The Mob of Virtue
Small “r” republican virtue, to be precise.
A wise man once told me that a weakness of our Constitutional system was that the Framers implicitly presumed that people of a truly dangerous character, from bullies to bandits to political menaces to the community, would primarily be dealt with in age-old fashion by outraged neighbors whose rights had been trespassed and persons abused one time too many. They did not prepare for a time when communities would be prohibited from doing so by a government that also, as a whole, had slipped the leash. Indeed, having read Locke, Montesquieu, Cicero, Polybius, Aristotle and Plato, they expected that such a state of affairs was “corruption” of the sort that plagued the Old World and might happen here in time. A sign of cultural decadence and political decay. They gave Americans, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, “A republic, if you can keep it”. It remains so only with our vigilance.
It is happening now.
We have forgotten – or rather, deliberately been taught and encouraged to forget – the meaning of citizenship.
We have let things slip.
Joseph Fouche superbly captures this implicit element, the consequences of the loss of fear of informal but very real community sanction, in his most recent post:
People Like Us Give Mobs a Bad Name
….A classic American mob could exhibit any or all of these strategies. It could be a saint inciting a mob to attack others who deviated from a shared narrative. It could be a knave in saint’s clothing inciting an attack on personal rivals. It could be a moralist inciting a mob against the local knaves. The one constant is that an American mob was an expression of communal self-government by moralists seeking to punish what they saw as deviant, even if its manifestation was frequently unpleasant. It was a sign the local people were engaged.
Samuel Adams was the Lenin of the American Revolution. He conceived a hatred for the British Empire and a desire for American independence well before anyone else did. Adams skillfully used mobs alongside legal pretense to incrementally spread his agenda. Others followed his example. In the Worcester Revolution of 1774, the local population shut down the normal operations of royal government in west and central Massachusetts and drove royal
officials out of those regions (the book to read is Ray Raphael’s The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord). The British crown lost control of inland Massachusetts before Lexington and Concord were even fought.
However, eleven years later, when many of the same local residents attempted to do the same thing in protest of the policies of a now independent Massachusetts, the state government put down their rebellion with Samuel Adams’s strong support. The difference? An apocryphal remark attributed to Adams captures some of the truth behind his attitude: “the man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death”. Mobs protesting the actions of an unrepresentative government like the British Parliament, Adams argued, were valid. Mobs protesting the actions of a representative government like Massachusetts’s state government, on the other hand, were treasonous. This doctrine, supported by other Revolutionary leaders, especially the cabal behind the Order of the Cincinnati, was eventually enshrined as the higher law of the land in the slow motion coup d’etat that overthrew the Articles of Confederation and replaced it with the more authoritarian United States Constitution in 1787-1788.
While mobs continued to combine, they were gradually neutered by the conscious agenda of American elites who sought to replace informal norms enforced by communal censure with formal norms applied under the professional supervision of “wiser heads”. This was a collusion between saints and knaves against moralists. Saints got purer standards that were not reliant on the whims of moralists who got stirred up in unpredictable ways that might violate the saints’ prevailing narrative while knaves got credentials that allowed them to entrench their positions and agendas under the cover of serving a higher good. The same sense of community morality and punishment that gave nineteenth century self-government its vigor and occasional excess was weakened as moralists were tuned out by saints embedded in holy isolation and knaves concerned only with advancing personal priorities. Moralists saw the knaves getting away with free riding off of them and began to opt out, leaving room for more knaves to free ride. For a little formal pretense, the returns on rent seeking were enormous.
The ideal went from a citizenry engaged in self-government to a system designed to advance the best and brightest. Meritocracy sounds good in theory and has some positives in reality. However, a perfect meritocracy is a perfect tyranny. All of the leaders are on once side and all the followers are on the other. This tendency toward the separation of the best from the rest may only be checked by the tendency of those on the ascendant to favor their own children, whatever their merit, over strangers that are more meritorious. This will force some aspiring meritocrats to side with the followers and bring about a rotation of elites. But the transition may take a while and its best to start before you have a meritocratic problem….
