Below is my column in the Hill on the rising political violence on the left. Many have found an irresistible release from both reason and responsibility in rage. A new study found more people embracing political violence. Joel Finkelstein, the lead author of the report, stated that “what was formerly taboo culturally has become acceptable… We are seeing a clear shift – glorification, increased attempts and changing norms – all converging into what we define as ‘assassination culture.’” Roughly 40 percent reportedly found it somewhat justifiable to burn a Tesla or even to kill Donald Trump.
Here is the column:
“We should replace our piece of crap Constitution.”
Those words from author Elie Mystal, a regular commentator on MSNBC, are hardly surprising from someone who previously called the Constitution “trash” and urged not just the abolition of the U.S. Senate but also of “all voter registration laws.”
But Mystal’s radical rhetoric is becoming mainstream on the left, as shown by his best-selling books and popular media appearances.
There is a counter-constitutional movement building in law schools and across the country. And although Mystal has not advocated violence, some on the left are turning to political violence and criminal acts. It is part of the “righteous rage” that many of them see as absolving them from the basic demands not only of civility but of legality.
They are part of a rising class of American Jacobins — bourgeois revolutionaries increasingly prepared to trash everything, from cars to the Constitution.
The Jacobins were a radical group in France that propelled that country into the worst excesses of the French Revolution. They were largely affluent citizens, including journalists, professors, lawyers, and others who shredded existing laws and destroyed property. It would ultimately lead not only to the blood-soaked “Reign of Terror” but also to the demise of the Jacobins themselves as more radical groups turned against them.
Of course, it is not revolution on the minds of most of these individuals. It is rage.
Rage is the ultimate drug. It offers a release from longstanding social norms — a license to do those things long repressed by individuals who viewed themselves as decent, law-abiding citizens.
Across the country, liberals are destroying Tesla cars, torching dealerships and charging stations, and even allegedly hitting political dissenters with their cars.
Last week, affluent liberal shoppers admitted that they are shoplifting from Whole Foods to strike back at Jeff Bezos for working with the Trump administration and moving the Washington Post back to the political center. They are also enraged at Mark Zuckerberg for restoring free speech protections at Meta.
One “20-something communications professional” in Washington explained “If a billionaire can steal from me, I can scrape a little off the top, too.” These affluent shoplifters portrayed themselves as Robin Hoods.
Of course, that is assuming Robin Hood was stealing organic fruit from the rich and giving it to himself.
On college campuses, affluent students and even professors are engaging in political violence.
Just this week, University of Wisconsin Professor José Felipe Alvergue, head of the English Department, turned over the table of College Republicans supporting a conservative for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. He reportedly declared, “The time for this is over!”
Likewise, a mob this week attacked a conservative display and tent on the campus of the University of California-Davis as campus police passively watched. The Antifa protesters, carrying a large banner with the slogan “ACAB” or “all cops are bastards,” trashed the tent and carried it off.
Antifa is a violent and vehemently anti-free speech group that thrives on U.S. college campuses. In his book “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” Mark Bray explains that “most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists. … From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”
Of course, many of the American Jacobins are themselves bourgeois or even affluent figures. And they are finding a host of enablers telling them that the Constitution itself is a threat and that the legal system has been corrupted by oligarchs, white supremacists, or reactionaries.
This includes leading academics and commentators who are denouncing the Constitution and core American values. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School, is the author of “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”
In a New York Times op-ed, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
Commentator Jennifer Szalai has scoffed at what she called “Constitution worship.” “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us,” she wrote. “A growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.”
As intellectuals knock down our laws and Constitution, radicals are pouring into the breach. Political violence and rage rhetoric are becoming more common. Some liberals embraced groups like Antifa, while others shrugged off property damage and violent threats against political opponents. It is the very type of incitement or rage rhetoric that Democrats once accused Trump of fostering in groups like the Proud Boys.
Members of Congress such as Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) have called for Tesla CEO Elon Musk to be “taken down” and said that Democrats have to be “OK with punching.”
