violence by convincing those susceptible to guilt that their destroyer is more moral than they themselves are.

Unfortunately Ben Franklin’s warning, though taken seriously by those who wanted to change from a republic to an elitist pretense of limited democracy, was not taken seriously by those who wanted a republic of limited democracy. The mob is fueled by their righteousness as they swallowed it from the vomit of the intellectuals. The citizens who made possible the environment the mob operates in is without intellectual heroes and like Achilles, hobbled.

Our politicians, with rare exceptions, are most assuredly products of the culture and totally without capability to protect a limited democracy. Heck, they would not even understand the concept. They are the last persons to correct this slide into violence, they are encouraging it. They too will eventually be on the receiving end. So, my question is: why wait? Where is the decency in giving your executioner time and resources to prepare for your slaughter? As Bonnie Tyler put it: where have all the good men gone?