U.S. DoJ Is Not the Way

Following the deplorable Jan 6 events at the Capitol, calls of sedition, coup, incitement and insurrection rang out with vigor not seen since the U.S. government prosecuted the J20 protesters and journalists during the 2017 Trump Inauguration, (Collective Liability, The Intercept; Lennard, The Intercept; Reilly and Mathias, Huffington Post).

Today, the political condemnations of the lunatic in the White House are spot-on. But the condemnation comes with demands for criminal prosecutions.

I'm skeptical and suspicious.

The lust to use the United State Dept of Justice as a weapon against U.S. capitol ralliers is wrong-headed and demonstrates the slanderous determination that police violence is the only way to contend with Trumpists and aggrieved white people in our country.

Ben Manski, a leftist human rights worker in California, is typical in his demand that the U.S. government "stamp out right wing terror." 

Stamp out sounds a lot like "disrupt" and "neutralize."

Surely, some of the Trumpists deserve a federal indictment, likely not hundreds. 

But demands for justice amid cries of sedition and anarchism should make us wary as when such white-hot talk was used to justify the Palmer Raids, CONINTELPRO and Robert Jackson's infamous betrayal of the First Amendment in his dissent in Terminiello v City of Chicago (1949).

I don't want the leading lunatic banished from public life, and not because this would be devastating for the Republican Party. 

Rather, because I believe in liberties for those with whom I most fervently disagree — it's a classical liberal thing, and government stamping out underground or unorthodox movements is to be avoided, and First Amendment rights should be regarded as preeminent.