To prevent a violent calamity, the President needs to demand that thuggish left-wing protesters stand down or be prosecuted.
If one or more of our Supreme Court Justices is attacked, injured, or God-forbid, assassinated, it will be because President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Congressional Democrats failed to forthrightly condemn, while sometimes implicitly encouraging, the thuggish behavior of “progressive” agitators, who have targeted the Court’s conservative justices for harassment and intimidation.
That may sound harsh and hyperbolic, but unfortunately—and alarmingly—it is true.
As we noted yesterday, far-left radicals have published the home addresses of six “extremist justices” whom they have placed in their political crosshairs. And Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer have raised nary a peep of concern, let alone outrage and condemnation.
Meek Words. Oh, to be sure, after being criticized for not condemning the thuggish protesters, Biden finally and belatedly sent out his press secretary, Jen Paski, to issue a meek, pro forma call for “peaceful protests.”
But as The Dispatch’s Stephens Hayes points out, this was a box-checking exercise— “putting out a statement to put out a statement.” Notably absent was a clear, full-throated denunciation of the agitators’ intimations of threats and violence.
And make no mistake: that’s what we’re dealing with. As National Review’s Rich Lowry observes:
These weren’t run-of-the-mill protests. No one doubts that demonstrations have an important role in showing popular support for, or passion around, a given cause. No, these protests were—and were meant to be—threatening.
There’s no reason to go to the homes of the justices unless it is to send the message that people outraged by their prospective decision know where they and their families live. In other words, to the justice who dares say that Roe and Casey have no constitutional basis: Beware.
“We hate to say this,” warns the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, “but some abortion fanatic could decide to commit an act of violence to stop a 5-4 ruling. It’s an awful thought, but we live in fanatical times.”
Political Violence. Indeed, and that’s what makes these threats so ominous and real: that, in recent years, we have seen venomous leftists violently assault Constitutional officeholders.
Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), for instance, was badly beaten up outside of his home in a wholly unprovoked, violent assault by an angry left-wing partisan. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) suffered life-threatening injuries during a Congressional baseball game after a man with a pathological hatred of Republicans opened fire on him and other GOP lawmakers.
The Senate, consequently, has approved a measure that provides security for the families of all nine justices. “The risk is real,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told CBS News.
Yet instead of recognizing this risk and confronting this threat, Speaker Pelosi has championed the thuggish protesters for “channel[ing] their righteous anger into meaningful action: [by] planning to march and mobilize and make their voices heard.”
This is the same Nancy Pelosi who has hyperventilated incessantly about the “threat to our democracy” from the “January 6 insurrection.”
The January 6 riot was bad and President Trump should ave been been impeached and convicted because of it, but it was no insurrection, and our democracy was never in jeopardy.
The legitimacy of the Supreme Court, by contrast, is being viciously attacked and, as a result, the lives of several Supreme Court justices are now in jeopardy.
President Biden needs to step up and speak out before it’s too late—before some left-wing goon decides to take it upon himself to “save democracy” from five or six “extremist justices.”
Speaking out against these fascist agitators is the right thing to do—especially for a president who promised, in his Inaugural Address, to bring us together to “fight the common foes we face: anger, resentment, hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence…
“I ask every American to join me in this cause,” Mr. Biden declared, because “we have learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile.”
Yes, it is. Which is why, at this particular moment in our nation’s history, we need presidential leadership: to help avert a violent calamity that would destroy the people’s faith in our institutions and rub raw the wounds of division.
Yet the President is missing in action. If Mr. Biden meant what he said in his Inaugural Address, then he will speak out now—clearly, forcefully, and with conviction—and insist that the thuggish left-wing agitators stand down or be prosecuted.
History is calling and the fate of our democracy is at stake.
Feature photo credit: Screenshot of radical agitators protesting outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, courtesy of a tweet from Douglas K. Blair.