Some take such words as a justification to violently attack a system supposedly advancing the white supremacy or fascism. Fortunately, such violence has been confined so far to a minority of radicalized individuals, but there is an undeniable increase in such violent, threatening speech and in actual violence.
The one thing the American Jacobins will not admit is that they like the rage and the release that it brings them. From shoplifting to arson to attempted assassination, the rejection of our legal system brings them freedom to act outside of morality and to take whatever they want.
Democratic leaders see these “protests” as needed popularism to combat Trump — to make followers “strike ready” and “to stand up and fight back.”
For a politician, a mob can become irresistible if you can steer it against your opponents. The problem is controlling the mob once it has broken free of the bounds of legal and personal accountability.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
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The hard lessons I have learned is that:
You cannot appeal to their intellectual side, because they will not have any of that which gives in the slightest, to a compromise.
There is Only being Right or Wrong, as clear as Black & White. They are never ever wrong.
Be it Right or Wrong there is Fault. If it is a right-fault (good), then they take credit for it to enhance their lives,
If there is wrong-fault (bad), it is not Theirs and You own it. It’s your Fault.
You are always a ‘subordinate’.
These are the Rules of the Left side. The balance of Power will not change.
O love it when, in their fight against the “monsters,” the Dims stare wide-eyed into the abyss.
“… The one thing the American Jacobins will not admit is that they like the rage and the release that it brings them. …”
How do yo know that, is that a fact? Show us the studies related to that subject. Or are you just making it all up?
Of course you’re anonymous
You’re a coward
Nothing new here. For communists, murder of individuals and mass murder of millions are just means to an end.
Joseph Stalin is quoted as saying, “Death solves all problems, no man, no problem.”
Biden almost lied us into nuclear war.
Sources not only make it clear that the public was lied to on a continuous basis from the outset of the conflict, but they describe how we were lied to, apparently thinking the methods clever. Some are small semantic gambits the idiots wrongly believe exculpated their actions, but the main revelation involves one gigantic, inexcusable deception. From Joe Biden down, they all lied about the risk of World War III.
They risked our lives and our children’s lives, knowingly, repeatedly, and for the worst possible reason: politics. Afraid to admit a mistake, they planned individual excuses while letting bureaucratic inertia expand the conflict. Worse, as was guessed at on this site late last year, the Biden administration after last November’s election increased the risk of global conflict by “expanding the ops box to allow ATACMS and British Storm Shadow strikes into Russia,” in order to “shore up his Ukraine project.” If you check this “secret history” against contemporaneous statements of American and European leaders, you’ll find the scale of the lies beyond comprehension.
Full story here:
https://www.racket.news/p/biden-lied-about-everything-including
DIZZY DAFFY SPIN 🤣
Incredible!
Mentally ill Judge Boasberg has been slapped down by the Supreme Court. His court was not the proper venue since the terrorist gang members were located in Texas, not Washington DC. Mentally ill Judge Boasberg should have known that and dismissed the petition instead of crazily ordering planes in the air to turn around in the air 🤪 🤡
Congress must make an example of Boasberg by imposing the strongest possible penalty.
Penalty for what, a crime, what crime?
Prove there wasn’t a civil disobedience from a district judge trying to usurp Article 2 powers
The Supreme court needed to step up earlier.
It also needed to do better than 5-4 on these venue decisions. They should have been 9-0.
I have not read this decision – but the 20,000 ft overview sounds correct.
I think they are correct on the AEA – but they should have passed on that and let an AEA challenge come up through lower courts.
The critical part of the decision is that the courts can not keep gaming venue. That was the core to friday’s 5-4 decision which Roberts dissented and the core to todays 5-4 decision which Barrett dissented.
These decisions both should have been 9-0
and they both should have been focused on jurisdiction and process – not the validity of Trump’s use of the AEA.
Again I beleive he is correct on that, but it is acceptable to have a challenge to the AEA climb the courts.
It is not acceptable to handcuff the executive with TRO’s that are not TRO’s and that will with near certainty be overturned.
