The ancient adage of how easily the political system of Democracy can degenerate into its evil opposite, an Ochlocracy, a reign of the mob, materializes in the reality of our everyday lives.
What we see unfolding before our own eyes in almost schoolbook-like perfection is something I've considered possible only as speculation of reason, something that could merely exist as an ideal representation in political philosophy. Yet, here it is. We witness in actuality what happens when a society no longer comes to terms with the crucial social ingredient of any democratically organized collectivity of people – human freedom and its complement, individual responsibility – and succumbs to an orgy of lawlessness and mayhem.
Mob Rule and the Plebeians of our Day
But the potential taking over of the country by the mob has not come about overnight, and if ever, will not vanish overnight. I have warned of the imminent 'mental dictatorship' and the looming 'ideological despotism' by the leftist mob in my post of January 31, 2017, entitled "The Tyranny of the Mob." https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2017/01/the-tyranny-of-left.html
In it, I also explained a phenomenon that has gained a prominent position in our time. The mob, the plebeians of our day, are no longer a class of citizens unable to read or write like in ancient times. Today the unruly crowd is built by all those ill-educated and ignorant, intellectually and morally wanting individuals that come from all strata of society – workers and teachers, journalists, academics, scientists, and politicians. Among that vast group of misguided people, I count many if not most of the Democrats in both Senate and Congress, but also neoconservatives among the Republicans and the neoliberal nomenclature in the State Department and other governmental bodies, not to speak of the vast majority of faculty at the institutions of higher learning.
However, never before has the harm caused by political illiteracy and moral confusion been so immense that it pushes the country to the brink of destruction. The misconceptions regarding the ontology of political and social coexistence have reached alarming and fundamentally threatening heights. I tackled the beginnings of the mania that has brought the U.S. and, albeit to a lesser degree, Europe to the current state of affairs in my blog essay of November 2015, addressing the fallacies and educational delusions that have brought us to the present point of societal disintegration https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2015/11/immigration-us-and-europe-governed-by.html.
Consequently, I bet I would not find one single person among the peacefully protesting and the looting, plundering, and killing hordes of recent weeks, whose awareness would contain a sound political philosophy for human and social existence. And it wouldn't make any difference whether I chose somebody from the more erudite echelons of the protesters, such as college graduates and studied people, mayors and congressmen/women, senators, media people, or less educated participants.
They have all succumbed to the imposition of a 'Culture of Insanity' that has suffocated the minimal reasonableness required for stable social coexistence. By pretending to protest against alleged systemic anti-black racism in the police force in the wake of a black man's murderous killing by a white police officer, demonstrations and riots broke out all across the country. For the most part, law enforcement condemned to stand down by Democrat governors and mayors and let looting and plundering take place unobstructed had to look on as the breakdown of law and order unfolded on an astonishing scale.
Soon, it became clear that the mob, acting under the pretense of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement was out to accomplish something utterly different. As their indifference toward black-on-black violence and the untenable position of disadvantaged blacks in society demonstrates, they instrumentalize the issue of alleged anti-black systemic racism for an issue quite distinct.
The Aim and Purpose of the Radical Leftism
Once calls to defund the police had become ubiquitous in leftist circles, and the mob had begun to establish anarchistic self-government zones and purge the nation's history by destroying historical monuments, the real objective of their lawlessness became transparent. It is all about the profound disruption of national cohesion to overthrow the government, get rid of President Trump, transform the US-American political system into a secularist Marxist-Socialist collective, devoid of its Christian social ethics, and led and governed by a forever-majority of Democrats in the central institutions of political power.
We are watching a mighty nation soon either descend into a new civil war or fall otherwise apart, a fate awaiting any country that renounces law and order and gives up its monopoly of power and force. Can the destruction of this nation be the objective aimed at by the broader circles of leftism and progressive political quarters in this nation?
No longer can there be any uncertainty about it. The proponents of this mob rule seem to think that abolishing law enforcement and engaging in social experiments on dealing with crime and transgressions would lead to new and possibly more humane ways of governance.
In their ideological delusion, they think that the arrangement of peaceful social coexistence and the political structures and institutions it requires could be subject to trial and error. Can they possibly believe that attempts at self-organizing and self-governing will bring about improved ways of governance? The ugly leftism's propaganda heads already created a new catchphrase for their policing utopia: Reimagining public safety. They indeed appear to be utterly ignorant that breaking the monopolization of force by the State and dissolving the structures of law and order can only lead to chaos and the overall deterioration of life-quality and the destruction of social peace. A fact that was almost immediately proven by how the community experiment of CHOD in Seattle ended.
In combination with moral deficiencies, a dreadful blend of ignorance has taken hold in this country whose population is facing the results of decade-long indoctrination and an education devoid of classical erudition. Only thus can the disregard for the wisdom of the grand traditions of classical liberal arts and the unbending desire for the destruction of monuments as an attempt to eradicate objectionable history as judged from the angle of ideological prejudice be explained.
What we witness happens when the common ground of foundational moral and civic values in society gets lost. The minimal common denominator for what is right and wrong, lawful and unlawful, good and bad, which is a prerequisite for any permanent structure of communal coexistence, has been terminated by the described culture of ill-education and indoctrination. I dedicated an entire blog post in March 2015, "The Crisis of Morality," to this ontological phenomenon and explained what happens when the crisis of morality manifests itself to such a profound degree as it does currently in the U.S. and many other western nations https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2015/03/the-crisis-of-morality.html.
What unites today's mob members up to the highest positions of political representation is their colossal ignorance regarding human nature. As logical inference, overcoming their lack of understanding regarding the social and political arrangements is indispensable for prosperous and potentially peaceful social coexistence.
