6/2/2020 - Pat Buchanan Townhall.com
On
the fifth night of rioting, looting and arson in Minneapolis, the criminal
elements were driven from the streets.
By
whom? By the same cops who had been the constant objects of media derision and
mob hatred.
Without
the thin blue line, far larger sectors of dozens of America's cities would be
in ruins, burned to the ground by the mobs that showered police and their
vehicles with rocks, bricks, bottles, Molotov cocktails and any debris that
could be thrown at them.
Because
they were the first responders in these riots, the cops were the first targets
of criminal assault and the last line of defense of the law-abiding.
Wherever
they had to draw back or pull back, anarchy ensued.
Consider
the decision of Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Medaria Arradondo to
surrender and abandon the 3rd Precinct. As police cars pulled out and the cops
fled, the exhilarated rabble invaded, pillaged and burned the precinct.
And
America saw, in astonishment, a triumph of anarchy.
One
wonders what the world thought as it, too, watched.
Now,
consider the political coloration of Minneapolis.
Frey,
who ordered the surrender, is a far-left Democrat. Gov. Tim Walz is a liberal
Democrat, as are both U.S. senators including Amy Klobuchar. Minneapolis
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is a soul sister of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Minnesota
was the political home of Vice Presidents Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale
and Senators Eugene McCarthy and Paul Wellstone, liberal icons all. The state
has not voted Republican for president since 1972. Even Ronald Reagan never
carried Minnesota.
Yet,
of his home state, this citadel of liberalism, Walz said last week,
"Systemic racism must be addressed if we are to secure, justice, peace and
order for all Minnesotans."
Query:
How does "systemic racism" permeate a blue state dominated for
decades by liberal Democrats? What explains the failure of Democrats who have
long run Minnesota to root out racism?
Why
have liberals failed to exorcise racism where they rule? Are even good
Minnesota liberals infected with the virus?
What
we witnessed this week in Minneapolis is a failure of liberalism. The
leadership of the city and state could not persuade the protesters it claims to
represent to remain peaceful. And when rioting, looting and arson erupted, and
attacks on police began, that leadership sat morally and politically paralyzed.
The
elites could not condemn both the killing of George Floyd and, with equal moral
vehemence, the violent and criminal element that came to permeate the ranks of
the protesters.
They
failed to get sufficient law enforcement or the National Guard into the city on
time, or to declare and impose a curfew, or to use requisite force to halt the
rioting and looting.
Why
have those leaders not turned in their resignations?
Comparisons
have been drawn to the 1960s.
In
the summer of 1964, LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act. In 1965, the Voting Right
Act was enacted after Selma. Then came one Great Society program after another,
as LBJ declared at Howard University, we are moving beyond equality of
opportunity to "equality of result" in America.
However,
in August 1965, Watts exploded, the worst race riot since Lincoln sent Union
troops to put down the New York draft riots of 1863.
Newark
and Detroit had uprisings of similar magnitude in 1967.
In
April 1968, for days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, U.S. cities
were pillaged and burned, Washington, D.C., among them.
LBJ's
Kerner Commission said the cause of the riots that had come out of the black
community was actually "white racism."
Said
Richard Nixon speaking for the silent majority: They seem to blame everybody
for the riots but the rioters themselves.
Liberals
of that era, too, seemed morally disarmed and politically paralyzed when it
came to confronting criminal elements that emerged from minority communities
and voted Democratic.
Such
situations invariably seem to produce in liberals a paralysis where the crimes
are attributed to a "few bad apples" hiding among all those
"peaceful protesters."
There
is much chatter about "speaking truth to power."
What
does that mean today?
At
the least, the recognition that while the killing of George Floyd was an
atrocity that cries out for justice, so, too, does the rampant criminality that
exploded in its aftermath.
But
because of the failure to condemn that criminality, and the paralysis of
Minnesota's political leadership class, the black community in Minneapolis has
lost hundreds of businesses -- some forever -- that had provided them with the
necessities of a decent life.
Liberals
may equate the term "law and order" with racism, but without law and
order, there is no justice and no peace.
Patrick
J. Buchanan is the author of "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That
Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."
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