“Laws,” F.A. Hayek wrote, “must be general, equal, and certain.” An open society rests on public confidence in the impartiality of police and courts.

Sometimes, that impartiality gives way under stress. It happened, for example, during the pandemic, when anti-lockdown protesters were repressed while Black Lives Matter protesters were indulged, and when 1,200 public health professionals went so far as to claim that demonstrations for BLM were justified because racism was more dangerous than COVID.