Commanding the State of National Emergency
The mayhem of the past few months laid open a severe weakness in the United States' constitutional legislation as well, an aspect nobody in the public realm has yet acknowledged or dared to mention.
This weakness pertains to the question of a functioning hierarchy in situations of national distress. The rift between federal (the President) and regional (the governors), as well as local (the mayors) authorities, demonstrated the lack of specific constitutional provisions for clear leadership responsibilities in situations of national distress.
Already the back and forth between the President and local authorities during the COVID-Pandemic and the want for an explicit command hierarchy gave a taste of how bad the situation can be. The grave national security crisis unfolding in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by a police officer moved this issue even further to the forefront.
The lawlessness of recent weeks ruthlessly reflected the deficiencies concerning emergency decision power. Several left-wing governors (i.e., California, Minnesota, Oregon) and mayors (i.e., Chicago, Denver, New York City, Portland, Seattle), acted at will in apparent contradiction to policy directives of the White House and nearly turned their areas of responsibility into war zones. With impunity, they did so for partisan expedience, out of ideological absurdity, or to spite the President. The President's occasional mobilization of national guard troops and the passing of executive orders to protect historical monuments might have prevented the worst from happening. However, the overall state of domestic political affairs of recent weeks with violence and mayhem still dominating many cities is unacceptable.
It seems no longer to be part of educated awareness that the longstanding wisdom of political philosophy and state theory has already resolved this issue profoundly.
Every government that wants to be capable of decisive action in circumstances of utmost national distress and emergency must include a 'dictatorial element' in its constitution. Indeed, although it might hurt democratic prejudice, truly exceptional situations require the temporary negation of democratic principles and the independence of the supreme executive from legislative majority approval. If the bonum commune means something, even the most hard-core egalitarians in democratic societies must come to terms with this seemingly paradoxical assumption - which neither the founding fathers nor contemporary lawmakers seem to have acknowledged. But this condition might have to change now, where the nation's survival as a homogenous political body is at stake.
In the U.S., while the constitution gives special powers to the executive in emergency times, Congress can terminate such emergency declaration by joint resolution. The National Emergency Act (of 1976) grants special powers to the President but ties the invocation of this crisis empowerment to certain procedural formalities. And as far as invoking martial law is concerned, both President and Congress can impose it. Besides, the Posse Comitatus legislation impairs the President's powers to use federal military forces for domestic security reasons. There is no clear preponderance on the part of the Head Executive of the Nation, in situations of national distress, to act unilaterally and decide independently of immediate legislative constraint. Lawmakers must not confuse or misinterpret the fact that the President's accountability as the Supreme Leader never ceases. The answerability for his actions in the exceptional cases of national distress has to come after resolving the crisis. Still, it must not hinder his immediate powers to act in difficult situations.
An attentive observer of recent political developments in the U.S. cannot doubt the legitimacy of the claim to significantly strengthen and centralize the President's executive powers for situations of utter national distress. Yet, it is doubtful that politicians and governmental advisory bodies, in their usual erudite shortcomings, will enact the necessary legislation to give the President sufficient executive powers to override resistance from regional and local authorities in exceptional situations of national agony.
Future Prospect and Solution
What went down in the past few months in this country leaves no doubt that the fact who commands the situation of national emergency is of paramount importance for the survival of a nation, democratically organized or not.
But what solution is there in the face of the violent attitude and doctrinaire aggressiveness of the left? Political discourse no longer seems to be an option, given that leftism suffocates even the slightest deviation from their notions, both by word and violent deed. It provides little consolation to know why the left has to be intolerant and autocratic – not one of their arguments and claims can withstand earnest critique and hold up to the scrutiny of social and political reality. It is one of the reasons why leftism always wants to eradicate history and focus on the future. Any historical experience available is evidence for the failure of socialism and the poor results of its reign.
As far as Ochlocracy is concerned, the ancient philosophers already warned us that the only way out of the Mob Rule is the tyrannis. The strike of the iron fist is needed to defeat anarchy and restore law and order. It appears as if this role will inevitably fall to President Trump as the last hope for this nation to avoid outright civil war. And even more critical, to prevent the installation of a godless, collectivist, and culturally destructive communist-type despotism from taking place, which will be the inevitable consequence if the Democrats take over the White House and probably even the Senate in the fall.
There are barely four months left till the presidential elections in November, and the ochlocratic state in many areas and institutions of the country has reached an appalling level. Civil unrest has continued for weeks and doesn't seem to lessen. Mostly Democrat governors and regional politicians are doubling down on their support for rioters and lawbreakers. Even certain Republican politicians and, of course, Never-Trumpers prop up the claims of the revolutionary inclined followers of Black Lives Matter and other radical formations.
In their hatred of President Trump, the radical left is bent on removing him from office at all costs, even at this nation's perishment. They have pushed this country almost to the point of no return. With every day going by that leaves the lawlessness and outright insurgent activity of the mob unanswered, it will become more challenging to return the entire country to stability.
Restoring order might require extensive use of force, both law enforcement and military. Probably, even martial law and temporary military rule in certain areas are not out of the question.
However, although it is somewhat pathological, it is interesting to note that precisely the media proponents of the mob, in the concrete case, CNN, have already called for martial law. The usual strategy out of the leftist playbook is on full display – to project and reflect their guilt and wrongdoing on the opposition and forestall measures and actions predictably used against them.
The leftist mob and their enablers in the Democratic and Anti-Trump establishment are aware of the decisiveness of the hour. They will not come to their senses unless the mob ceases their lawless activities because of exhaustion and fatigue, or the iron fist will strike to save the nation from itself.
A grueling and costly path lies ahead if the country wants to return to its more traditional political order and its Christian roots. We will soon learn whether or not it is already too late.
