@charliekirk11 We have steadily cultivated the culture that permits violence from anti-social malcontents and the dysgenic. We've stopped asserting ourselves and allowed the subversives to open the gates to barbarity.
There are certain philosophical principles that destroy any high-level civilization which holds them.
One of them is the idea that human life isn't precious.
But the other is that human life is so precious that no attack on property, reputation, trust, or peace of mind can ever justify violent retaliation.
In other words, any society where there's no such thing as "fighting words" is doomed.
Why?
Because the moment you place violence off limits, then people who wish to harm others, who take joy in harming others, have now been given a free pass to do so in absolute safety.
If all of your property is worth less than a hair on my head, then I can steal or destroy all of your property, because you cannot stop me without harming a hair on my head.
If your entire reputation is worth less than a hair on my head, then I can dedicate my life to slandering and character assassinating you, because you cannot stop me without harming a hair on my head.
If all of your peace of mind is worth less than a hair on my head, then I can terrorize you night and day, because you cannot stop me without harming a hair on my head.
If all of your trust is worth less than a hair on my head, then I can betray that trust over and over again, until no one trusts anyone, because you cannot stop me without harming a hair on my head.
And if I can destroy all of these things, then enough people like me can destroy civilization itself, because civilization is made of property, peace, trust, and reputation.
Why are there no civilizations without violence?
Because without violence, there is no civilization.
The message of a protest is "we don't like this".
The message of a riot is "we don't like this, and we're able to do something about it".
People who unconditionally call for peace and calm, regardless of the provocation, don't fundamentally understand how politics works in the real world.
They do understand that the purpose of politics is to provide an alternative to violence, but that's as far as their understanding goes. They don't think through the implications, usually because they are quite comfortable with things as they are.
If politics is an alternative to violence, then politics is a proxy for violence.
And that means you have to dole out power in proportion to capacity for violence. Or someone's going to figure out they can do better by flipping the table.
Monarchy wasn't replaced by democracy because of fine-sounding philosophical ideals and eloquent documents declaring this or that.
Democracy happened because if you added rifling to the flintlock firearm, suddenly a individual farmer with a tube was the pinnacle of military technology, and now you had to keep all the farmers with tubes happy by giving them political power.
(Ancient Greek democracy had a similar relationship with the hoplite warrior.)
When political systems work well, for a while, the violence they represent becomes further and further from people's minds, and those who can't effectively commit or direct violence worm their way into power, and begin to take it away from those who can.
And they'll defend their position by saying that violence is unthinkable, barbaric, always bad, must be disavowed at all costs, etc.
This isn't some sort of high-minded principle on their part. It simply means one of two things. Either "the status quo works for me, so I don't want you to upset it", or "I suck at violence, and I don't want to have to fight".
They want young men demoralized, so that their artificial meritocracy of spreadsheets, or their non-meritocracy of patronage networks, can be protected from the natural meritocracy of conflict.
This means that riots aren't actually for achieving any specific material aim. They are for reminding the comfortable that judges and bureaucrats and policemen have home addresses and families. And that violence is always on the table.
A protest would only send the message that the Irish don't want to be ethnically cleansed. But the bureaucrats and judges and lawyers already know that. They just don't care.
A riot reminds them that they have to care, because the Irish have a long tradition of doing something about it.
@MarkLynchSC Guys. The Screen isn't calibrated.
The machine gives you a paper read out and you can spoil your ballot if it's wrong. I'd be more concerned about a mechanism that fraudulently counts every 6th or 7th Lynch vote for Graham.
That would be in the software, not this blatant.
The attacks on @RomReddySC are ridiculous. We can disagree on policy and politics, but there is no place for this type of bigotry and personal smears in South Carolina. If career politicians can’t win on the issues, you don’t deserve to win at all.
I am entirely uninterested in making exemptions for un-British religious practices.
What would Restore Britain do?
Halal slaughter, banned. The kirpan, banned, Kosher slaughter, banned. The burqa, banned. All of it, banned.
This is Britain - we do things our way.