For now, the Left lacks the power to drive everyone they don’t like out of every place they occupy, but when they are threatening to put a knife through the heart of liberal lions like Alan Dershowitz, you know that if they had the power, they would be hounding people everywhere in the country, ruining them, forcing them to leave the country, destroying their reputations and everything they eve worked to build.
There was nothing like that in the 1950’s. That would have been too far even for the John Birch Society, which rightly–as history shows us–predicted an on-going infestation of leftist authoritarianism in our politics and our universities and eventually society. They were not beating people up in the streets, even people who manifestly deserved it.
I will never forgive the anti-war left for stealing a hard won victory in the Vietnam War from our troops, and from the long suffering South Vietnamese, whose lives were torn apart and in hundreds of thousands of cases ended outright. Where was the outrage when the victorious Stalinists started ripping husbands from wives, children from parents, and sending them to gulags where many died? Is it bad to rip a child from its screaming mothers arms? Not if you are a Communist, or a fellow traveler. That is part and parcel of the job.
No, this is new, unique. It is a mania vastly worse than even that of the Civil War era, because in that era both sides at least understood the situation clearly, and differed on matters of principle. One side maintained the nation must be preserved and all secession treated as treason; and the other held that the States were superior to the Federal government, and that secession was inherently implied, if not specifically authorized, by the Bill of Rights at least. And I will note their case never saw the Supreme Court. The legal status of their secession was never settled. This is why Jefferson Davis was never tried for any crimes, and was eventually released.
No, now the Blue Meanies scream and shout and shriek for roughly the same reason that children do, when their mother tells them no. I wish this were a gross exaggeration, but it isn’t. How are we, as a nation, to create a situation in which emotional and intellectual children can be encouraged to grow up, to become sane, rational, mature, sensible adults?
I don’t know. We will just need to see how things evolve. It does seem likely that the trickle of desertions from the Democrats has become a torrent. Chuck Schumer sees this, but he is surrounded by idiots.