The “Occupy” movement, which the Obama administration and much
of the media have embraced, has implications that reach far beyond
the passing sensation it has created.
The unwillingness of authorities to put a stop to their
organized disruptions of other people’s lives, their trespassing,
vandalism and violence is a de facto suspension, if not repeal, of
the 14th Amendment’s requirement that the government provide “equal
protection of the laws” to all its citizens.
How did the “Occupy” movement acquire such immunity from the
laws that the rest of us are expected to obey? Simply by shouting
politically correct slogans and calling themselves representatives
of the 99 percent against the 1 percent.
But just when did the 99 percent elect them as their
representatives? If in fact 99 percent of the people in the country
were like these “Occupy” mobs, we would not have a country. We
would have anarchy.
Democracy does not mean mob rule. It means majority rule. If the
“Occupy” movement, or any other mob, actually represents a
majority, then they already have the votes to accomplish legally
whatever they are trying to accomplish by illegal means.
Mob rule means imposing what the mob wants, regardless of what
the majority of voters want. It is the antithesis of democracy.
In San Francisco, when the mob smashed the plate-glass window of
a small business shop, the owner put up some plywood to replace the
glass, and the mob wrote graffiti on his plywood. The consequences?
None for the mob, but a citation for the shop owner for not
removing the graffiti.
When trespassers blocking other people at the University of
California, Davis refused to disperse, and locked their arms with
one another to prevent the police from being able to physically
remove them, the police finally resorted to pepper spray to break
up this human logjam.
The result? The police have been strongly criticized for
enforcing the law. Apparently pepper spray is unpleasant, and
people who break the law are not supposed to have unpleasant things
done to them. Which is to say, we need to take the “enforcement”
out of “law enforcement.”
Everybody is not given these exemptions from paying the
consequences of their own illegal acts. Only people who are
currently in vogue with the elites of the left — in the media, in
politics and in academia.
The 14th Amendment? What is the Constitution or the laws when it
comes to ideological soul mates, especially young soul mates who
remind the aging 1960s radicals of their youth?
Neither in this or any other issue can the Constitution protect
us if we don’t protect the Constitution. When all is said and done,
the Constitution is a document, a piece of paper.
If we don’t vote out of office, or impeach, those who violate
the Constitution, or who refuse to enforce the law, the steady
erosion of Constitutional protections will ultimately render it
meaningless. Everything will just become a question of whose ox is
gored and what is the political expediency of the moment.
There has been much concern, rightly expressed, about the
rusting of bridges around the country, and the crumbling and
corrosion of other parts of the physical infrastructure. But the
crumbling of the moral infrastructure is no less deadly.
The police cannot maintain law and order, even if the political
authorities do not tie their hands in advance or undermine them
with second-guessing after the fact.
The police are the last line of defense against barbarism, but
they are equipped only to handle that minority who are not stopped
by the first lines of defense, beginning with the moral principles
taught at home and upheld by families, schools, and
communities.
But if everyone takes the path of least resistance — if
politicians pander to particular constituencies and judges give
only wrist slaps to particular groups or mobs who are currently in
vogue, and educators indoctrinate their students with
“non-judgmental” attitudes — then the moral infrastructure
corrodes and crumbles.
The moral infrastructure is one of the intangibles, without
which the tangibles don’t work. Like the physical infrastructure,
its neglect in the short run invites disaster in the long
run.
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