I heard reports this morning of how protestors in Berkeley violently raged against a speaker to the point where the speaker canceled his appearance and several people were injured. Now, this speaker says some despicable things, but America is about freedom of speech, even detestable speech. If I don’t like what someone is saying, I have a right to a peaceable assembly to protest. The guy that says stuff I don’t like, he also has a right to peaceably assemble. Nobody has a right to smash windows, start fires in the streets, or get into a fight.

I had ancestors who were the targets of mob violence because the people around them didn’t like they way they lived or what they believed. I may wish that people wouldn’t say hateful, horrible things, but I don’t wish it to the point of wanting to inflict violence on them or their audiences. I detest mobocracy. It cannot be a solution, ever. It is only a way of destroying one set of problems by creating another set that is far worse.

I can understand people disagreeing with the racism, sexism, and fascism that has bubbled up into view, encouraged by the election campaign of Donald Trump – and his winks and nods in those directions are themselves deplorable – but I cannot see anything good coming from using violence and mobocracy to drive them back into the shadows.