charlotte-riot-courtesy-rt-com

Pat Buchanan writes [via Ammoland.com] Celebrating the racial diversity of the Charlotte protesters last week, William Barber II, chairman of the North Carolina NAACP, proudly proclaimed, “This is what democracy looks like.” Consider what the protesters, who, exults Barber, “show us a way forward to peace and justice,” accomplished.

In the first two nights of rioting, the mob injured a dozen cops, beat white people, smashed and looted stores, blocked traffic, shut down interstate highways, got one person shot and killed, and forced the call-up of state troopers and National Guard to rescue an embattled Charlotte police force.

This was mobocracy, a criminal takeover of Charlotte’s downtown by misfits hurling racist and obscene insults and epithets not only at the cops but also at bystanders and reporters sent to cover their antics.

We have seen Charlotte before. It was a rerun of Ferguson, Baltimore and Manhattan, after mobs in those cities concluded that innocent black men had been deliberately killed by “racist white cops.”

Yet, one week later, what do we know of the precipitating event in Charlotte?

Keith Scott, 43-year-old African-American father of seven, was shot and killed not by a white cop, but by a black cop who shouted to him, along with others, almost 10 times — “Drop the gun!”

An ex-con whose convictions included assault with a deadly weapon, Scott was wearing an ankle holster and carrying a handgun. Charlotte Police Chief Kerr Putney, also black, after viewing video from a dash-cam and a body-cam of the officers involved, recommended against filing any charges. The chief concedes that he cannot, from the video footage, see a gun in Scott’s hands at the time he was shot.

But how is the legitimate investigation of the death of Keith Scott advanced by a mob? And if mass civil disobedience is what “democracy looks like” in 2016, why are we surprised that other nations look less and less to American democracy as their model Moreover, if these repeated reversions of the enraged to street action become the new normal, what do they portend for the country?

Blanket cable news coverage of the Ferguson riots split us along racial lines. But what purpose did they serve? Even Eric Holder’s Justice Department concluded that officer Darren Wilson should not be charged in the shooting death of Michael Brown, who tried to grab his gun.

A year ago, Baltimore divided the nation. Six Baltimore cops, three of them black, were charged in an alleged “rough ride” in a police van that killed 25-year-old Freddie Gray. This year, a black judge acquitted three of the cops in three trials, and all charges against the rest were dropped. No evidence was produced that the cops had intended to injure Gray.

In New York, the five cops who piled on Eric Garner to subdue him never intended to injure him, said a grand jury. Well over 300 pounds, Garner suffered from obesity, diabetes, asthma and hypertension, and died, not of a police chokehold, but a heart attack.

Yes, there have been incidents when cops made mistakes and cases where cops acted criminally. In Tulsa last week, after a white cop shot and killed an unarmed black man who appeared to offer no threat, she was charged with first-degree manslaughter. Is not this, rather than marching mobs, the way to handle such incidents?

Inevitably, given the violent crime in our cities — 540 murders this year in Chicago and 3,000 shootings — white and black cops are going to be confronting white and black suspects. Inevitably, some of these collisions are going to result in police shootings and black deaths.

While most of those police decisions to shoot are going to be seen in retrospect as justified, some will not be unjustified, and some will be malicious. The latter will be rare, but they are going to happen.

But in a nation of 320 million, if every collision between white cops and black men resulting in the death of a suspect is to be seen as legitimate grounds for mob action like Charlotte, we will never know racial peace.

Like moths to a flame, TV cameras are attracted to conflict, especially racial conflict. Networks and TV stations reward with airtime the most incendiary of racial charges. Thus, the news going out to homes and bars will continue to polarize us along racial lines.

And when the rage of one side and the disgust of the other dissipate, some new incident, between white cops and black men, will occur, and will be recorded, and rushed onto the air.

The street action in Ferguson, Baltimore and Charlotte may be what “democracy looks like” to Barber’s NAACP. But to most Americans, it looks like a formula for endless racial conflict — and a touch of fascism in the night.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.“

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68 COMMENTS

  1. This is indeed what democracy looks like: mob rule.

    This is why the Founding Fathers eschewed democracy and put in democratically elected representatives to a republic.

