The Future Belongs to Them?

‘The People’ being on the side of a cause doesn’t tell you anything about its rightness or goodness.

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Anti-Israel protesters chant outside the City College of New York (CCNY) on May 1, 2024—one day after the New York Police Department cracked down on protest camps at both Columbia University and CCNY. (Photo by Alex Kent/Getty Images)

There is a certain kind of political partisan who always believes that the people—the People!—are always with them. The People lack a coherent political outlook and so aren’t really on anybody’s side, of course, and I don’t see why you’d want them on your side.

The people are, generally speaking, the worst. 

There’s a very fine scene in Lincoln in which a couple who have come up to Washington from Missouri to lobby the president about a business matter are asked whether they’d support the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, if the Confederacy first capitulated and the war came to an end without an abolition amendment. The Missourians confess that they’d rather not see the institution abolished. Secretary of State William Seward asks why, and the husband looks at him like the answer is too obvious to need saying:

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  1. Randall Briggs

    This piece reads even better today than it did when it was posted (published?) 10 days ago.

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    Ben Connelly

    “Sometimes, I lean more libertarian, sometimes I lean more conservative, but I’m going to end up an Ent: on nobody’s side, because nobody is on my side. And I’m okay with that.”

    Ha! Me too.

    Thank you for writing about that review of Bowles book! That made me very annoyed when I read it. Struck me as remarkably bad faith and poorly reasoned. I’m not always the biggest fan of the Free Press but this just read like a griping hit job.

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  3. Matthew.Whinery

    It is interesting that here in the West, we judge both sides' actions (Eg. the murder/rape of women and children and tragic non-combantant lives lost) through a distinctly Western lens. These protestors at Columbia et.al view these actions (to their side at least) as atrocities. The great irony that these values a wholly attributable to a Jewish carptener who lived in ancient Palestine. Moreover, they are not shared values by Hamas/Iran/the muslim world.

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  4. Chris Gerrib

    I find I usually agree with Kevin D. Williamson, or at least find his thoughts well-considered. Not so today. To wit:
    1) The original post fails to define what a "mass movement" is. Is it a majority? If not, what percentage of the population needs to be involved?
    2) In a previous life I was a banker involved in the bidding for 15 failed banks (we were the winning bid on 6.) If you understand how a bank operates, determining the least cost to the government is fairly easy. The trick is to recognize that if the FDIC needs to liquidate the bank and pay out all the depositors, the FDIC takes a substantial financial hit up-front and has a long and uncertain period of time to recover assets. During this time, they have to pay to maintain the bank's assets.
    3) The decision by the FDIC to not charge insurance fees prior to 2007 was made by a political appointee for political reasons, not by the professional staff of the FDIC.

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  5. ConProf

    The tone policing in the comments is a thing to behold.

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  6. Richard3645

    Oh, how I have missed KDW's writing. So glad to reconnect with it and him here.

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  7. Norcal

    "The sheer comfortableness of American life is our great national shock-absorber;"

    There is so much wisdom in this statement.

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  8. Scastro87

    Great column

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  9. Mollydare

    I was a member of that minority group of young people who opposed the Vietnam War, and recall the excitement and pleasure of joining a hundred or so peers on sunny weekend afternoons to conduct our city-permitted marches and rallies and speak our newly-hatched political opinions. Being part of such a big group with a purpose was intoxicating, as it still must be for today's protesters, but that is where I think the similarities end. When there was too much nonsense it was time to leave.

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  10. Ben.Bobbitt

    Nice Ent reference. “The Wisdom of Treebeard” would be a long book, indeed.

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