Insurrections

Speaking of insurrections, before January 6 became the ultimate insurrection, United States Senator Tom Cotton wrote an op-ed for the New York Times. Therein, during the George Floyd riots of the Spring and Summer of 2020, he recommended invoking something called the Insurrection Act, the better to suppress the violence and to save communities.

The Times published Cotton’s article in June of 2020. As soon as it saw the light of print day, Times staffers and editors fell into a guilt ridden agony, about how terrible it was to recommend the deployment of soldiers in America’s burning and looted blue cities.

If you find the article today you will see it prefaced by a disclaimer, wherein the Times editors tell the world how bad they feel about having published such rot. Name another op-ed piece that has been published and repudiated, by the Times. Name another that cost the op-ed editor his job.

Sen. Cotton described the scene during the George Floyd insurrection:

New York City suffered the worst of the riots Monday night, as Mayor Bill de Blasio stood by while Midtown Manhattan descended into lawlessness. Bands of looters roved the streets, smashing and emptying hundreds of businesses. Some even drove exotic cars; the riots were carnivals for the thrill-seeking rich as well as other criminal elements.

Outnumbered police officers, encumbered by feckless politicians, bore the brunt of the violence. In New York State, rioters ran over officers with cars on at least three occasions. In Las Vegas, an officer is in “grave” condition after being shot in the head by a rioter. In St. Louis, four police officers were shot as they attempted to disperse a mob throwing bricks and dumping gasoline; in a separate incident, a 77-year-old retired police captain was shot to death as he tried to stop looters from ransacking a pawnshop. This is “somebody’s granddaddy,” a bystander screamed at the scene.

Some elites have excused this orgy of violence in the spirit of radical chic, calling it an understandable response to the wrongful death of George Floyd. Those excuses are built on a revolting moral equivalence of rioters and looters to peaceful, law-abiding protesters. A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants.

Sen. Cotton saw an unfolding insurrection. He recommended that it be suppressed by military force.

One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers. But local law enforcement in some cities desperately needs backup, while delusional politicians in other cities refuse to do what’s necessary to uphold the rule of law.

In these circumstances, the Insurrection Act authorizes the president to employ the military “or any other means” in “cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws.”

Of course, past presidents had called in the military when necessary. No one blinked:

For instance, during the 1950s and 1960s, Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson called out the military to disperse mobs that prevented school desegregation or threatened innocent lives and property. This happened in my own state. Gov. Orval Faubus, a racist Democrat, mobilized our National Guard in 1957 to obstruct desegregation at Little Rock Central High School. President Eisenhower federalized the Guard and called in the 101st Airborne in response. The failure to do so, he said, “would be tantamount to acquiescence in anarchy.”

More recently, President George H.W. Bush ordered the Army’s Seventh Infantry and 1,500 Marines to protect Los Angeles during race riots in 1992. He acknowledged his disgust at Rodney King’s treatment — “what I saw made me sick” — but he knew deadly rioting would only multiply the victims, of all races and from all walks of life.

So, the risk in the Cotton op-ed was that people would start using the word “insurrection” to describe leftist rioters. The New York Times could not allow that. Best to reserve the word “insurrection” for acts committed by the right. To their minds the American left does no wrong. The American right does no right.

The result was predictable. Across America’s blue cities stores have been subjected to smash and grab robberies. In many places they have been obliged to shut down. Local district attorneys have refused to prosecute and the police cannot do their jobs.

Giving a green light to certain kinds of crime, especially crime that feels like reparations, seems not to have been a very good idea. But, don’t you dare call it an insurrection. 

John Hinderaker of the Powerline blog proposes that the Democratic Party decision to exculpate certain groups for their criminal activities has contributed to the explosion of anti-Semitic violence across America. It did not come from nowhere and it has not been promoted or practiced by Christians or even by white supremacists.

Hinderaker offers his thesis: 

But the fact is that the anti-Semitic violence we are now seeing is of a piece with what liberals often do, when they can get away with it. The Democratic Party has been a party of violence for a long time.

Better yet, Hinderaker recalls the Trump inauguration of 2017, event that was accompanied by far more violence than occurred on January 6.

The Democratic Party’s tolerance of violence, as we saw on the day when Donald Trump was inaugurated in 2017–the Democrats’ riot did at least 10,000 times as much damage as the January 6 protest–in the George Floyd riots, and in Antifa terrorism, all of which were largely coddled by Democratic Party officials, has metastasized across the country. And now it is manifesting itself in a grotesque and unAmerican anti-Semitism.

At the least, you must keep in mind that the January 6 protest was the worst insurrection since the Civil War. The rest, the violence perpetrated by people on the other end of the political spectrum, must be ignored and downplayed.

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