Two Brooklyn lawyers, Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman, respectable products of elite universities were arrested for making, distributing, and throwing Molotov cocktails during a riot in New York.

‘He’s a person with an extraordinary career that was just starting in the law. He attended prestigious universities, he had some of the best education that you can have in this country and yet he risked everything–everything–to drive around in a car with Molotov cocktails attacking police vehicles,’ federal prosecutor Ian Richardson said during one of Mattis’s initial court appearances. ‘It is difficult for me, frankly,’ Richardson later added, ‘to comprehend how somebody in his position with his background would do what he did.’…

“A former colleague of Rahman’s, Alicia Bella, said she couldn’t reconcile the charges with the person she knew. ‘I’m very surprised. My heart goes out to her, and I want to do everything I can to help her,’ she said. ‘I know what this country does to people who express themselves. I’m definitely worried.’…

“By all accounts, their alleged actions stand in contrast to their nature.”

Do we really have to treat this like it’s some great mystery? Did we not live through the 1960s, when preening leftist rich kids, like the Weather Underground’s Billy Ayers–the son of the CEO of Commonwealth Edison–turned to terrorism?

As for whether Rahman was “expressing herself,” here is the prosecutors’ description of what form of self-expression she and Mattis chose.

“Prosecutors say the two lawyers drove Mattis’s tan minivan late in the evening of May 29 to participate in widespread protests in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood. There, just before 1 AM on May 30, Rahman approached an empty NYPD vehicle with an already broken window and tossed in a makeshift explosive device, according to court filings. She also ‘attempted to distribute Molotov cocktails to several other individuals and to incite them to use the Molotov cocktails in the course of the protests.'”

There has been an outpouring of sympathy for Mattis and Rahman from fellow lawyers, and you will excuse us for being a little cynical about how “progressive” this is. There is a whiff of horror on the part of educated middle-class lefties that someone like them might actually do hard time.

My reaction is the opposite. We should throw the book at them and at everyone else who came out to riot and not to protest.

Throw it harder at these people in particular, precisely because they were educated, had prospects in life, and knew the law–so they were not merely carried away by the moment but knew full well what they were doing.

I could point out that these rioters are actually setting back the legitimate cause behind the protests, and there’s ample evidence for that. As a matter of historical record, burning cities and smashing store windows tends to make the case for police crackdowns, not police reforms.

But I’m more concerned about what this says about the actual nature of the far left’s cause. The common belief of the rioters, the essence of their supposed idealism, is that force, violence, and terror are an acceptable and even preferable means of achieving political results.

So no, this is not an aberration on the part of someone who is “kind-hearted.” It’s a theory of how to achieve political change. There is a full court press right now to get us to accept assault, looting, and arson as normal and acceptable forms of political activism. For example, an actor from a semi-obscure television series was arrested in Santa Monica, and in a press release, he insisted that “riots” and “looting” are “an absolutely legitimate form of protest.” People are trying to make this into a mainstream view.

We should take a moment to think what that actually means. It means that argument, debate, and voting will be replaced, as the means for making political decisions, with a kick to the teeth or the burning of your car, your home, your business. Persuasion will be replaced by terror.

The only cause served by this is totalitarianism. If you are for violence as a means of achieving political change, then you are not against the abuse of power. You are only against its abuse by somebody else.

That this should be promoted and acted upon by trained lawyers, with the apparent sympathy of many of their colleagues, is what should really alarm us. If lawyers don’t believe in the rule of law any more, who does?

Isabel Paterson once described Maximilian Robespierre, the instigator and leader of the Reign of Terror, as “the humanitarian with the guillotine.” That captures the contradiction of today’s rioters, who tell us they’re going to make the world a better place through terror and mayhem…..

The above was from Robert Tracinski

 

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