Read the whole post here.
Today’s circumstances, with the elite determinedly crafting rules for the mass but not for their class, have an ominous portent for the future of America as a democratic republic, but violence is not yet required.
Political engagement is.
August 1st, 2010 at 5:07 am
About our "unrepresentative" government. Did we stop having elections? (I have to read the newspapers more often!)
Also — in Fouche’s praise of mobs’ role, he neglects to mention that during most of US history the "offenders that need to be punished" often seemed to be black. How does that fit into his triptych?
August 1st, 2010 at 5:24 am
hi FM,
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JF can speak for himself but if he is a Mormon or former Mormon as his post indicated, his antecedents were on the receiving end of mob violence rather than the inciters thereof.
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You are quite correct that mob violence was often targeted at African-Americans at or around the antebellum period – though not as exclusively or any where near as often historically as popular culture imagines to be the case though the latent threat of mob violence was always present during Jim Crow definitely backed de jure segregation.
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That said, I don’t think the point of JF’s post was that we should go out, form a mob and engage in violence.
August 1st, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Plato was mentioned?.
"The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness.. Yes, that is their way.. This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector.. Yes, that is quite clear.. How then does a protector begin to change into a tyrant? Clearly when he does what the man is said to do in the tale of the Arcadian temple of Lycaean Zeus.. What tale? . The tale is that he who has tasted the entrails of a single human victim minced up with the entrails of other victims is destined to become a wolf. Did you never hear it?. Oh, yes.. And the protector of the people is like him; having a mob entirely at his disposal, he is not restrained from shedding the blood of kinsmen; by the favourite method of false accusation he brings them into court and murders them, making the life of man to disappear, and with unholy tongue and lips tasting the blood of his fellow citizens; some he kills and others he banishes, at the same time hinting at the abolition of debts and partition of lands: and after this, what will be his destiny? Must he not either perish at the hands of his enemies, or from being a man become a wolf—that is, a tyrant?. Inevitably.. This, I said, is he who begins to make a party against the rich?. The same."
August 1st, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Mark,
It might be important to note the divisions Plato made when describing Democracy (before describing or considering the rise of tyranny, above) since these divisions parallel those Fouche and you have made–very closely as you have outlined it.
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The Drones: "Then, in order that we may see clearly what we are doing, let us imagine democracy to be divided, as indeed it is, into three classes; for in the first place freedom creates rather more drones in the democratic than there were in the oligarchical State…That is true…And in the democracy they are certainly more intensified…How so?…Because in the oligarchical State they are disqualified and driven from office, and therefore they cannot train or gather strength; whereas in a democracy they are almost the entire ruling power, and while the keener sort speak and act, the rest keep buzzing about the bema and do not suffer a word to be said on the other side; hence in democracies almost everything is managed by the drones."
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The Wealthy Class: "Then there is another class which is always being severed from the mass…What is that?…They are the orderly class, which in a nation of traders is sure to be the richest…Naturally so….They are the most squeezable persons and yield the largest amount of honey to the drones….Why, he said, there is little to be squeezed out of people who have little….And this is called the wealthy class, and the drones feed upon them….That is pretty much the case, he said."
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The People: "The people are a third class, consisting of those who work with their own hands; they are not politicians, and have not much to live upon. This, when assembled, is the largest and most powerful class in a democracy."
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Actually, beyond Fouche’s descriptions and yours…this is actually the current now passing through our America, as anyone familiar with the Tea Party and TP-sympathizers can see at a glance. After outlining the divisions, Plato describes the trend:
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[GLAUCON: "True, he said; but then the multitude is seldom willing to congregate unless they get a little honey."] [Socrates:] "And do they not share? I said. Do not their leaders deprive the rich of their estates and distribute them among the people; at the same time taking care to reserve the larger part for themselves?…Why, yes, he said, to that extent the people do share….And the persons whose property is taken from them are compelled to defend themselves before the people as they best can?….What else can they do?….And then, although they may have no desire of change, the others charge them with plotting against the people and being friends of oligarchy?….True….And the end is that when they see the people, not of their own accord, but through ignorance, and because they are deceived by informers, seeking to do them wrong, then at last they are forced to become oligarchs in reality; they do not wish to be, but the sting of the drones torments them and breeds revolution in them….That is exactly the truth….Then come impeachments and judgments and trials of one another….True."