    Franklin once answered an inquiry as to what sort of government were we going to have with “A republic, if you can keep it.”

    Well, only educated people can maintain a republic, and now we have a great number of really ill-informed, intellectually lazy and downright venal people in politics, and this is the result.

    • If “This is what democracy looks like.”, they better realize that votes currently cost about 27 cents each and are limited only by the size of one’s wallet…

    • I was going to say exactly (verbatim) the same thing, “This is indeed what democracy looks like: mob rule.” Dyseptic beat me to it.

    • You don’t gotta be very educated to understand the only rule that’s needed In fact, you don’t even need to write it down. –Do to yourself what you want, but in your dealings with others you may only engage in acts of consent. If you initiate force you get a bullet, plain and simple.– Now starts the quibbling, the grey areas, who’ll maintain the roads and bridges, what about the children and the school lunches and buses and blah. The thing is, as it deteriorates, it will return to this rule by default.

  2. The news was reporting a black man killed by cops in San Diego this morning. Don’t know any more details.

    As for mob rule. When you’re 13% of the population attrition in such actions are going to leave you short handed in pretty quick order.

  3. It was Democracy, which is why we the US is NOT a Democracy, we have a constitution that gives us protections from mob rule. Carry always, keep a couple boxes of extra ammo in the car as well as some loaded mags and a same caliber backup handgun, and you do drive a 4wd with a brush guard correct? Just sayin’…..

  4. Please tell me more about the benefits of “democracy”… For those on this site who criticize my more authoritarian tendencies… Yeah… This is my counter.

    • I can’t claim to know about your authoritarian tendencies so I will make some assumptions. What happens when the authoritarian in charge does not align with your specific political views? Would you be fine with Hillary Clinton as your dictator?
      We don’t have a democracy. We have a democratic republic based on rule of law, and that law is based on the Constitution. At least that is SUPPOSED to be the set up. We are learning more and more that some people are above the law, thanks to a corrupt FBI and DOJ.

    • “Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant”

      – Mussolini

    • This kind of anarchy doesn’t take a riot squad, just one person who is justified in using lethal force.
      Decisively drop the first one the tries to smash your skull with a brick, and the rest will scatter.

      This would be done by any number of shop owners or local residents who would defend their streets with force if they weren’t terrified to death of prosecution, trial by media, state persecution, and generally being hung out to dry by our justice system. Once again – the State is the problem, not the solution (though it desperately wants you to believe it is). No one here has any illusions that Police wouldn’t descend in droves if a bunch of white people started throwing bricks back at the “black” mob that’s throwing bricks at them.

      What the riot police are doing here is security theater, not actual security. They are the State’s whipping boy, sent out into a losing situaiton for the mob to vent their anger on – essentially a padded cell made of humans for this insanity.

      The problem is that you can’t cure anarchy without cutting out the cancer – all the padded cells in the world won’t cure that. This cancer’s name is entitlement, and our leaders are pumping the country full of it.

  5. First off we’re is a Republic not a Democracy.

    Second, were we a Democracy this isn’t what Democracy looks like either. This is a mob of people smashing store fronts to loot NFL jersey’s and take money from the register. They’re looting trucks for anything they might want.

    It’s not Democracy, it’s an excuse (and a piss poor one at that) for somewhat organized criminal activity.

    What did Sublime have to say about this? Something about looting liquor stores for all the alcohol you can’t afford, stealing music equipment and furniture… That’s not Democracy, it’s an excuse to steal a bunch of stuff you don’t want to be bothered working to obtain.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1dPKfxRhk0

    • Actually strych9, this really is democracy by the strictest definition. Anything is fine if a mob does it.

      I suppose you could argue whether an actual majority of people in Charlotte shared the same view as the mob. But then we get into the quagmire of defining which arbitrary boundary we draw around a mob. How far out do we extend the boundary beyond the mob itself?

