In his latest entry in his column in The Catholic Thing, Prof. Arkes addresses the amoral assumptions undergirding the approach to protest movements today. While America has a tradition of protecting speech, protest, and the right to petition, even free speech dogmatists like the late Justice Hugo Black believed that speech and protest had limits. In the case of Justice Black, the limit was reached when "protestors" massed outside courthouses or legislatures with the intention of intimidating government officials into complying with their demands. As opposed to a method for the voicing of reasoned arguments about government action, these method turn protest and petition into a base sort of "might makes right" claim. Prof. Arkes argues that our contemporary protest movement has fallen from the level of protected speech and assembly into mob violence for its own sake, something unworthy of the protection of the law. He calls on local governments to restore order so that real dialogue can resume.

Some quotes from the column:

"...there is a certain irony in the fact that [Thomas Hobbes's] sense of things here was shared by the late Justice Hugo Black, who was near an “absolutist” in the protection of “speech” as any judge might be.  He was opposed even to the laws on libel.  But when it came to a massive crowd assembled outside a courthouse, Black drew the sharpest line."

"Does the demonstration in the street not carry the premise that the massiveness of the crowd offers evidence of popular support – and that widespread support confirms the justice of the cause?  And would that not simply be a way of concealing to ourselves that we have prettified a version of the Rule of the Strong, or Might Makes Right?"

"One reporter on Fox News last week got things right by accident when he reported a “protestor” using a crow bar to break down a door in Seattle, and another one spraying graffiti on a building.   The bent towards violence has become absorbed now in the defining premise that these are “peaceful protests."

You can read the whole article here.