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Or, to translate it to modern terms, we could say either:
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1. That heavy taxation of the wealthy (a favorite Dem tactic) produces a movement toward oligarchy by the wealthy classes. Or, in other words, the wealthy who have no real desire to become an oligarchy — perhaps would rather let the drones have the headache of ruling — are nonetheless forced into becoming an oligarchy through some policies of redistribution of wealth etc.
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2. If, on the other hand, we take your and Fouche’s description, this threat of actual oligarchy may or may not have begun to materialize, but right now the Drone-Wealthy partnership is nonetheless already squeezing the People.
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It may be more apt to consider The People, in our modern American idiom, and because of the great success of America thus far, to be a kind of class of the Wealthy, themselves: not the real Wealthy who are so very wealthy but nonetheless a class of wealth being drained by the Drones who need ever more honey.
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The point, though, between the above and the description of the emergence of the tyrant is this: The pressure toward oligarchy, followed by the emergence of apparent and perhaps actual oligarchy, creates an outcry for some protection against that oligarchy; and in this environment, the people begin to look for a Protector.
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Glenn Beck, for an example, styles himself a Protector; but then, many talking heads are beginning to petition for that title. The most likely candidate I see at present would be Sarah Palin. However, already various Tea Party members/sympathizers are running for office, so if I were to try my hand at real prophecy, I’d have to consider some others for the role. The general commonality among all candidates for the position of Protector — even the mere talking heads like Glenn Beck — would be this: they are trying to solicit the aid of those they would Protect. I.e., raise mob, often by highlighting the need for a mob. What is the line, fine or not, between 1) a Protector raising such a beneficial mob (beneficial to himself), 2) a "virtuous mob" and 3) what might else be called mere "rabble raising" ?
August 1st, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Sorry hate to clog this thread with my repeated comments, but I forgot to add:
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In many respects, Obama could almost have fit the bill of Protector. "Yes We Can" was rabble raising, and much of his campaigning and current presidency included what Plato described as "at the same time hinting at the abolition of debts and partition of lands" — i.e., in the current Tea Party vernacular, hyperbolic as it might or might not be, the trend toward socialism.
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However, by all appearances, and viewing his actions in toto he might be better termed a hyper-active Drone involved in trying to steal more honey from the Wealthy. Nonetheless, the trend toward "socialism" figures in Plato’s dynamic, as perhaps a precursor to the advent of oligarchy and, later, tyranny.
August 1st, 2010 at 5:09 pm
I suspect the relevant point is not that Mormon’s were persecuted in the past, but that Fouche does not see future mob violence as a threat to himself. Blacks, Moslems, Hispanics are more likely targets. At which folks like him will "tut tut" at such unforunate but understandable actions. Virile and dynamic manifestations of an engaged people, blah blah blah.
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Amidst all the philosphy, I see no comments addressing the foundation of his call for mob action: the "unrepresentative" nature of our regime, despite our elections. Tied to our couches, earphones taped to our ears — perhaps we’re prisoners, like the folks in The Matrix!
August 1st, 2010 at 6:29 pm
Fabius Maximus,
My initial knee-jerk response to the Safranski/Fouche call for mob action was this: That temperamentally I am more of the Thoreau mindset. I’d rather let the machinery of government wear itself out with friction, so long as I’m not required to be an agent of injustice toward others.