      • This meets none of the criteria to be what is classically considered a Democracy.

        In a Democracy these people would be taking part in an ad hoc plebiscite to vote on what to do about this incident, not looting stores and lighting shit on fire.

        • Yes, the people did vote … and they all agreed to loot and set stuff on fire.

          This is apparent in the fact that all of the people in attendance were participating and none of the people in attendance were trying to stop the madness.

          Anyhow, I get your point. I think the only difference is how formal the vote is.

        • I’m not going to lie here. This drives me nuts.

          When we discuss public policy we use words. Words have meanings, actual definitions to which we either adhere or we fall into Lefty “Newspeak”. Colloquialisms need not apply for usage.

          Mob: a large or disorderly crowd; especially : one bent on riotous or destructive action

          Democracy: government by the people; especially : rule of the majority OR a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.

          Mob Rule is defined as: “control of a political situation by those outside the conventional or lawful realm, typically involving violence and intimidation.”

          Democracy is not “mob rule” that’s a colloquialism that comes from the Latin term mobile vulgus (usually translated as “the fickle crowd” or “the mobile crowd” the latter being literal and a reference to shifting opinion). This actually refers to Ochlocracy, which is “mob rule… the rule of government by mob or a mass of people, or, the intimidation of legitimate authorities.” This was used in the Roman Republic specifically to refer to the fact that “the mob” would sometimes threaten to kill (and sometimes did kill) governmental members or their agents over things they didn’t like and that this was outside the normal legal process for influencing legislation via voting, petitioning and peaceful protest.

          In the case of Charlotte:

          Was a vote held? It was not. There was not even a plebiscite.

          Did the majority of the folks in Charlotte even get involved in this (which is not voting btw any more than me picking up a gun tomorrow morning and shooting my neighbor for his motorcycle is “voting”)? Negative Ghostrider. In fact most of those involved with this seem not to have been residents of Charlotte or even residents of towns near Charlotte.

          The actual peaceful protests at the beginning were a form of free speech attempting to influence the political process. That’s part of Democracy.

          The riots later in the night(s) were nothing of the sort. It was assholes looting cash registers and stealing NFL jerseys with no political objective whatsoever. This was not Democratic. It was a loosely organized criminal action the objective of which was personal enrichment of those involved or physical violence for the sake of physical violence. Therefore such action can not be described by the term “vote” or “Democracy” because it bears no relation whatsoever to any form of Democracy or voting.

          This isn’t what Democracy looks like at all. Stick to the actual definitions of words. Don’t fall into the Lefty trap of using their language which is meant for only one purpose: to deceive. Once you accept their language, they’ve already won because you have tacitly accepted that people lighting tires on fire in the street, beating people up and looting businesses is part of the Democratic process and therefore acceptable on some level.

        • strych9,

          Thank you for the lengthy explanation. (No sarcasm nor veiled snark.)

          First of all, I do not accept looting as “part of the democratic process”. Having said that, the left obviously does.

          I did not have any information which establishes that the mob was not entirely ( or almost entirely) residents. Had all the looters been local residents, the only difference between their activity and democracy was their failure to hold a formal, public vote to legalize their looting. The end result, however, is the same: the appearance of propriety as long as 50% + 1 vote in favor of any and every whim.

          Now, if the looters were outsiders, then this is not an application of democracy in any possible definition. It truly is criminal looting.

          What I am getting at is that the only difference between your definition of “democracy” and the frequent definition of “mob rule” is one of formality/expediency, assuming that all the actors involved are residents of whatever district that some policy/activity is in question. The end result is the same: anything goes if 50% + 1 support a policy/activity. Saying it another way, there are no limits on anything as long as 50% + 1 support something. That is the danger of “democracy” that people are highlighting with the “word picture” that is the label “mob rule”.

        • Uncommon:

          70% of those arrested for violent acts were from outside the area and had out of state ID cards. Like other places we’ve seen it’s pretty obvious a healthy percentage of those involved came to the area with the singular objective of shit-stirring/looting/robbery/violence.

