The fallout from the leaked Supreme Court draft ruling hasn’t died down yet. If anything, it’s become more intense with leftists taking to the streets and screaming for someone to do something about this. What they expect to be done and who should be doing it isn’t usually specified. But they may have found a new champion in this engagement in the person of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. As our Redstate colleague Bonchie revealed today, Lightfoot is fighting mad about all of this, perhaps literally so. She certainly sounded as if she was preparing to “rally the troops” when she issued a “call to arms” against the Supreme Court Justices who might dare to conclude that the regulation of abortions is a task best left to the states and not the federal government.
Words matter, right? That’s been the prevailing message of the left for years, but if you thought they’d hold themselves to their own standard, you’d be wrong.
Alright, no one thought that, so Lori Lightfoot appearing to push for a civil war via a “call to arms” and a challenge to “fight” an unelected body like the Supreme Court isn’t at all surprising. It’s the ultimate cliche given the transparent bias in the news industry but imagine for a second that a Republican put these tweets out.
Definitionally, a “call to arms” has a very specific meaning. “Arms” means weapons, and Lightfoot is calling to use them to enact a political outcome. There’s a word for that, too, but no doubt the Chicago mayor will claim she meant her tweets in the most peaceful way possible. That makes no sense, though, given the language used, but that will be the excuse, and that’s if the media even press her to give one.
Lightfoot’s challenge to the judicial branch was picked up and amplified on Twitter.
Democrat Mayor issues a “call to arms”based on made-up fear mongering. pic.twitter.com/Bh8PF4Cr6c
— Abigail Marone 🇺🇸 (@abigailmarone) May 10, 2022
As Bonchie goes on to point out, Lightfoot employed what seems to be some very specific and deliberate language. A “call to arms” is a directive to take up weapons. It’s a very simple definition. And you’ll notice that she followed it up by using the word “fight,” not once, but twice. I’m old enough to remember when Donald Trump told his supporters they needed to “fight” (while also saying he knew that many of them were about to go “peacefully protest”) and he was accused of fostering an insurrection.
It certainly sounds as if Lori Lightfoot is talking about an armed insurrection. How else would you describe a crowd of people taking up weapons and attacking the judicial branch of the federal government?
And what else could her call reasonably mean? How do you “fight” the Supreme Court? They hold appointed positions for life so you can’t “fight” them at the ballot box. They can hypothetically be removed via impeachment, but the votes do not exist in the Senate to come anywhere near the level needed. Also, that’s only been attempted once in the history of the nation (in 1805), and the justice in question was not removed.
The Supreme Court reviews the laws enacted by the rest of the government when asked to do so and renders verdicts. They produce many verdicts that a lot of us don’t care for, but they have the final say. Of course, nobody involved in the current wailing and gnashing of teeth is paying any attention to the laws prohibiting intimidation or protests outside the homes of judges or jurors, so they’re probably not going to let an inconvenient fact like this one stand in their way.
Perhaps Lightfoot is just looking for some positive attention from her base. After all, her approval numbers have been tanking as the spiraling crime rates in Chicago keep people cowering in their homes and send businesses fleeing to safer locations. Perhaps she sees a “fight” with the Supreme Court as just the ticket to get her back on top.
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