The Bitter Fruit of Self-Righteous Moral Interventionism

 

The conservative establishment is melting down over the federal Justice Department’s announcement that it will begin a process to squelch protests at local school board meetings:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-addresses-violent-threats-against-school-officials-and-teachers

That is disturbing, but these folks, from Mark Levin on down, have no justification for their outrage.  None. 

Why, you ask?

Because these are the same people who routinely praise precisely this very kind of unlawful federal intervention into local affairs in the name of creating harmonious race relations, equal opportunities for all, and other utopian-sounding projects.  They resort to all kinds of legal gymnastics and theories to justify the massive breaches of the Philadelphia constitution that were involved in the so-called Civil War, Reconstruction, and the 2^nd Reconstruction (Civil Rights Act, Brown v Board of Education, and so on), but now they are upset when those very same tactics are used to silence their allies protesting at local school board meetings.

We’re not going to defend race relations in the South in this short essay; they’ve been good at times, and bad at others.  But it is hypocritical in the extreme for the conservative establishment to criticize AG Garland and others for using the same tactics that the ‘Right’ glorifies in other contexts.

What’s it gonna be, conservatives?  A consistent support of State and local self-determination?  Or a strictly utilitarian approach that criticizes violations of the tradition of decentralization only when it benefits the pet causes of you and your allies?

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!