          Now, let’s ignore a few things for a moment and focus on a singular question.

          In 2013 Charlotte had a population of 792,862. 792,862/2 =396,431. Do you really believe that, were this put to a vote, 396,432 (50%+1) people would have voted in favor of violent riots in their own city?

          Well let’s think about that. According to the US Census (http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/3712000) 35% of the population is black. That means that if every single black person in the city voted yes (assuming none of them is under 18, which ~25.3% are) you’d still only have 277,502 (rounded to nearest person) in favor of rioting. 118,930 short of what you need to “approve” of this behavior.

          So, with 50% of people being white (I’m just going to ignore other races for the sake of convenience and because the Census didn’t give us all the numbers) you’d still need 30% of white people to approve of rioting before this could be “democratic” rioting. Do you think that’s realistic? Personally, I find the idea that 100% of blacks and 30% of white would approve of this to be extremely unlikely. If just one black guy or gal votes “no” to rioting under this situation, “rioting” loses the plebiscite.

          Ergo, since the chances that just a plebiscite would pass a vote, what is going on here would be criminal conduct pretty much no matter what because it would be conduct that was outside the normal legal process. Either way, without it the conduct is illegal.

          Keep in mind that when the Romans spoke of the mobile vulgus they almost never spoke of a majority. In fact, as far as I know they never did. They mostly spoke of a violent minority that was simply large enough that Rome’s Cohortes urbanae and other various forces couldn’t contain it without military intervention (some of these “mobs” were actually gangs controlled by rich city dwellers or politicians many of which, such as Titus Annius Milo Papianus, were fully capable of throwing the city into chaos on command with just the use of one gang). Also keep in mind that soldiers under arms in the city were forbidden in the Republic (I’m not going to get into the legal niceties of the fact that urbanae guys were considered legionaries in certain regards). In effect the “mob” were fairly small groups of terrorists holding the government hostage because the group was large enough that the “police” couldn’t effectively deal with them in a rapid manner. The number of the “mob” would not need to be great as a percentage of the population because at the time we’re talking about Rome had a population in the hundreds of thousands and the Cohortes urbanae numbered at best three cohorts of 500 men each.

          I’m sorry, I don’t buy into calling this “Democracy” in any form. It’s not. At best it’s brigandry. At worst it could be considered insurrection. It has no legal nor democratic defense. It’s quite simply, criminal activity on a larger scale than normal and nothing else.

          I will not surrender to Newspeak. As I said, to do so is to concede to the Left that this behavior has some standing in our country. It does not. It is 100% inexcusable and I will not let the Left manipulate the language to create a “safe space” for this bullshit the way they did with “assault weapon”.

      • Tactically speaking: If you’re in the street while cars are burning and NOT running in the opposite direction, you are part of the mob.

  6. So when did the NAACP sell out to BLM Terrorism?
    Or were they closet anarchists all along just waiting for a president who encourages their anarchy?

      • Yep not unlike the Black Liberation Army back in the day. The ‘reputable’ groups just point their more extreme friends in the direction of the offshoots to try and look like they have clean hands. Then Al Sharpton gets up and makes fun of them for not shooting as many cops as they say they will.

    • Not anarchists, though the black flag tends to fly when and where there is chaos. The driving force here is collectivist authoritarianism, pretty much the opposite of anarchy on the individualist vs. statist continuum. The chaos is just a means to an end.

      • Good point. The anarchy is the means not the end: just like the Bolshevik anarchy Stalin took advantage of to gain power.

    • This kind of thing isn’t anarchy, it’s chaos. There’s a difference. Anarchism is a specific political philosophy. This is just loosely-organized, widespread criminal behavior.

    • The NAACP once had a legitimate purpose back when black people had to worry about the Klan showing up the middle of the night and killing them, with the tacit approval of law-enforcement and state governments, and when black people could not buy the house they wanted or get a halfway decent education.

