How “Mob” Violence Attacked the Soul of America

Video Above: Raytheon Engineers Develop New Infrared-Acoustic Sensor to Stop RPGs & ATGMs

By Kris Osborn – Warrior Maven

“There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law,” Abraham Lincoln, Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838.

Spoken more than 180 years ago, these words from Abraham Lincoln offer themselves as a timeless conceptual bridge between generations, weaving a philosophical, conceptual and political thread of continuity into the fabric of American consciousness and identity. They are critical to remember… right now.

During this now famous speech from his early days as an emerging American leader, a young Abraham Lincoln appealed to, and invoked, a distinctly American sensibility, that of having “reverence” for the law in alignment with the forward-looking vision of the country’s founding fathers. He was speaking out against instances of “mob rule,” wherein groups of angry protestors and armed mobs were seeking to take the law in their own hands and commit acts of violence. He spoke out against many instances of dangerous disregard for American institutions, citing instances of murder committed by pro-slavery mobs and growing circumstances wherein an angry disregard for laws informed how bands of people were acting with destructive abandon upon political and social grievances. Obviously, there is a fascinating synergy between Lincoln’s use of the word “mob,” and the widespread use of the word “mob” to describe the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capital. Did the same thing happen nearly 200 years later? Perhaps this is why there is now a sense of collective Patriotic outrage at the storming of the Capital?

“Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure, and with impunity; depend on it, this Government cannot last,” Lincoln said in this speech. What is amazing about this is that, at this time, Lincoln was a young, aspiring politician working as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives.

In these remarks, Lincoln was, if even unwittingly, drawing upon the philosophical, intellectual and political wellspring from which liberal democracy in America emerged. Often referred to as the “contract theorists,” a group of Enlightenment thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and some others envisioned the idea of an optimal, highly functional civil society as institution able to preserve, balance and ultimately reconcile the “natural rights” of the individual with a collective sense of order, security and, more specifically, the “rule of law.” The intent was to architect a construct for society that aligns with, preserves and protects man’s fundamental nature. Many of these visionary thinkers entertained a theoretical discussion, or conceptual premise regarding man’s fundamental disposition as it would exist in a “state of nature,” and sought to accommodate that into the structural and intellectual framework of what then evolved into and became liberal democracy in America. The Founding Fathers were, among many things….intellectuals and philosophers.