What is the case for a blanket pardon of the violent rioters? That we need to bring a close to a divisive era and promote social peace? ... granting impunity to political violence is apt in the long run to raise rather than lower the temperature of street activism and mob rule.
That it was unjust to prosecute anyone? We sometimes pardon people who break unjust laws, or even people who break entirely just laws protesting a greater injustice (Nelson Mandela, for example, was guilty; it was the South African system that was bad). But neither of those is true here. The laws against assaulting the Capitol and D.C. police are just laws. The 2020 election may not have been entirely fair, but it wasn’t stolen. There was nothing to justify violence on January 6.
Defenders of the pardons ultimately fall back on two arguments. One is that the justice system has been so lopsided in its treatment of leftist violence that it’s effectively unfair and a denial of equal protection to prosecute right-wing violence. The other is that January 6 defendants simply were unable to ever get a fair process and trial, so we have to act as if none of them were guilty of violent crimes.
.... If you take to its full logical conclusion the idea that we can never prosecute anybody if we don’t prosecute everybody, we end up with Hobbesian anarchy. If we buy the argument that it’s unfair to try the January 6 defendants before D.C. juries because they are so politically one-sided, how is that different from arguing that deep-red counties can’t prosecute (name your favorite “out-group”)? ... a blanket pardon for violence that actually happened is no way to restore law and order. (read it all)
Top Stories
No comments:
Post a Comment