Weaponized Rhetoric: Political Change Through Mob Action
On Friday, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Roe v. Wade, the long-standing precedent that expanded Federal regulations on abortion.
Channeling the spirit of New York Democrat Chuck Schumer, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), or AOC, encouraged protesters to get “into the streets” while leading the mob outside of the Supreme Court into chants that declared the SCOTUS was “illegitimate.” She also tweeted that the SCOTUS “chose to endanger the lives of all women and all birthing people in this country.” She also refused to answer whether she supported political violence by protestors, condoning any potential violence de facto.
Abortion rights groups have vowed to embark on a “Summer of Rage” as a consequence of the decision draft first leaked in May. Shortly after this leak, a would-be anti-2A, pro-abortion apparatchik botched an attempted assassination on Justice Brent Kavanaugh. Already, pro-life institutions have been targeted for vandalism and destruction by militant pro-abortion activists. This may serve as a mere digest of the promised “Summer of Rage” promised by the likes of militant groups like Jane’s Revenge. Based on her reluctance to condemn violence, one can reasonably assume that AOC fully approves of this terrorism. One is left to wonder if this de facto approval includes the illegal protests paraded in front of the Justice’s homes, employed in recent weeks and encouraged by Far-Left activist, Cameron Kasky, who told readers to “Go to the home of every Supreme Court just who just voted to kill women.”
Nancy Pelosi asserted that Republicans are relentlessly pursuing their “dark and extreme goal of ripping away women’s right to make their own reproductive health decisions” and “are plotting a nationwide abortion ban.” The decision is also being maligned and misconstrued as a kind of “slippery slope” meant to dismantle gay marriage and even interracial marriage. For months headlines have warned of a looming national ban on abortion, despite the decision transferring such authority away from the Federal government and returning it to the individual states.
Joe Biden, Democratic President of the United States, also insisted that the Supreme Court “expressly took away a constitutional right from the American people that it had already recognized.” He also begged Congress to “codify Roe,” evincing even further that Roe was a clear act of judicial legislation and gross abuse of the Separation of Powers. Attorney General of the United States Merrick Garland agreed with President Biden, stating that “the Court has upended the doctrine of stare decisis, a key pillar of the rule of law.”
Sensationism was also the modus operandi for ex-First Lady Michelle Obama. After describing a dystopian, fatalist world where abortion was illegal, she told all of her fifty-million followers to “channel your frustration and anger into action by getting involved.”
All of these claims are erroneous. The 1973 court artificially invented a “right to abortion” without ever describing it as such; the “right to privacy” was the true crux of the decision and the activist court stretched that ambiguity to cover abortion since it was (presumably) a medical procedure. The decision made today did not make abortion illegal but returned the authority to individual states to decide amongst themselves pursuant to the individual preferences of their constituents. That is called Federalism.
This decision is as much a boon to the pro-abortion crowd as it is for those who oppose it. In States that adore and encourage abortion—including New York, California, New Jersey, and Illinois—are also freed from Federal restrictions. States are not only free to ban abortion, but are also unfettered to make it as accessible and cost-effective as their voters wish. They may even allow late-term and post-birth abortions, supported by Virginia Democratic Governor Ralph Northam. Many states and cities who consider abortion a civil right have already established funds and polices meant to encourage its continued—and expanded—practice.
Nor can this decision be misconstrued as a “slippery slope” to attack gay rights or interracial marriage. Justice Clarence Thomas made this very clear in the majority opinion, writing:
And to ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.
Despite this clear language, tremendous hysteria is being encouraged and provoked into masses of the public by newspaper publications and politicians alike in a manner that is clearly and monstrously partisan and political.
These reactions are not new, nor is the use of violence and intimidation to effect political change. Today’s Democratic Party is recycling the same playbook used to defend its party’s obsession with slavery.
Since the influx of Calhounism around 1824 the Democratic Party insisted that it was their constitutional right to own slaves, a belief they held so sacrosanct that they enshrined it in their Confederate Constitution after seceding from the Union. Democrats also insisted that the evil “Abolition party” of Republicans sought eliminate slavery on the national level, though Lincoln ran with the intent only of restricting slavery into new territories. When the infamous Dred Scott decision was announced, Democrats clung to it with indefatigable desperation, citing it as proof-positive that the constitution guaranteed a right to own black slaves. This was the same Democratic Party who considered the Fugitive Slave Law a just Act and maligned those who refused to participation in the capturing and returning of their black slaves, describing them as “hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary...”
Much like the Roe decision, Democrats applied a perverted and distorted view on the concept of rights, inflamed whole throngs of the public to react aggressively and violently to their policy agenda, and repeated erroneous propaganda meant to incite a public reaction. They used the slave issue to launch ad hominem attacks at their political opposition by distorting and perverting their views and by exaggerating the perceived consequences.
Today’s Democrats insist that “people will die” if states are allowed to exercise their proper authority over abortion; Democrats in the Antebellum, Reconstruction, and Civil Rights Eras insisted that eliminating slavery and Jim Crow laws would result in forced interracial marriage (specifically between black men and white women) and the destruction of the labor market. Democrats then and now argue for legal precedent to uphold their positions, first with Dred Scott to enslave blacks, and now with Roe to protect Federal abortion regulations. President Biden claims that the court recognized abortion as a right; the same claim was once made of slavery.
Also like Scott, the Roe decision was a usurpation of legislative authority away from the Congress and into the judiciary.
In both instances, the Democratic Party sought to weaponize the public through hyperbolic, incendiary rhetoric and fatalism. Let us hope that today’s public has learned something from our past.