Anthony Kennedy resigns! It’s time for all Hell to break loose… as if it that hadn’t happened already. Look to the coming battle over a new Supreme Court justice to tell us the truth about our culture, our politics and our souls.

As has been reported and commented on most everywhere, Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif., has been advocating mob action against Trump administration officials. “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station,” she proclaimed, “you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” Will Republican senators be added to the list over Court nominees? If not, why not?

And again, as many have commented, mob politics doesn’t end well. “Push back” sooner or later turns into bloodshed. Trump supporters have already been treated to flying eggs, bottles, and punches.

Calls for ‘Reeducation’

“Donald Trump set the tone,” said a friend. This was the same friend who in another conversation commented that Trump supporters should be “reeducated.”

I’m willing to attribute carelessness to the use of “reeducated,” a word freighted with totalitarian baggage. “Reeducation” programs in places like Vietnam, China, North Korea, Cuba, and the Soviet Union employed propaganda, coercion and mob justice. And for those who wouldn’t knuckle under, there was imprisonment, torture and death.

Our schools and colleges happily employ the first three to prod students to affirm the values of the sexual revolution including homosexuality and abortion, to march for gun control, to believe that being intolerant of any opinion that contradicts the party line is the height of toleration, and, of course, to condemn Donald Trump.

The same is true of most mainstream media, the entertainment industry, political activists, and far too many corporations.

And that reeducation program works with many. Or at least it scares them into silence. But it’s really nothing more than a power grab that only teaches fear. Proper “reeducation” would enable the already mal-educated to think for themselves.

Krauthammer’s Critical Thinking and Civility

Commenting on the late Charles Krauthammer, the editors at The Wall Street Journal wrote,

Charles Krauthammer never forgot that he owed his readers and audience something more than on-the-fly opinion. When his admirers say he was learned, they mean that Krauthammer had deep respect for the importance of knowledge and facts. … Krauthammer didn’t do snark and he didn’t sneer at opponents. He often looked impatient when others did. His humor was sly and never mean-spirited. He didn’t build his opinions out of emotional resentments. He wasn’t tribal. He refused to be any politician’s cheerleader.

That is, listening to or reading Charles Krauthammer was an education in what we most lack: critical thinking and civility.

Alas columnists on the left and right — including some I’ve respected — seem to have succumbed to Trump derangement syndrome. Like Obama derangement syndrome and Bush derangement syndrome of recent memory, this harms the political conversation. It also damages columnists’ reputations by being untrue (No one is 100% bad. Everyone knows that.) and by being unbearably tedious to read.

Did Trump Set the Tone?

As to claims “Donald Trump set the tone,” let’s suppose he did. (After seventeen years in D.C., I can assure you that this is a dubious supposition, but let’s go with it since Trump is certainly abrasive.)

Isn’t it the responsibility of every man and woman in America — and elected officials most of all — to change that tone, rather than make it worse? Isn’t it the responsibility of every reporter, pundit, and elected official to make coherent, honest, civil arguments about the president? Why add more poison to a poisonous environment?

I was glad to see what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., whose reputation for civility is sadly lacking, said on the Senate floor. He said, “The best solution is to win elections, that is a far more productive way to channel the legitimate frustrations with this president’s policies than harassing members of his administration.” Exactly. That’s how we do it in the United States.

And yet, according to NPR, Maxine Waters “has found a new wave of popularity and viral fame within Democratic circles in the Trump era for her often provocative and combative rhetoric toward this administration in public and in cable news appearances.”

And it’s only just begun. Let me predict that the fight over a new Supreme Court will be alarmingly ugly. With mob violence? Entirely possible given our polarization, a popular Democrat encouraging it, and the reflexive blaming of Donald Trump.

But is that what we really want?

St. Paul exhorted the Christians in Philippi to be, “blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world.” (Philippians 2:14-15)

Christian friends, regardless of our political differences, it’s our moment to shine.