Kerby Anderson

Heather Mac Donald asked an interesting question: “Is rioting acceptable?” She follows it up with the question: “If so, how much?”

She focused her attention on two different pictures of what happened in Los Angeles. The first is the official one from California’s elected leaders and the media. The second is what she calls the ground-level view from law enforcement. The incident she discussed is what happened when “a crowd broke into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center downtown to liberate the detainees. The vandals overpowered the skeletal crew of National Guard soldiers, using improvised bombs made from M-80 firecrackers, nails, and broken glass.”

Politicians said local law enforcement had everything under control. She even reminds us that the day before, a mob surrounded two ICE agents. A dozen men “jumped out of a truck and grabbed the handcuffed suspect from the back of the ICE van, threw the suspect into their truck and fled. The ICE agents gave chase, but without sirens or lights, the pursuit was futile.”

Neither of these two incidents were reported by the media. Instead, the official narrative and the message from the legacy media was that these “protests” were “largely peaceful.” They were also labelled by a federal judge as “some stray violent incidents.”

In her commentary, Heather Mac Donald reminded us of the phrase used by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan – “defining deviancy down.” Our society tends to minimize bad behavior and even criminal behavior. If you have ever read the book of Isaiah, you will recognize this tendency. In Isaiah 5:20 we read, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.”

Unfortunately, we seem to be normalizing riots and criminal behavior.