The burden of proof is on the plantiffs. They should be allowed to proceed in the correct courts.
SCOTUS’s decision that the oportunity to file a Habeaus claim in the proper US courts must be provided is also correct.
Arrest, detain, provide notice, provide time to file a habeaus claim, and when that is adjudicated deport.
The Habeaus claims in these cases are fairly simple – are you the person the govenrment claims you are ?
And in a Habeaus claim the burden of proof is on the detainee to prove they are not.
Thinking more on the ‘good conduct’ requirement for judges continuing in office I remind myself that only the Supreme Court is required by the Constitution. All other courts, and their jurisdictions, are at the pleasure of Congress.
It is evident that Congress has a good deal to say about the structure and authority of the lower courts and that would almost necessarily extend to what is ‘good conduct’. Congressman Biggs’ brilliant idea may succeed.
The idea is interesting, but SCOTUS has acted. It would have been better if it was 9-0 and it should have been.
These jurisdiction cases should have been open and shut.
Left wing nuts have been claiming Trump must follow the rules – so must judges.
But unless the lower courts continue to play games, this should be the end of it.
Congress should NOT go after individual judges – even though they deserve it.
There are things congress should do – but not because of the lawlessness of DC courts, but because they are good ideas.
The DC circuit should be eliminated – or severely shrunk,
Most of DC should be returned to MD and VA.
Most government offices should be moved out of DC.
better laws governing jurisdiction and TRO’s for lower courts should be enacted.
Do not fixate on the bad judges.
Work to repair the process, but do not go too far.
The Supreme Court did not address many of the issues of district court excesses that it should have done long before this pass had been reached.
If the Court hasn’t the will or courage to set the courts straight then Congress or the President must do it.
And if need be start with one prominent, maniac judge, pour encourager les autres
Leftist neighbor harasses Trump supporter, writes “Nazi Scum” on street with arrow pointing to their house. Keeping it classy, liberals.
And yet they offer no alternative ideas to solve the impending economic disaster of 37,000,000,000,000 debt and a 3,000,000,000 dollar interest that occurs each day. They have no idea how to reindustrialize our nation.
All they can do is act like weak crybabies.
The people love Trump (politicians, not so much). He’s pretty funny when he ad-libs:
https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1909272047961948607
WINNING!
M orons
A re
G overning
A merica
WINNING!
Retarded. You’re calling $11 trillion evaporating from the accounts of more than 200 million Americans. When people start losing their jobs go out in public and claim Trump and you are winning. Have someone start a stopwatch to see how long it takes before you teeth get kicked in.
Last Week GM said it was hiring.
Not seeing any efforts to lay people off.
The stock market does not control the economy, the economy controls the stock market.
But it does so in many different ways, so every stock market increase does not mean an economic boom
and every decrease does not mean and economic bust.
The biggest underlying american economic problem right now is our Debt, This is a millstone making growth harder.
Government spending is making that debt worse, Cutting spending will improve things.
Tariffs will accomplish some combination of things.
If they are more than a negotiating strategy they will produce revenue for the government WITHOUT negatively impacting US growth. There are taxes on consumption – not investment and they are taxes on consumption that is mostly avoidable, and that if avoided will NOT cost US jobs.
Tariffs are not perfect, but claims of their economic damage are overstated.
Alternatively if they are a negotiating strategy – they will end concurrent with trade barriers to the US being ended globally. That is postive for the US – and mostly for the world. It allows US manufactures the oportunity to go after foreign markets. That increases US jobs. That increases US GDP and growth and makes out debt slightly more bearable.
Regardless – though not eually the mere threat of Tarriffs is driving already existing trends to reshore and to reindustrialize the US. That will happen regardless, but Trump merely threatening Tarrifs has accellerated that.
That is NOT an instant fix. Some of the benefits will happen nearly immediately. Some take years.
Further – contra so make experts Tariffs are DEFLATIONARY. The norm for 19th and early 20th century america – and Europe when Tarriffs were the largest source of governemnt revenue was mild deflation.