      Now that everything they advocate for has been achieved, they have to find some way to stay relevant in the black community. This crap we’ve seen lately is one way to do so.

  7. What can you do? There are different America’s now. You have thugs using any excuse to commit crime and use “protests” for a cover, and if that isn’t enraging enough, the intellectual, college-educated leaders of the black community make excuses for the riotous crowds. And the constant undertone of guilty white liberals excusing the lawlessness as well. I don’t think most white people have too big of a problem with black folks these days, for me at least, it’s more of an aversion to the behavior.

    • I find it amazing that there seems to be a majority of Whites who are voting for the BLM-embracing candidate Clinton. She seemed to blame police only in the first debate: not a word about Black misbehavior and criminality.
      I never imagined we’d have such widespread self-destructiveness in American politics.

      • She’s pandering (what she does best). She won’t do anything for the black or other ethnic minority communities. If she wins, she’ll simply see the black community again in a couple of years come re-election time. That’s more surprising than white people voting for her- is the minorities that have got to know progs/Dems won’t do anything for them, but keep voting them in anyway, continue to vote for dependency, for the gov’t to do just enough via social services and the like, but never being able to prosper. Just keep voting for their own dependency.

        And a lot of these guilty white liberals don’t really care when they really think about it. It makes them feel good that they voted for Hillary, meaning, in their mind, they’ve done something about improving race relations and income inequality.

  8. If this is the future then we must join the party. I have been practicing at the range a lot and can persuade those wanting to destroy my property it is a bad idea. If everyone joins in the riots will remain isolated in their own communities. If they want to burn their own communities down let them and do not rebuild.

    • That’s really the problem – those who live in places where there are riots are terrified. Not of the riots, but of being absolutely destroyed by the Justice System if they did what had to be done to defend their neighborhood from the plunderers.

      They know (as well as we do) that they would be hung first in the court of public opinion, they’re business would be siezed/burned/attacked from all sides, they’re family would be threatened with all manner of harm, and the government would likely vindictively prosecute them to make a political statement.

      Until someone is willing to put a rifle round in the chest of someone throwing bricks, and then defend it in (and out of) court, this will continue.

  9. “Like moths to a flame, TV cameras are attracted to conflict, especially racial conflict.”

    Wrong metaphor, Pat. Moths fly into flames and burn to death.

    This is more like hogs running to the trough when they hear the sound of feed buckets banging on the fence.

  11. It’s the future of cities with democratic mayors which, correct me if I’m wrong, all of these recent riots (and that’s what they are) have taken place.

    All this country needs is leaders who will put their foot down, firmly state “this shit will not stand on my watch” and mean it; back it up with arrests of anyone who causes a problem.

    But that, unfortunately, isn’t happening.

      • In your mind looting an NFL store for jerseys and cash is “justified” by the incident with police?

        Attacking people who had nothing to do with the situation based solely on the color of their skin is “standing up against the government”?

        Absolute balderdash. That’s a large group of shitbirds shitbirding. Nothing more and nothing less. They are not petitioning the government for redress of grievances. They’re stealing and assaulting randomly for their own personal gain or pleasure.

        • Methinks you missed the point when “Even if…?” was a distinctly different sentence not about this case. Your statement is anti-protest, anti-riot even when justified.

      • There’s a difference between protesting grievances and riots. What happened in Charolotte, Baltimore, and Ferguson were not protests.

        Protests don’t end in millions of dollars worth of property damage, nor serious injuries against police or other people.

        You can throw in as many “yeah but”s as you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that the consistent actions of these people has led to your average joe associating BLM/Anti-police ‘rallies’ with an inevitable riot and violence against police.

  12. Every time a race riot burns a gas station, loots a store, or beats white people because they are white, the media and the liberal left praise their empowerment while at the same time calling white people racist and continue to convince the rioters that they are underprivileged because of their race.

