The troubling violence at Trump rallies

Dara Lind
Vox.com

When a Black Lives Matter protester was punched and kicked at a
Donald Trump rally in Alabama last weekend, the GOP front-runner’s
response was typically unapologetic, said Dara Lind. “It was absolutely
disgusting what he was doing,” Trump told Fox News. “Maybe he
deserved to get roughed up.” Even for Trump, it was a shocking statement:
In a nation where free speech is the cornerstone of the Constitution,
no one should be assaulted for protesting at a political rally. But
Trump’s fans have a nasty habit of getting “physical with protesters,”
with his overt or tacit approval. Trump’s security goons dragged one
Latino protester out of a rally in Miami, and “sucker-punched” another
protester in New York City. This summer, a Boston man beat a homeless
Hispanic man nearly to death with a metal pole, and then told
cops he’d been inspired by the billionaire businessman’s anti-immigrant
rhetoric. Trump’s response? His supporters, he said, are “very passionate.”
In keeping with its authoritarian mindset, the Trump campaign
has now taken to penning in journalists at rallies, to keep them from
mixing with his supporters. Apparently, Trump doesn’t want reporters
to witness those who disagree with him getting beaten into silence.

An enemy unlike any we’ve fought

Robert Samuelson The Washington Post

“The horrific massacre in Paris reminds us of the Achilles’ heel of American
foreign policy,” said Robert Samuelson. Since World War II, the U.S.
has spread its influence and values throughout the world largely by offering
to bring material progress, freedom, and democracy to other nations.
This approach has “paid large dividends,” transforming Japan and Germany
from enemies to prosperous allies, triumphing over communism,
and turning much of Asia into market economies and trading partners.
But today, we face foes who “repudiate our faith in the power of shared
prosperity.” Putin’s Russia has chosen aggressive nationalism over the
Pax Americana, despite great economic costs. Radical Islam, meanwhile,
emphatically rejects material progress and secular democracy, and promotes
a moral code and fanatical religious dogma that is utterly foreign
to Western values. ISIS and other Islamic radicals couldn’t care less about
giving their followers better material lives. Instead, they promise religious
purity and paradise, and glorify murder and martyrdom, disdaining
Western freedoms and material wealth as vulgar and evil. We’re fighting
people whose worldview is incomprehensible, and “the battlefield has
been selected by them.” That’s why this struggle is so “disorienting.”

England’s first parliament meets

The new assembly presents a potent threat to Henry III

Simon de Montfort, who called the first parliament in English history, depicted
on a stained-glass window in St Andrew’s Church, Oxford

The first parliament in English history met on 20 January 1265, but it was so different from its modernday equivalent that the two can barely be compared. It was called not by the king – the decent, dithering Henry III – but by the rebellious magnate Simon de Montfort, who had become the standard-bearer for the cause of the barons against the monarchy.

After defeating Henry’s forces at Lewes in May 1264, de Montfort decided to call an assembly (‘parlement’) in Westminster Hall to discuss his plans. The king had called such assemblies before; what was unusual about this one, though, was that its members included representatives of the shires and boroughs, not just the clerical and aristocratic elite. As such, it posed a potent challenge to the king’s monopoly of power. It was made up not merely of England’s bishops, abbots, earls and barons, but of two knights from each county and two burgesses from each borough.

Of course de Montfort never intended it to be entirely independent; many historians think he packed his parliament with men sympathetic to his interests. But by inviting knights and burgesses – who became known as the ‘Commons’ – de Montfort implicitly recognised the rising power of the English gentry.

Little detail about this first parliament survives, and it seems to have broken up within a month. But it established a vital principle, and when Henry’s son Edward I summoned the ‘Model Parliament’ 30 years later, he too invited knights and burgesses, as well as representatives from each city, all of whom were elected.

So perhaps de Montfort’s reputation as the accidental godfather of parliamentary democracy is not entirely false, even if he was far from being a democrat.