Demonic (46 page)

The belief that Germany had been treated unfairly after World War I was concocted by documented crackpot John Maynard Keynes in his 1920 book
The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
¹³
When the Nazis came to power and war broke out, Keynes’s insane thesis was immediately enshrined as a form of religion among foreign policy experts.
You see! If only we had appeased the Teutonic brutes and rebuilt their cities, this never would have happened!

The stabbed-in-the-back theory was easy to implant because when
World War I ended, there were no foreign troops on German soil. Having no firsthand experience of the devastation of war, Germans weren’t particularly averse to it. (In that sense, they were like modern liberals who have no idea what it’s like to be physically attacked, and are therefore not particularly exercised when it happens to conservatives.)

A contrary theory was tried on the Germans in World War II, when the Allies announced that they would accept nothing but “unconditional surrender” from the Axis powers. By the time Germany surrendered, Allied troops had seized control of every part of the country.

This time, they got the message. Germany has been as peaceful as a lamb since then—other than during World Cup soccer season. It’s always a liberating moment when you realize some timeworn shibboleth was just a cockamamie liberal idea that’s been repeated so often even you believed it.

Japanese kamikazes were pretty fanatical, too. Who would have imagined the architects of the Pearl Harbor attack were governable? Two well-placed nuclear bombs put an end to the legendary Japanese belligerence.

Similarly, Russian tsars are criticized for overreacting to peaceful protests in 1905 by firing on the crowd—which historians claim led immediately to the revolution of 1910 (leaving the question of how “immediate” it was with a five-year time lapse). Another view is that the tsars shut down the mobs quite effectively in 1905 but compromised with the mobs when they rose again in 1910, and that it was the appeasement the second time around—not what had happened five years earlier—that was ineffective.

By the time Nixon became president of the United States, it was almost too late for this country. But the mob knew Nixon wouldn’t tolerate riots. Even after the butterfingered Weathermen blew up some of their own, they kept setting bombs. That didn’t stop them. But the shooting at Kent State shut down campus riots pretty quickly.

The same was true for New York City when Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor. In a city that had been a criminal bacchanal, he enforced a “zero tolerance” policy toward crime, arresting every turnstile jumper—to the evident displeasure of the
New York Times
. Within a few
years, the “ungovernable city” was the safest big city in the country and property values went through the roof.

Napoleon said that if only King Louis XVI had shown any force against the revolutionaries, “victory would have been his.”
¹⁴
Would you worry more about someone who hates your guts, or someone who hates your guts and has just had the crap beaten out of him? With liberals, as with Muslim terrorists, it’s more important that they fear you than they like you.

It is the rare individual who does not succumb to horrendous physical pain. Unfortunately, benign and advanced civilizations generally lack the will to apply it.

Tranquil, law-based societies are the most vulnerable to attack because those with an interest in defending it are calmly following the law. They don’t like disorder even in defense of order. But as Evelyn Waugh said, barbarism “is never finally defeated.” And if our present society falls, he warned, “we shall see not merely the dissolution of a few joint-stock corporations, but of the spiritual and material achievements of our history.”
¹⁵

Republicans are the party of peaceful order; Democrats are the party of noisy, violent mobs. Republicans would do well to remember that George Washington sent troops to crush the Whiskey Rebellion. Abraham Lincoln used the U.S. military to squash racist—and Democrat-led—riots in New York City. This nation’s heroes knew what Louis XVI did not: A mob cannot be calmly reasoned with; it can only be smashed.

When faced with a mob, civilized society’s motto should be: Overreact!

APPENDIX

Prosecutor Elizabeth Lederer (Q):
Where did you go?

McCray (A):
We went to Central Park.

Q:
Where did you go in Central Park?

A:
We went, um, we went to 110th Street.

Q:
And what did you do when you got to 110th Street?

A:
We got to 110th Street, we went up the hill in Central Park, you know? We was on the road.

