By James Wilson
Large majorities
– according to polls – believe Michael Brown was the aggressor and Officer
Darren Wilson shot him to protect the public and his own life. Yet protestor-rioters – from Ferguson, Missouri,
to Oakland and Berkeley, California, know better; they self-righteously keep
burning and throwing makeshift weapons at police and anyone who crosses their
path. Other polls show 60% of Americans
– including nationally known pundits on both left and right – believe the grand
jury got it wrong in the Eric Garner case.
Is this democracy in action or a mob mentality that forgets we are a
nation of laws and legal processes?
In
the Old Testament Judges 21:25 says, “In those days there was no king in Israel
and everyone did as he saw fit.” The
upshot is no one held people accountable to the ethical standards of their
covenant with God; without these standards there is no real commonwealth. But the Israelites got themselves a king who
was no better than they and the situation remained chaotic. Covenant – and for that matter, commonwealth
– depend on shared commitment to values larger than ourselves, coming from a
Superhuman Source. Our American
Constitution and its body of law is a covenant.
Mob rule – even where the mob is democratically grounded – is the
antithesis of covenant. Yet the mob has
ruled in Ferguson, New York City, and the other places where might makes right
in these days. It never ends well.
Mobs have burnt Asian-owned businesses in
retaliation against white police officers for killing blacks in self-defense in
cities in which the incidents to be avenged did not take place. That defines mob operations; incoherent rage
that achieves nothing but greater injustice.
It was the same in the day of the Klan, and when mobs of the army and
militia groups massacred Cheyenne and Arapahoe at Sand Creek in Colorado and
Shasta and Wintu people at Etna and Natural Bridges in California. Mobs always act in defiance of law, and even
law – unrestrained by covenant or constitution – is no more legitimate than a
hanging vote in an oak grove.
Inciting
to riot and making terrorist threats are illegal in every state, just as
crying, “Fire!” in a crowded theatre is grounds for arrest. Al Sharpton and every one of the other
agitators who orchestrated shouts of, “What do we want? Dead cops.
When do we want it? Now,” should be in jail. This is not protected speech except in cases
where authorities are too corrupt or too cowardly to protect the innocent.
Mob
rule is not always overtly violent. The
teens demonstrating for Michael Brown and Eric Garner in Denver had no intention
to harm anyone. Yet they knew they were
supposed to be in school, as did the school officials who looked the other way
when they left campus. So who should we
blame for the serious injuries to four Denver police officers protecting the
marchers when an SUV slammed into them? (The
driver became ill and lost control of his vehicle.) And if the police are so violent and
repressive as a species why did they protect those kids at the risk of their
own lives? It defies logic, but when the
mob mentality takes over logic is the first casualty.
There
is simply no way mob rule and a republic can co-exist. The latter places reasonable limits on behavior
that all might have opportunity to live in freedom. The former gives license to every impulse and
endangers everyone by enslaving to injustice.
It is not a
question of whether defiance of the establishment is acceptable. There would be no American republic had
patriots not defied an establishment in declaring independence, abolishing
slavery, and founding unions to address corporate injustice. But each of these movements was grounded in
covenant from Declaration to Constitution to the laws emerging from it and
amendments enacted to it. Mobs are
grounded in rage and the end of the line is always a reign of terror – whether
in revolutionary France or Russia or China.
Not all mobs go that far – thank God – but they have no other
destination.
There
is an antidote found in the Christian’s default resource – the Bible. It is return – repentance – to covenant
relationship between God and man and between man and man. It calls people on both sides to abandon rage
and seek real life. It is more than ten
laws; it is the relationship embodied in Micah 6:8, “He has shown you, O man,
what is good. And what does the Lord
require of you? To act justly and to
love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Covenant in no
way precludes ordering a society with the punch necessary to do it. Under covenant we support the police when
they do their job and hold them accountable when they do not. The city of Cleveland – where it seems to be
open season on citizens via a rogue police department – should be a case in
point of the latter. Ferguson and New York are surely cases of the former. Covenant also means when we encounter one
another across barriers physical or spiritual we speak the truth that is
consistent with the facts; we listen to the other point of view whether we
think it true or not; and we ask the Lord Himself to re-frame the conversation
so that life is available to all sides.
This approach leads from mob rule to authentic republic. It is both good and doable under God.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living
As Ambassadors of Relationships and The
Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by
e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
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