Violence on two fronts dominated the news cycle this past week: the violent anti-ICE protests that stretched over days and the shooting of two Minnesota representatives and their wives.  The liberal media treated the Minnesota killings with abhorrence while dismissing the ICE protests as “mostly nonviolent,” which is like saying the Sharon Tate murders were “mostly” nonviolent because Charles Manson and others in the cult weren’t present at the scene.  The reality is that the street protests that took place in Los Angeles and other cities were violent to the core — and that they had more to do with the Minnesota killings than most people realize.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, on June 6, “over 1,000 rioters surrounded a federal law enforcement building and assaulted ICE law enforcement officers, slashed tires,” and “defaced buildings” and “taxpayer funded property.”  That was just the beginning.  As anyone with eyes can see (apparently not Mayor Bass), cars have been burned, including police vehicles; rocks have been thrown, weapons brandished, and officers struck.  At least eight individuals have been accused of instigating violence and face prosecution for their actions during anti-ICE protests.  Does this sound peaceful? 

In the anti-ICE violence, mobs blocked highways, broke windows, looted, shouted threats, threw bricks and incendiaries at police and guardsmen, threatened drivers in their cars and pedestrians on the street, and aggressively resisted arrest.  These actions were extremely violent.  They were also entirely irrational: What reasonable person sets out to block a major highway, to assault police officers, or to loot stores?  What reasonable person decides to protest the arrest and deportation of murderers, rapists, and other violent criminals?  Did Alex Padilla appear “rational” and under control when he barged into Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem’s press conference on June 12?

The point is precisely this: radical ideology is not rational, whether in the case of the anti-ICE protests or the vicious attack on state legislators in Minnesota.  Ideology is behavior driven by a single fixed idea, and so, by definition, ideology precludes rational thought.  Most protesters could not even tell reporters what specific injustices they were protesting; they were just part of a mob driven by the idea that “Trump is bad; anti-Trump (or anti-ICE) is good.”  But mobs are never inspired by careful reflection.  They are driven by mindless emotion. 

Opposition to the deportation or jailing of violent criminals is, in itself, a remarkably extreme and simplistic position.  Such opposition implies that one is opposed to all policing (“defund the police”) and all punishment of criminal behavior.  The underlying ideology is anarchistic, since the result of such a position would be a society in which the strong would prevail via violence over the weak, which is exactly what arose in Los Angeles before President Trump sent in the National Guard and prepared to send the Marines.  Carried to an extreme, which is what the protesters and those who fund and support them (including California Democrats and some shadowy billionaire leftists impelled by their own fixed ideas) seem to want, we’d be left with a brutal and lawless society in which murder, rape, looting, and home invasions would be the rule rather than the exception.

In that kind of anarchy, every homeowner would have to possess weapons, but this would hardly matter, since large gangs would rampage at will across every neighborhood.  With stores looted of everything they possess and transport shut down, there would be no food, medicine, or clothing — no goods or services of any kind.  The only option would be to flee, but where?  As the anti-ICE movements spread, every state might be subject to the same lawlessness, with the possible exception of Texas and Florida and some states in the South.

The anti-ICE protesters are not listening to reason because they are ruled by progressive ideology, which insists that authority of any kind is “fascist.”  If one believes that all authority is illegitimate, then to bring in the National Guard or the Marines to maintain order might seem to be the action of a “dictator” or a “king.”  At their heart, anti-ICE protests are driven by the fixed idea that all compulsion is wrong, something that the French philosopher Michel Foucault promoted in what he called an “interrogation of power.”  What we see today is the crude legacy of misguided thinkers like Foucault.

It was apparently a similar sort of ideological thinking that allegedly drove Vance Boelter to kill two innocent human beings and gravely would two others — and to construct  a list of some 45 others deemed worthy of assassination.  That kind of behavior is not the product of reason; it is a rejection of reason, brought on by ideological hatred.  Reasonable persons may disagree, even vehemently disagree — as I do with those who promote abortion on demand — but they do not resort to violence.  An intelligent, thoughtful individual, as all true conservatives are, argues his position but does not threaten or harm others.  Only a person driven by ideology and the uncontrolled anger it instills does such a thing.

It was the same in the Soviet Union of Lenin or Stalin, or in Nazi Germany.  In those totalitarian states, no independent thinking was permitted.  Every aspect of life was assessed by whether it accorded with fixed ideas such as anti-capitalism and antisemitism.  It is disheartening to see those same misguided concepts now driving the actions of millions of leftists in America — just as it is extremely disturbing to see a man in Minnesota murder two  innocent strangers as a result of ideological hatred.

Ideology is never the solution to human problems.  It is, as Roger Scruton in The Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Culture has shown, a modern disease that arose during the Enlightenment, especially during the French  Revolution and the many extremist movements that followed, and that appears to be growing in influence.

We as conservatives must never fall into the trap of substituting one ideology for another that we reject.  We must act reasonably and thoughtfully even if others do not, and even if we enter a national condition of madness ruled by conflict by opposing ideologies.  The essence of conservatism is thoughtful reflection, and we must hold that standard high even as the streets are filled with mobs ruled by madness.

Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).

Image: kolyaeg via Pixabay, Pixabay License.