Congress is considering enhancing protections against antisemitic “hate speech”: It’s a terrible idea. Fundamentally, shutting down the speech of pro-Hamas protesters is every bit as bad an idea as it was for our government to attempt to shut down free speech on covid, race relations, or the environment. If you truly want a free society, short of incitement to violence, that society cannot place limits on what people say. As long as bigots and useful fools have a right to their nonsense, the rest of us are guaranteed an equal right to express our values.
The answer to miseducated mobs of useful fools repeating slogans they don’t know the meaning of is more speech, not less. But the response to those using and inciting others to violence, should be much different. We should throw the book at them. Intimidating and blocking other students from accessing public spaces? Break out the cuffs. Vandalism? Trespassing? Prosecute them to the FULLEST extent of the law.
The failure of jurisdictions (including, I’m sorry to say, many of those in red states) have fomented this crisis by repeatedly and politically refusing to enforce the law. 2020’s Summer of Love should have resulted in mass incarceration of the people who burned down police stations, shops, and cars. Repeated violent assaults on police should have been met with the harshest justice allowed under the law. That didn’t happen because it would have been inconvenient to Democrat electoral prospects and the all-pervasive leftist narrative, and here we are.
The laws against public misconduct are perfectly sufficient. Our political will is not. The same dynamic is at play on our Southern Border. We don’t need more laws; we need to stop neutering the law with debates over how much (if any) of it will be enforced. There is a legitimate and valuable debate to be had about what laws we should have in the first place. Deciding that is democracy in action, and should be celebrated. Conversely, the bureaucratic shifting of legal boundaries to satisfy the leftist politics of the moment is poison – the end of the Rule of Law in favor of the Rule of the Powerful. It is, exactly, the condition that our Founders sought to prevent when they drafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Ultimately, it is the Rule of Law, and the even application of those laws to rich and poor, powerful and powerless alike, that has separated and elevated America throughout our history.
Democrats, confronted with the reality that most Americans do not support their agenda, are deliberately breaking this foundation apart in pursuit of power. Most Americans do not support Open Borders. Elected Democrats do. Most Americans do not support gutting local police forces. Elected Democrats do. Most Americans do not support Hamas’ goal of eradicating the Jewish population of Israel. Elected Democrats are indifferent, as long as it doesn’t cost them Michigan. And faced with the unpopularity of these and many other positions elected Democrats and their activist base are adopting, Democrats are choosing to pervert the Rule of Law rather than lose.
It is tempting, as with the legislation currently being considered in Congress, to follow the footsteps of these radical leftist legislators and officials and start revising, adapting and where convenient ignoring the law for Republicans to likewise achieve our political aims. Republicans should not fall into this trap. We must stand for the Rule of Law and insist on the rigorous enforcement of those laws.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Sam Stone only and not his co-host Chuck Warren or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