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The comment I left in Mark’s "Collapse" thread might go to address my general impression of the problem you highlight via your Matrix satire. The trend toward abstraction, or the separation of the doers from the done so that the would-be doers in the general populace are greatly separated, through many layers, from the done of Washington, points at the difficulties now existing and likely to continue to exist re: our representative form of government. We elect façades, because 1) we can hardly know all there is to know about the characters and, more to the point, all the possible future actions of our would-be representatives, and 2) if my preferred façade — i.e., candidate — loses the election, then, well, I’m not being "represented" by even façade, much less an actual representative. In any case, the trend toward abstraction, or the placing of layers between the People and the putative Representatives, is growing; in fact, the placing of layers between those representatives and even the results of their own actions is growing.
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As a Thoreauvian, I support the idea of allowing any given person in the common populace the right to "tune out" without being sought after by the would-be representatives or indeed elected representatives. This is altogether opposite of the call for mob action (however virtuous or engaged.) The problem with the Mob has always been in determining what, precisely, comes after the Mob activity. Those bemoaning the state of disengagement spend a lot of time bemoaning said disengagement via a bemoaning of the presumed results of said engagement, and far less time outlining their own visions of The Republic that might follow a process of increasing engagement. Me, I’ve always been curious about the exact dimensions of that greater system Thoreau claimed to have seen in his own mind but no where else ever yet in the world; and I’m faced with asking myself whether disengagement, rather than being the evil Fouche hints it to be, might hold the key.
August 1st, 2010 at 8:56 pm
"Tied to our couches, earphones taped to our ears — perhaps we’re prisoners, like the folks in The Matrix!"
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It is not like the folks in The Matrix; it is more like the first Native Americans before us, and their ties to alcohol, yellow fever and the likes.
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Our orientations are being gutted by Wolfs and the drones such as Zen and Fouche are more willing to control their environment by using the velocity of the mob than command their environment by force of leadership. The difference is, of course, the Wolves come from the East instead of the West and the drones are in front of the leadership, inciting the mob, instead of behind the leadership, as an enemy of the state.
August 1st, 2010 at 10:09 pm
About our "unrepresentative" government. Did we stop having elections? (I have to read the newspapers more often!)I live in Chicago, Mark in the Chicago suburbs. Are there elections here worthy of the name? Congressional districts have been gerrymandered to prevent upstarts from threatening the incumbents. Apathy or despair do for the rest. Those who are most likely to vote tend to be public employees who have the most to gain and lose by the system.
August 2nd, 2010 at 12:36 am
With no offense meant to any of the participants of this thread, I believe you all may have missed the point.
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Fouche opens his post with the following line: "The decline in the vigor of American self-government is directly tied to the decline in the vigor of American mobs." What is meant by this?
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The American people, notes Tocqueville, differed from their European counterparts. Unlike the peasants of Tocqueville’s home land, Americans truly felt that the laws they followed were their own. They spoke not of "the" law, but of "our" law. Americans felt that they could overcome the challenges they faced by their own means and their own power. It was this spirit that made the American experiment of self government possible.
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It was also this spirit that fueled the fire of American mobbery. There is only one step removed between citizens who craft laws with their own hands and mobsters who take the law into their own hands. The by-product of cohesive, self-governing communities is the explosive passions of the mob. It is a price of democracy.
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Thus you need not worry, Fabius Maximus. There will be no mobs. The rioters are tied to our couches, ear-phones taped to their ears.
August 2nd, 2010 at 3:19 am
"The by-product of cohesive, self-governing communities is the explosive passions of the mob. It is a price of democracy."
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Is this a counterfactual or just revisionist history? Did the Parisian mobs which often dominated 19th century French politics (and sometimes in the 20th C as well) show a strong democracy? Did the relative lack of such in England show a weak democracy? Were the vibrant mobs in post-Civil War South showing democracy at its best, and the lack of this in the post-1960 South proving its decay?
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Interesting speculation, running counter to the standard interpretation in the historical and political science literature. It would be a good ice-breaker when visiting the Black Studies department at your local college.