We are already seeing that. A significant portion of the money you claim was lost in the stock market has just moved to the bond market, driving bond yeilds down, driving interest rates down, driving mortages down, driving ghe cost of US debt down. During the next year they US must refinance $10T in debt – that is the euivalent of a bit less than half our economy. Lower Bond rates mean much slower growth in debt.
We are also seeing commodity futures drop. That means lower food prices in the future – though that is starting already.
We are seeing oil prices drop – that means lower prices for gas and myriads of things that depend on energy.
To be clear the impact of Tariffs is not all positive. It is also not all negative.
Nothing is entirely positive or entirely negative.
Everything I mentioned above is already happening. It is not speculation. There will be other impacts – good and bad.
Given that so many of the experts have been wrong about so much we shall have to wait to see what the other effects will be.
The stock market collapse in 1929 did not cause the great depression – the over investment in long term assets – factories and homes caused the depression. The stock market crash was wall street recognizing that we were producing more than we could possibly afford to consume and therefore our businesses were massively over valued.
The recent collapse also means that our businesses are likely over valued.
But it does not mean we are over producing. it is highly unlikely that the stock market crash will result in business failures unless there is an underlying reason to beleive people will not be able to consume what we are producing.
In the 2008 financial crisis – like 1929 we suddenly discovered we had built more homes that people could buy.
We have over produced – and that REUIRED people to be layed off. Layoffs in one sector lead to layoffs elsewhere.
Tariffs mean MORE domestic demand not less.
In the tech bubble the markets also crashed, but the economy did not. We had overvalued tech stocks.
But we had NOT overproduced, so there was little in the way of layoffs and sharp economic damage.
If the current stock market crash results in layoffs, recession, …. that means something more fundimental than tariffs is wrong with the economy. That is possible though I do not think so.
My view is that the stock market collapse is two things – a reflect that like the tech bubble stocks are overvalued – primarily due to inflation. And the fact that the market does not like change and it overreacts.
Regardless, everything could be going to h311 and if so Trump will be impeached and reviled forever, and it will take republicans decades to recover.
But I would bet heavily that is not the case. The alternative is that Trump will succeed – as noted above there are actually many paths to success. All paths are not eually good. but most paths reflect improvement for the overwhelming majority of people. And that scenario puts Democrats in the wilderness for decades.
our Republic’s founder did not want the creation of a two party system, study history, they knew ne had one enemy, the world wide royal thug mafia families, treaty of verona.
the original; 13, ratified, amendment, urgently needs be in full force, via the vile BAR owe have no separation of powers, no checks and balances
“ The problem is controlling the mob once it has broken free of the bounds of legal and personal accountability.”
This will likely be difficult with the likes of Pam Bondi at the helm of law enforcement. But, it will be amusing to watch idiots wantonly breaking the law and thinking a wink and a nod will be sufficient to escape punishment – much as it has been the case for the last several years. She is a slave to the the law, and will enforce it with no regard whatsoever for who is committing the offense.
# . It’s cancel culture and treason. It’s individuals believing their personal inclinations are more than the group.
Their personal inclinations are doing very poorly in heaven currently.
# Thanks for the blog, professor Turley, but I shall now take leave. I don’t want to know about Elie Mystal or ilhan Omar or the secretary of the treasury ‘s husband and two children. So much I don’t want to know.
Adieu
Boasberg was on vacation; he was not the “emergency” judge; he came back to town; he took the case.
These flights were scheduled in advance. The ACLU rushed to court at the last minute, with the Wong complaint, magically at random got the same judge who has been asigned 32 other Trump cases, who scheduled and emergency hearing on Saturday forcing the DOJ to show up without an oportunity to prepare, Issued verbal TRO before DOJ had any meaningful oportunity to even Know what the ACLU’s case was. Boasberg advised the plantiffs they had filed the wrong claim, gave them legal advice, converted a Habeaus claim filed in the wrong jurisdiction into a Class Action this is actually imporper and if the ACLU loses – which is ultimately likely this could Cost All TdA members any oportunity to properly file Habeaus claims.
