MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: While KBJ Enjoys Broadway, Her Constitution-Loving Supreme Court Colleagues Can Barely Leave Their Homes.

Still, it’s nice that Jackson can appear on Broadway to rapturous applause from left-wing audiences. It’s a notable contrast to her conservative colleagues on the court, who remain under constant threats to their physical safety from left-wing activists.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer famously took to the steps of the Supreme Court itself to threaten violence against Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh if they didn’t rule on a case the way he wanted to. During the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, mobs took over Capitol rooms and buildings and pounded on the doors to the Supreme Court shouting, “Burn it to the ground!”

Prior to the release of the Dobbs decision, which returned abortion law to the people and their legislatures, an anonymous affiliate of the court leaked the decision, creating an incentive for assassination. Had any of the justices who signed onto the decision been killed before it was officially released, it would have prevented the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Left-wing activist groups posted the private addresses of justices’ homes and offered financial incentives for sightings of the justices in public. If the information were given to the mobs in time for them to show up and harass the justice, the financial incentive quadrupled. Although federal law prohibits demonstrating in front of a justice’s home in order to influence a decision, President Biden and his Attorney General Merrick Garland gave the protests a green light and claimed there was nothing they could do.

Some justices had to wear bulletproof vests to protect themselves from assassination attempts by left-wing activists. One such attempted assassin used the information posted online by pro-abortion activists to fly across the country and locate the home where Kavanaugh lives with his wife and children. He was stopped before he could kill the Kavanaugh family.

At the Free Press, Charles Fain Lehman of the Manhattan Institute explores the history of political violence in America and writes: Political Violence Happens Because We Let It.

As the political scientist and gadfly Edward Banfield observed, the riots of the ’60s and ’70s eventually went away, even without massive social reform. Banfield argued that rioting—or any goal-directed violence—is a product of opportunity, as much or more than structural conditions. In other words, if people can get away with it, they will do it. Excusing political violence turns it into a bargaining tactic, making it a more attractive option.

Even if fewer people want to do it, and those who do fear getting caught, they can still be motivated by a sense that the violence’s message will be taken seriously, even respected.

All of this suggests that political violence is downstream of public support, and that political violence happens because we let it. Conversely, it implies that every time someone utters the line “violence is never justified, but. . . ” they are increasing the rewards for engaging in exactly the violence they are nominally condemning.

Such a situation is unsustainable, because political violence cannot coexist with a functioning democracy. Democracy depends on peaceful liberation, allowing each person to have her say, while violence replaces the ballot box with the bullet. If we want the former, we must be unambiguous in our condemnation of the latter.

Which isn’t something to be expected from Chuck Schumer.