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This love of mobs shows, I suspect, a degree of decadence among our intelligentsia. And confidence that they’ll not be among those strung up. Much like the radical chic admiration for the Black Panthers (authentic!) that Tom Wolfe described in his 8 June 1970 article in New York Magazine:
http://nymag.com/news/features/46170/
August 2nd, 2010 at 4:11 am
Some other readings about mob justice. I strongly urge you to read these before venturing along this path.
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Mark Twain’s "The United States of Lyncherdom"
http://people.virginia.edu/~sfr/enam482e/lyncherdom.html
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Lincoln’s "The Lyceum Address" (1838)
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm
He discusses mobs in both his time and in general.
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Excerpt:
"I know the American People are much attached to their Government;–I know they would suffer much for its sake;–I know they would endure evils long and patiently, before they would ever think of exchanging it for another. Yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property, are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the Government is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come.
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"There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law."
August 2nd, 2010 at 5:42 am
Violence of any sorts just gives the Oligarchy a "problem" to provide a reaction and solution to. This solution will be Internet censorship, "hate speech" laws, and macro-scale "discussions" about how the Western world needs more diversity.
August 2nd, 2010 at 1:18 pm
In the climate being whipped up against American Muslims by astro-turfed Christian groups gaining legitimacy with public approval of their efforts by Palin and Gingrich, I would not be shocked to see very real mob violence against them if there is another terror attack. Ditto for Mexicans in Arizona if the cartels actually do something stateside with a notable body count (one AZ businessmen at our planning conference said he would pay AZ Gov. $15 million to shut the hell up and stop destroying AZ’s tourist and investment climate with baseless hysterics about cartel invasions and AZ being Baghdad in the American desert with the highest number of kidnappings, terrorist attacks, and drug cartel wars than any state in US history).
Still, more political engagement could get something constructive done. The residents of Bell, CA certainly learned that lesson last month. There are thousands of Bells waiting to happen in response to abuses of power and corruption… it just takes engaged people getting organized and not just showing up with a sign protesting Obama’s latest perceived (real or otherwise) outrage.
Nationally, if Fox News would cease being an organ of the RNC and actually consider that little-practiced profession known as journalism, the country is ripe with Bells to expose in ways that would still embarrass Obama while actually telling the truth instead of inventing or grossly exaggerating scandals. Not to mention if they would cease the campaign of racial hysteria they’ve been whipping up, they could put real pressure and fear into the hearts of state legislatures and federal agencies getting ready to racially and politically gerrymander even more districts this year and the next, give billions of corporate welfare incentives at a time when they claim taxes have to go up, and continue to write new laws and regulations that merely widen loopholes politically connected companies get to exploit.
August 2nd, 2010 at 3:30 pm
There is one constituency that Obama unfailingly helps, that would be the banksters. Need more money? No problem. Need the accounting rules changed so you can mark to fantasy, book phony profits, then pay yourselves huge bonuses? Done. Did Wells Fargo, BofA, and Western Union get caught laundering money for drug cartels? Not to worry, there will be no criminal prosecutions.
This isn’t socialism at all. In socialism the state owns the means of production. Right now, it’s more like certain powerful business segments are being bolstered and protected by the government while other segments are ignored.
This is what William Black calls control fraud, the deliberate looting of companies and even states by a few elites.
August 2nd, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Fabius,
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A few thoughts. First and foremost, I doubt you will find much love for mobs among any of the intelligentsia. Taking a few comments by no-name bloggers as representative of the entirety of American intellectual thought is sloppy logic.
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I have no love for mobbers. They are the chosen trauma of my people. As a Latter Day Saint a hate and distrust of mobs has been ingrained deep into my soul – too deep, think, to ever sanction their use on others. However, I do realize that even if I wished to sanction their use there would be little point. Mobs are harder to conjure than most among our elite imagine.
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American mobs – the kind drove out the British, terrorized Mormons, and lynched African Americans – arose only under select conditions. Hardly the unorganized rabble of popular imagination, most mobs were carefully organized and (less carefully) managed by local leaders. These local leaders (news editors, sheriffs, militia lieutenants, Klan officials, ect.) could only form mobs in areas with a strong communal spirit. It is where an entire community felt threatened, and was accustomed to dealing with problems and ills as this community, that mobs were born.