While this fridays SCOTUS rejection of the TRO ordered for STATES is not 100% on point. The overlap is enormous.
You can not sue the government in DC under the APA when you have a valid complaint against the government under other law in another court.
Everyone being deported can file a Habeus claim in the circuit they are being deported from.
SCOTUS send a load message to lower courts – The APA is NOT a carte blanche means to rig venue, and select favorable courts.
Equity claims are NOT suitable for TRO’s or preliminary injunctions.
Contract claims are NOT covered by the APA.
If any other law allows you to sue the government other than the APA – you must sue under that Law, and you must follow the jurisdiction and due process requirements of THAT law not the APA.
A very partial (i.e., corrupt) Juristocracy.
By the way, from yesterday, 4/6, 6:46 PM:
______________________________________________
John Say
There is an issue with legislation – because the constitution explicitly requires legislation to be “signed into law” The president MUST physically sign at least one copy.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The pardon exists upon communication of its approval by the President, understanding that no particular form or method of communication is required by the Constitution, thereby allowing verbalization to suffice by omission.
Article 2, Section 2
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
Are you agreeing or disagreeing ? I specified legislation. Most all other executive acts must be at the direction fo the president. That does NOT mean the president must sign.
But if the president signs there is less uestion that it is a presidential directive, than if it is signed by autopen
The challenge is not to the use of the autopen, but to the absence of evidence that the president gave a directive, rather that someone with control of the autopen acting outside the knowledge of the president.
# . Yes, it’s RICO. the spider web of corruption and it extends into the treasury and fed reserve. The reason it’s being disassembled.
John Say: “Equity claims are NOT suitable for TRO’s or preliminary injunctions.”
I think that TROs are precisely for matters of equity. One of the conditions to be met is that the plaintiff will suffer irreparable harm if an action is not stopped. Another is that there is no adequate remedy at law. Both situations call for a remedy in equity, a TRO.
Depends on what you mean by Equity the normal legal meaning is disputes over value.
TRO’s are pretty much never appropriate when the dispute is over value, or where the remedy is over value.
There can be no irrepairable harm where there is a dispute over value.
For a plantiff to suffer irreparable harm they must have a claim that can not be remedied by a transfer of value – usually money.
Irepairable harm usually reuires someones RIGHTS to be violated – though sometimes we allow that to be fixed by money.
actual instance of irreparable harm are uite rare. TROs should therefore be rare.
John: “Depends on what you mean by Equity the normal legal meaning is disputes over value.”
No. Equity is an entirely different system that is distinct from law and intervenes when law is inadequate or unjust. Originally it was the king’s power to intervene and shares that character with the power to pardon. It was delegated to the Chancellor and in more recent times courts were given both law and equity but when a judge is exercising authority under equity he is wearing a different hat as it were and following different rules. A TRO is a remedy in the equity system and is not available under the rules of law as distinguished from equity.
The AI response when you Google equity vs law is pretty good:
“In legal contexts, “law” refers to established rules and statutes, while “equity” addresses fairness and justice where strict legal rules might lead to unjust outcomes, often providing remedies beyond monetary damages. “
John, in his COMMENTARIES, Vol I, Blackstone said that law without equity was too harsh but warned that too much equity destroys the law. I think our judges are reaching for the equity toolbox far too often and thereby becoming tyrants.
For decades there is no right vs left, dog and pony show, both are controlled by the feudal reserve ssa principals, roman curia mafia. i never had a chance.. SSA hired their Agents title 31 3128, that should never have existed, nor still exist, in our Republic , to toss me in jail for breathing in peace wasting decades of my life. Benign me, pure heart, dedicated profound science to enable limb regeneration. Normalized treason is still treason, they all must be hung for it.
apparently there is not one constitutional lawyer in my Republic, my ancestors and kin, samuel & john adams, william williams, john hancock, elbridge gerry, john pullen, joseph reed, stood for for 50 years