David French:
It will be impossible, over the long term, to maintain peace and even national unity if elite media and the Democratic party continue to condone and even encourage political violence and the systematic violation of individual rights by its radical progressive base. From Occupy to Ferguson to Baltimore to the unrest on campus, Americans have watched the liberal establishment trip over itself to express solidarity and sympathy with protesters who’ve burned, looted, shut down roads and parks, and violated the fundamental rights of American citizens.
As Trump supporters are fond of pointing out on Twitter, this didn’t happen at a Trump event:
Nor did this:
For the better part of two years, millions of Americans have watched as violence and disruption actually work. At college campuses, radical students and allied professors and administrators will shout down dissenters, intimidate fellow students, disrupt the educational process, and win.
In the streets of American cities, protesters will riot, vandalize, block traffic, and invade shops and restaurants, and they win. When the narratives (“Hands up, don’t shoot,” or “It’s open season” on black males) are debunked by facts, protesters still prevail. Police tactics change even as the national murder rate seems set for its largest spike in 25 years. In the nation’s 50 largest cities, 770 more people were murdered in 2015 than in the previous year.
Yet with the exception of a few courageous progressives, the Left largely hails this unrest. Even riots are excused or minimized by leading figures in the liberal intelligentsia, and mob actions that violate the free-speech rights of fellow citizens — by shouting down or shutting down events the Left doesn’t like — are whitewashed as “peaceful protest.”
If the Left thinks that it can continue to use, with impunity, violence and disruption as the enforcement mechanism of its political and intellectual movement, it is sadly mistaken. Recent American history shows that tolerance for left-wing violence and disruption is limited, and that same history shows that the violence will meet with a response. Whether that response is constructive or destructive depends on the quality of American leadership.
The political violence and unrest of 1968 helped usher in an era of Republican presidential dominance. Between 1968 and 1988, Republicans won five of six presidential contests — often running on law-and-order platforms designed to directly counter the sense that America was unraveling, that violence was spiraling out of control. Clinton was able to break the Republican winning streak only by directly confronting black radicals (remember his “Sister Souljah moment”?) and doing so with enormous rank-and-file black support. Now, sadly, he’s ashamed of the bipartisan crime bills that helped end America’s murder epidemic.
Stepping back from the brink took leadership. Where are our leaders now?
As Molly Ball notes today in an insightful piece in The Atlantic, Trump is dominating the GOP primary in part because he is directly tapping into the anger over double standards. In response to an unruly protester, he asks, “Why are they allowed to do things that we’re not allowed to do, can you explain that to me?” Pondering American military restraint in the face of ISIS atrocities, he writes, “The enemy is cutting off the heads of Christians and drowning them in cages, and yet we are too politically correct to respond in kind.”
Trump’s message is simple — an eye for an eye. Witness this tweeted threat against Bernie Sanders:
if you are politically correct, you believe in your own bullshit. being politically correct is a process of personal, economical and social confinement, it does not allow for any form of intellectual process. Chicago has doubled it homicide rate from last year. the fool pres. has trampled the Constitution and both the congress and the Supreme Court under dick Roberts has condoned these treasonably offences. the protest of today is how much you can steal. billy the whore dog is no different that your pres.
Secret Service: We’re not allowing firearms at the Republican National Convention.
Because of worries about leftist violence, no doubt. So, about that gun store customer in the photograph… Is it laundry day, or is there some other rational explanation? Maybe he just likes keeping his firearm really close?
More on gun policy and the threat of republican violence. (Bearing in mind that Newsy likes to yank people’s chain—which, I’m sure, David French would never do):
The GOP Is Pro-Guns — Just Not At Its Convention – Newsy