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These things – strong local leaders, a determination to solve problems without dragging in the government, and strong community cohesiveness – did more than just create mobs. They created volunteer fire departments, built school houses, raised barns, caught and punished criminals, organized local political parties, and gave us the highest voting rates this country has seen. The same things that gave rise to American mobbery invigorated American democracy. The only element missing was the ethnic or religious tension that gave the mobs their reason d’etre. When this was supplied, the mobs soon followed.
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Could it happen again? I doubt it. We have few local leaders left. The midling institutions that held communities together, the churches, school boards, and city clubs, have been declining for more than a half century. And cultural cohesiveness? We have none. And of course, the Americans of our day have not the patience or passion to solve their own problems. That is for somebody else to do.
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In the end it comes to this: sheep do not riot.
August 2nd, 2010 at 7:58 pm
But occasionally, sheep do stampede.
August 2nd, 2010 at 8:09 pm
It strikes me that speaking favorably of the good indicated by the presence of mobs arises when the alternative in that dialectic is being able to think of people as sheep.
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Where is Dr. Tdaxp and his philosophy of historical declines in violence wrt systems when you need him?
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Any chance that democracy combined with a more equitable but strong system of laws naturally produces the so-called "sheep"?
August 2nd, 2010 at 9:44 pm
The first Amendment defines "peaceable assembly" as a right. How peaceable is peaceable? The point is that the scope for assembly was pretty broad. The types of street gatherings that were considered sufficiently peaceable in the early republic were rough indeed by our standards. There was a limited franchise, after all, in most places, and the idea was that the public should have an outlet to make its grievances known. This was true in England as well, which had an even more limited franchise, where the Riot Act contemplated that riots would be almost part of the constitutional order, so long as the crowds realized that they had to disperse once the troops arrived. Robert Weibe, in his book The Search for Order, talks about this. The key factor was that the people would have a rowdy demonstration when they believed that their legitimate concerns were not being met. It was a way to let the powerful and connected know that they were exhausting the patience of the democracy — as the mass of people were called then. Sam Adams apparently thought that merely having democracy meant that there would never be a justification for a rowdy mob to weigh in on a political debate. The early Republic showed that in practice this was not correct. It was a sort of open-air referendum process. Weibe sees the end of this sort of thing, and the imposition of a very sober and sterile middle class set of public standards as a retreat from true democracy, with lots of people excluded from the process.
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http://www.amazon.com/Self-Rule-Cultural-History-American-Democracy/dp/0226895637/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_4#reader_0226895637
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This is not the same thing as the mob violence leading to lynching that FMC is rightly concerned about. To the contrary, the anti-Black lynchings in the South were semi-official, and the government not only tolerated them but its own personnel often instigate them, though supposedly in an unofficial capacity. The lynchings after the Civil War war a part of an apparatus of state terrorism against Blacks. They were not a protest against the legitimacy of the state apparatus, they were part of it.
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I tend to think that political violence on any significant scale is not likely in the near term. Not because Americans are sheep but because they are relatively well off and have a stake in stability. Yes, that is a good thing.
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Whether or not the American people are hopelessly turned into a herd of sheep or not remains to be seen. I don’t think so. Annual New England town meetings can go many years barely making a quorum, then when something major is at stake, half the town turns out. I have seen this with my own eyes in Massachusetts. We will all find out in the months and years ahead.
August 2nd, 2010 at 10:48 pm
Assemblies of various degrees of rowdiness were indeed part of the pre-reform constitutions of Britain and America, and it’s also important to realize that there was a broader spectrum of representation of which assemblies of all sorts were the bottom rung; that which anybody could join. A vote for Parliament was the top rung, but in between there were many other forms of representations — votes for aldermen, which could be broader-based than parliamentary votes; votes in your guild, which among other things served as a lobbying organization; other voluntary associations, including Beneficial Societies, Masonic Lodges, etc. which could and did present petitions. The governing class followed such things, at least as much as our governing class follows polls.
