Commentary
The very notion of republican self-governance, which has been a core tenet of Western civilization since the demise of the great monarchs of Europe, depends upon the willingness of citizens to debate and deliberate the most pressing issues of society. Sadly, high-profile recent examples, from the tony terrain of Stanford University all the way to the raucous streets of Tel Aviv, Israel, underscore the extent to which Western societies have given up on reasoned deliberation and capitulated to mobocracy. Where this civilizational decline ultimately ends is anyone’s guess.
Earlier this month, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan was relentlessly heckled and successfully shouted down by a frothing mob of mini-Robespierre jackals who call themselves Stanford Law School students. The mob was simultaneously juvenile and outright vile, with one student unconscionably yelling to the esteemed jurist, “We hope your daughters get raped!” Even more galling, “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach finally rose up upon the judge’s plea to restore order … and, in preprepared remarks, sided with the protesters and ludicrously asked whether the “juice” (of Judge Duncan’s planned remarks) was worth the “squeeze” of the alleged “harm” to the pampered brat students that Duncan’s mere presence caused. (Steinbach has since been placed on administrative leave by Dean Jenny Martinez, although the culpable students have tragically escaped thus far with impunity.)…