Law Versus Mob Rule (Thomas Sowell)

It is painful — and dangerous — how little we learn from history, even when it is recent history.

Just a year ago, "rape" charges spread lynch-mob hysteria on the campus of Duke University and in much of the liberal media, while professional race hustlers descended on the town of Durham, North Carolina, and mindless tribalism was stirred up by extremists in the local black community.

This year, we have all learned what a total fraud that case was, from beginning to end. Yet now we see a similar outburst of mindless tribalism and another attempt at mob rule, promoted by such veterans of last year's hysteria as Jesse Jackson.

This time the scene is in Jena, Louisiana. The issue is the prosecution of a black high school student accused of stomping on an unconscious white student — and the lack of criminal prosecution of white students who hung a noose on a tree, who were disciplined by the school.

Liberals' skills at moral equivalence have been so finely honed during the long years of the Cold War that they have turned this into a case of "unequal treatment," based on race — as if putting a noose on a tree is equivalent to stomping somebody who is unconscious.

The black student was found guilty but the verdict was overturned on appeal — not on grounds that he was not guilty, but on grounds that the appellate court did not think he should have been tried as an adult.

The usual legal procedure would be to try the student again, but this time not as an adult. However, the usual legal procedures are not good enough for those who have once again seized the opportunity to hype race — and to hell with questions of guilt or innocence or legal procedures.

The immediate demand of the mobs that have been mobilized around the country to descend on the small town of Jena is that the young man found guilty of a serious crime of violence should be free on bail pending a second trial.

The legal question is whether letting someone accused of such a crime go free on bail is likely to mean that he will not be around long enough for a second trial. But no one is seriously debating that.

Racial hype has replaced all rational discussion. Moreover, the Jena episode has shown that two can play the racial hype game. Neo-Nazis have published the names and home addresses of all the young blacks involved in the school incident.

The slogan "No justice, no peace" has been used to justify settling legal issues in the streets, instead of in courts of law.

Neo-Nazis have now helped demonstrate what a dangerous slogan that is, since different people have opposite ideas of what "justice" is in a given situation.

Long after the imported demonstrators have left, and the national media have lost interest, the families of the black youngsters involved in the school altercation will have to live with the knowledge that their privacy and security have both been lost in a racially polarized community, with vengeful elements.

The last thing the South needs is a return to lynch-mob justice, whatever the color of whoever is promoting it.

Back in the 1950s, when the federal courts began striking down the Jim Crow laws in the South, one of the rising demands across the country was that the discriminators and segregationists obey "the law of the land."

But, somewhere along the way, the idea also arose and spread that not everybody was supposed to obey "the law of the land."

Violations of law by people with approved victim status like minorities, or self-righteous crusaders like environmentalists, were to be met with minimal resistance — if any resistance at all — and any punishment of them beyond a wrist-slap was "over-reacting."

College campuses became bastions of the new and sanctified mob rule, provided that the mobs are from the list of groups approved as politically correct. Otherwise, even an injudicious remark could bring swift and certain punishment under "speech codes."

The politics of condoned law-breaking is part of the moral dry rot of our times. So is settling issues in the streets on the basis of race, instead of in courts on the basis of law.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy.

Indeed he is and right not just according to race. In the past few years, we have seen the erosion of laws because some person or group is placed in a victim status. From OJ Simpson and Rodney King to the illegal aliens - eventually it will erode respect for the law from all quarters.

The Jena Kid in jail did have a $90,000 bail with a $9,000 bond needed to let him out to go free. The question needs to be asked, why didn't the race pimps simply post that kid's bond? Why didn't any of rap artists post his bond? They sure found the money to travel several times to Jena and then pay for chartered buses to march on Jena for justice but failed to simply post that kid's bond.

Many people have sent their hard earned $$$$$$ to FREE the Jena Six but those who were free were too busy buying more Bling and Stuffing hundreds in their mouths.

Well said, you’re right on the mark.

There is nothing more disingenuous to me than to hear liberal pundits and even senators and reps bring up the fact that such and such Repub did the same or similar thing in the near or distant past to justify behavior that is clearly not acceptable.

They are expert in the saying that if something is repeated often enough the people will believe it, it’s disgusting.

Remind me. Isn’t his degree, specialty, in the area of statistics? It has been awhile since I read his book. I originally found it facinating becuase, to tell the truth, it was a subject I knew would give me a real bad case of MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over). LOL! But he is certainly a man of many interests when you read his column regularly. I think he is well known, but like I said, he is dicounted by the left as a “sellout” like any black conservative is. It takes us right back to my original thoughts. The one thing I find very frustrating is the lefts constant condemnation of people and opinions they do not know. FOX is biased, Sowell is a sellout, etc. As for me, I spend a lot of time getting both sides of every story. If I see a thread here I open DU or KOS just to see what they are saying.

I got a kick out of your info on Sowell and airline travel. It made me think of something I witnessed back in the 70’s. I was living in Fairbanks Alaska. A theater group at the U of A put on the first ever stage version of The Martian Chronicles, from the book by Ray Bradbury. Before the performance I letter from Mr. Bradbury was read to the audiance in which he said he wished he could have attended, but there was no way that he could becuase the only way he could get there was by air.....and he was afraid of flying. And this was a guy who wrote about space travel. LOL!

Isn’t his degree, specialty, in the area of statistics? It has been awhile since I read his book.

His degree is in economics, but you may be right that he has a specialty in statistics. Because he is good at finding the meaning of data, all right. I believe he is responsible for pointing out the significance of the correlation between income and age - that the "lowest quintile of the income distribution" so beloved of liberals for indicating the unfairness of capitalism is not a permanent underclass but predominantly a bunch of young people just starting out, and usually headed up to a higher, and not rarely the highest, quintile within ten years.

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