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:17 pm
Further strikes me that two separate discussions are occurring.
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The first is a look at mobs through the prism of citizen-on-citizen activity. Fouche brought this up with his example of the Saints marching on through Missouri to a wilderness seclusion. This look may be a masquerade for approbation of tribalism, since the sort of community cohesion and so forth being described — not only that the cohesion exists, but that it works as a kind of community self-defense against any outsiders or group of malcontents whatsoever who would upset the cognitive paradigms of Paradise long enjoyed by the Mobsters — fits in with the whole tribalphile archetype.
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The second look — which is getting mixed up, and thus muddied, with the first — is a look at engagement whereby communities find the strength and the encouragement to stand up to some sort of centralized government. Rather than a call for neo-tribalism, this one may be a call for rebellion or revolution (however peaceable.)
August 3rd, 2010 at 2:48 am
CGW: I think the two threads are present in Fouche’s original post. The crowds Sam Adams organized were very rowdy, in fact they were often lawless, or sometimes literally engaged in military resistance to the Crown. But wherever they were on that continuum, they were certainly of the second sort, standing up to government power. The crowds that massacred the Mormons, or who lynched people in the South were of the first sort. I think it is two different things. There is really a third sort, or a subset of your second group, which is that crowd action and public assembly were actually part of the process of representative government, just not a part that works by counting votes. It’s hard for us to imagine now, but it was once recognized that way.
August 3rd, 2010 at 3:42 am
OK mates, here then is my question: how possible is it to have one type of mob without the formation of the others?
August 3rd, 2010 at 4:02 am
Answering a question with a question: What is the scope of "peaceable assembly" under the 1st Amendment?
Other questions: How far does a government get from democratic control and accountability before some kind of public protest begins? Why should that trouble is, in principle? Haven’t public protests often been positive forces in American life? Shouldn’t unaccountable rulers have to worry about a population that is not entirely docile?
Aren’t there risks in both directions?
August 3rd, 2010 at 4:48 am
It’s worth pointing out that most American mobs prior to the middle of the last century were reactionary and defensive (as they saw it) rather than revolutionary and offensive (as they saw it). For example, Samuel Adam’s mobs were seeking to preserve Massachusetts as it was during the period of Robert Walpole’s benign neglect from the innovations of the new fangled British High Imperialism. Similarly the American Revolution was more about preservation than innovation, though innovation came.
August 3rd, 2010 at 10:26 am
Well as long as the Mob is aware of the finer points of Plato we should be Ok.Was I the only person who thought the Article was an elaborate Joke?
August 6th, 2010 at 1:38 am
[…] Mobs on mobs. […]
August 6th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
"About our "unrepresentative" government. Did we stop having elections?"Does anyone think that elections decide anything of importance anymore? To some extent maybe re foreign policy. Otherwise, the Permanent Government (Federal civil service, media, Ivy League) that rules the managerial-therapeutic state decides everything. The people can only delay things a bit-like the old House of Lords. See, for example, recent court decisions on gay marriage and immigration. The people have been resisting mass immigration since at least the days of Prop 187, but the Permanent Government is bent on the racial and cultural dispossession of the historic American majority and it will be done.
August 6th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
AMERICAN TYRANTS – 2010
Tyrants can turn peaceful citizens into ranters. One citizen, who is fed up with the depraved nuts and devils running America these days, was heard to shout: "John Hinckley Jr. and Eric Rudolph, now that we REALLY need you, where are you?" For insights into some of the worst tyrants, Google or Yahoo "Obama Avoids Bible Verses," "Obama Supports Public Depravity," "Obama’s Re-Election Promise," "Un-Americans Fight Franklin Graham," and "Imam Bloomberg’s Sharia Mosque."
(saw the above on the net – Tom)
April 25th, 2012 at 5:29 pm
Good read. Thanks