    The fact is, they are not under-privileged at all. Plenty of white people are born into poverty, and they are no different. If a black man can be elected by the majority, they can make their lives whatever they want to. Yet due to the continued persuasion from the left, they are made hypersensitive to anything that could even possibly, through the deepest inner mind, be construed or link to something racist. And… while they waste their time with this nonsensical leftist shit, they could instead be pursuing a successful career, pursuing a happy life with a loving partner, and enjoying life with the ones they love.

  13. William Barber II, chairman of the North Carolina NAACP, is correct to proclaim: “This is what democracy looks like.” This is not what a republic looks like. Nor a government of laws. Nor a liberal nation, citizenry, or culture. Nor even limited democracy, or voting.

    “Democracy” is rule by American Idol when it’s peaceful, and by mob riot when it isn’t. “Unlimited democracy” is when anything can be decided by marshaling 50% + 1 vote, any one time, to do anything; votes counted by American Idol, or whatever the nearest riot is chanting.

    A charter for a republic – self-government for our mutual advantage – is none of that. It starts out with a mutual non-aggression pact, agreeing to leave each other alone because the war of all against all is indeed nasty, brutish and short. You start with: “It’s advantageous to me to do what I want, so I’ll agree to leave you alone if you’ll do the same.” Everybody gets to do more of what they want, except the people who are only interested in imposing on others. There’s a name or three for these folks.

    Next, there’s mutual defense, to protect the space where we leave each other alone, from people who just have to bully their way through life. You are agreeing to protect the *arrangement*, which may extend to protecting each other from things that violate that arrangement.

    Last, there’s listing out what we’re willing to decide together, and how. In general, decide together only what we have to, to get left alone the most without stepping on each other. And in general make it hard to decide we’re going to force other people to do something, together. “Government is just a name for the things we do together.” No, government is a name for things we force people to do our way; government is a name for things some people dislike so much, we have to force them to do them.

    Unlimited, direct Democracy is a poor choice for any of that. “This is what Democracy looks like.” is exactly why a limited, Constitutional Republic is better.

  14. “This is what democracy looks like.”

    He’s right – it looks like mob rule. Its why we have a bill of rights, and a jusdicial system.

  15. Academia is planting the ideological seeds early to keep the rage boiling over. In the progressive mind, when protesting achieves nothing, it’s time to resort to naked force of a mob to enforce “equality of outcome,” the chaos of which also justifies further expansion of state power. One palm greases the other, but they’re part of the same despicable body. The Obama admin has been fighting the long war since ’08. Caitlin Jenner, BLM, Sanders, Safe Spaces etc overlapped and hit us all at once, in an attempt to destroy anything that remotely unites the citizenry as proud Americans one and all. Remember that ideological schism that split the gay progs from the others after the Islamic terrorist attack in Orlando? All part of the plan. They want us fighting each other in the classroom and the streets ’til we’re too weak to stand up, and then look towards absolute state dependency as some kind of virtue.

  16. As long as they make flat screens and hair extensions, yes, it will work this way in some places. Not in my neighborhood, but in some places.

  17. The mob in Charlotte is doing exactly what the mob enablers in Washington, DC, wants it to do. Obama promised fundamental change, and Charlotte is what his kind of change looks like. How do you like it?

    The whole damn country will burn if Hillary occupies the White House. And if America is so stupid that it elects that psychopathic witch, it deserves to burn.

    • If people like us stay in the fight, it will be a battle (likely an eternal one).
      If people like us give up on the idea of a Free Country, it will be a swift collapse.

      If we take ourselves out because it looks hopeless, it most certainly will be.

      Keep the faith. Keep the powder dry. LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC!

  18. This article is garbage, and anyone who thinks like this is a fool. Of course it’s usually racist old white coots.

  21. Does Mr. Barber really believe that? That looters, rioters, anarchists and street thugs are the face of democracy. That taking the streets and smashing some store fronts further’s anyone’s cause other than opportunistic hoodlums. They know they can pretty much get away with anything for one or two nights but when the men in green with black rifles show up, it’s time to head back to the crib. Will any of these “people” even exercise their democratic rights and vote in the election?

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