The spectacle of protesters jumping out of their chairs at regular intervals to shout incoherent slogans during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings did not lend itself to the view that those who oppose the judge’s confirmation are especially clearheaded in their beliefs. Their antics, if we may speak plainly, made them look like idiots. The fact that they were encouraged and abetted in their behavior by Democratic senators—the very officeholders who regularly (and often rightly) castigate Donald Trump for his uncivil and unbecoming conduct—leads us almost to despair.
Even so, we were confident that the great majority of Americans beheld the protests with disgust. Most of our countrymen, we feel sure, still believe that the reasoned expression of complex views by accomplished public servants deserves something better than the tantrums of ignoramuses.
We were equally confident, however, that the opinion-makers of progressivism would find a way to defend and praise these tantrums as some kind of public good. And so it was. Consider, for instance, a column in the Washington Post by Monica Hesse headlined “ ‘Civility’ vs. ‘hysteria’ at the Kavanaugh hearings.” As a piece of sophistry it’s average: It takes her 800 words to make the point that incivility is okay when it’s about something really important. It’s really important, in Hesse’s view, if it “relates to central questions in our democracy”—meaning, we’re led to conclude, that the more important a question is, the more we should shout at each other:
That’s true; no one wants women to die. But another thing we should weigh, really weigh, is that this year alone around 600,000 pregnancies will end in abortion—that is, death—in the United States. About half of those aborted would otherwise grow up to be women.
