Protest in the streets?
Dr.Winston more or less got where I was trying to go with this, although I am here to point out that you cannot assume that either the mob or the “people”, as an abstract, are morally correct. You must understand the situations individually. As per the OP, the question was statues of American heroes, who fought, bled, and sacrificed for the Republic. Even if those men were flawed, it is emphatically not morally obvious that the people should want their statues torn down.
Either we are a democracy, in which case the majority shall rule, and the mob must be rewarded or punished according to the will of the people. Or we are a Republic, in which the mob must be restrained according to the laws and the duly-elected representatives of the people. But in neither case is the mob given carte blanche to do what it pleases, especially when it is a less-popular opinion.
That’s the thing about mobs; once the state fails and the mobs are roaming around, who knows what’ll happen?
I don’t think you understand what “Democracy” means, because a country can be both a democracy and a republic. “Democracy” does not mean mob rule, and a “republic” is not the only way to restrain excess through law and representative democracy.
I guess I don’t understand why this is hard to grasp, but “mob rule” does not mean “the majority gets whatever it wants.” The majority getting whatever it wants from the government is populism. Mob rule is a failure of the government, where people are not longer getting what they want or don’t want from the government, they’re taking it in groups. The state does not have to deliver justice based on whatever 51% of the population wants this week. That is not how countries work, and it’s not how societies work. Countries function by impressing upon people that the apparatus of state is legitimate, and in a free country they do that by giving the populace the sense that the state is on their side and working with them and has to be generally obeyed, even if some elements of it aren’t always pleasant or the way you want it to be right now. That’s done through a wide variety of elements of the apparatus of state, and sometimes the majority of people don’t get what they want, or don’t get exactly what they want, or don’t get it right away. Establishing the legitimacy of the state is what will allow people to accept that in a relatively free country.
My point about the state not delivering justice and the mob deciding to go ahead and give it a shot is what happened what that legitimacy fails. I’m not talking about 52% of the people not getting what they want around a statue, I’m talking about the people, or an substantial portion of them, feeling that the state does not function for them.
If you think I was supporting mob rule holy shit, did you miss the point. The point is that when the mobs take to the streets, you should look to why the state screwed up badly enough to let that happen.
Rickjay,
So far all you’ve communicated are platitudes about the state doing or not doing “something” for the crowd without any real content. I can’t make anything out of your argument and I have no idea what you are trying to say. You keep expressing what you don’t believe. May I recommend you try stating what you do believe?
Let’s use a counter-hypothetical: What should the state have done to prevent the Tulsa Race Riot and how should it have appeased the mob and made them feel that the state does function for them?
Considering in that case, the state acted in concert with the “mob”, wherein corrupt officials armed the white people and pointed them in the direction of the “undesirables”, it can well be stated that that was a failure of the state to be a legitimate governing force.
I’ve quite clearly explained it, more than a few times, and for whatever reason you just seem to be struggling with comprehension to a degree others aren’t. It’s not worth my time to spell out, again, a pretty straightforward observation.
Bumped.
Forrest is out at the Tennessee capitol:
I seem to recall from my travels through Tennessee that all sorts of stuff is named after this prick-a-lick.