One More on Riots as Protests

Stanley, I take your point, but I'm not really much moved by it. As you said in the first post, Livingstone is arguing that people should see the riots as political protest. The obvious effect of such a claim, if accepted, is to give the lawlessness the patina of legitimacy. On that point, It makes no difference that Livingstone is not in the trenches stoking the violence. Nor does it matter whether it was his intention to support or encourage the violence. By arguing that riots should be seen as dissent rather than mayhem, he spins them as righteous even if he personally thinks this method of conveying dissent goes too far. He is trying to make this about what he takes to be the underlying grievances rather than the lawless conduct. That has the effect of supporting the rioters regardless of whether that is his purpose -- and because I believe he is smart enough to know that, I can only conclude that he is doing this willfully.

As far as Obama is concerned, I was careful to say "lawlessness" rather than "rioting," which is a specific and extreme form of lawlessness. Still, even if Obama eventually came around to the point of seeking to channel the anger behind lawlessness into "productive electoral paths," your book documents that he has a history of resorting to "direct action" (or "Alinskyite hardball," as you aptly refer to it). You relate, for example, the 1988 landfill controversy in Chicago, in which Obama helped plan a demonstration that included breaking into a meeting between bank officials and community leaders for the purpose of enabling the demonstrators ("presumably including Obama," you point out) to intimidate the people in the meeting so they would not strike a deal. Moreover, you further show that, in his work on foundation boards, Obama steered funds to leftist groups like ACORN that had a history of advocating and participating in "direct action." 

The kind of lawlessness we're talking about does not rise to the level of rioting (although some of ACORN's shenanigans come pretty close), but it is extortionate, which is in the same ballpark. (And relatedly, I'm also convinced by your book's well supported surmise that Obama knew exactly who former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn were when he teamed up with them on various things.) Once public actors expressly or impliedly endorse forms of extra-legal intimidation as a legitimate way of pursuing political objectives, they've contributed to the culture of lawlessness that leads to rioting -- whether that was their intention or not. Public actors have to stand unambiguously against extra-legal intimidation, extortion, and mayhem. Once they expressly or implicitly green-light steps outside the laws and processes of civil society, it becomes impossible to control how bad things will get because they've undermined the very premise that there are boundaries for our behavior. (If this is a misimpression in President Obama's case, I don't think, say, his administration's dismissal of the Black Panthers voter intimidation case was the best way to correct it.)