Q:
What happened next?

A:
We was walking, then we seen a bum.

Q:
You saw a bum?

A:
Yeah.

Q:
What did you do when you saw the bum?

A:
We let him pass by, and then this kid with three gold caps grabbed him, threw him on the ground.

Q:
How did he grab him?

A:
By the, by the shirt.

Q:
He grabbed him and threw him on the ground?

A:
Yes.

Q:
And what did everybody else do?

A:
Everybody started kicking him and hitting him.

Q:
Did you start kicking him and hitting him?

A:
I hit him.

Q:
Where?

A:
In the chest.

Q:
With your hand?

A:
My hand.

Q:
So you hit him with your hand in the chest. Was he already on the ground when you hit him?

A:
I hit him like once, twice.

Q:
What happened when you got to the tennis court?

A:
We was at the tennis court and then we seen this lady, jogging lady, she had on blue shorts and a white shirt, she was jogging and everything, we was gonna let her go but then we just grabbed her.

Q:
Where did you wait?

A:
Behind the trees, on the grass, a couple of us.

Q:
Right next to the path around the reservoir?

A:
Yes.

Q:
And everybody sort of hid?

A:
Yeah.

Q:
What happened as she came closer?

A:
That’s when we all charged her.

Q:
Did you charge her?

A:
Yes.

Q:
What happened when you charged her?

A:
We charged her, we got her on the ground, everybody started hitting her and stuff, she was on the ground, everybody stompin’ and everything. Then we got each, I grabbed one arm, some other kid grabbed one arm and we grabbed her legs and stuff. Then we all took turns getting on her, getting on top of her.

Q:
Did you hit her?

A:
Yes, kicked her.

Q:
Where did you kick her?

A:
I don’t know, just kicked her, I felt it, just kicked her, it was like a whole bunch of us.

Q:
Who else kicked her?

A:
Um, um, Kevin [Richardson, another defendant], um, all of us.

Q:
That tall thin black guy I was asking you about, did you see him hit her in the ribs?

A:
I heard it. I heard it.

Q:
What did you hear?

A:
It sounded like when you get hit in your chest. Sounded like that.

Q:
Was she screaming, is that how you could tell she was being hit?

A:
She wasn’t screaming. She was hurt, though. She wasn’t screaming.

Q:
How could you tell she was hurt?

A:
’Cause she was lying there.

Q:
First you knocked her down, then you started hitting. Did anybody have a weapon?

A:
Yeah, a black pipe [indicates it was more than a foot long].

Q:
A little less than two feet?

A:
About two feet, I guess.

Q:
And was it a stick or a pipe?

A:
A pipe.

Q:
Who had that pipe?

A:
At first, I don’t really know but I think the tall black kid had the pipe. I don’t know.

Q:
Did you see what he did with the pipe?

A:
No, I just heard it. He got off of her and she got hit again with the pipe in the head, then …

Q:
Was she standing up?

A:
No, she was on the ground and then we left.

Q:
Well, let’s go back for a second, when she was on the ground and you said that you kicked her. Were other people also kicking and hitting her?

A:
Yes.

Q:
How many times did you kick her?

A:
I kicked her like twice.

Q:
When you were kicking her, were other people kicking and hitting her?

A:
Um-hum.

Q:
Was that before or after she was hit with the pipe?

A:
Before.

Q:
Was she still moving at that point?

A:
She was just turning her head, stuff like that, she was moving.

Q:
How many times was she hit with the pipe?

A:
Twice, in the side and in the head.

Q:
You heard her?

A:
I heard her get hit in the ribs.

Q:
Did you see her get hit in the head?

A:
I heard it, not only, I seen it.

Q:
Who did it?

A:
The tall, black kid.

Q:
After she was hit in the head with the pipe, did somebody take her clothes off?

A:
Yeah.

Q:
Who took her clothes off?

A:
One of us, not one of us, I let her arms go?