As racial unrest has spread to more and more cities following the police killing of George Floyd, the far left has been busy devising excuses for riots.
These progressives have frequently quoted Martin Luther King Jr.’s comment that "a riot is the language of the unheard,” with less attention to his simultaneous insistence that "riots are socially destructive and self-defeating.” Property is less important than people, they proclaim on Twitter, as though damage to the one offers protection for the other — and as though violent crowds are fastidious in observing the distinction.
Thankfully, some Democrats have repudiated this dangerous sophistry. Even better, one of those Democrats is the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden. In a speech in Philadelphia, he proved that it is entirely possible to view Floyd’s killing as a wake-up call about racism and police brutality while also condemning violence. Some communities, he said, "have had a knee on their neck for too long. But there is no place for violence. No place for looting or destroying property or burning churches, or destroying businesses — many of them built by people of color who for the first time were beginning to realize their dreams and build wealth for their families.”