As someone whose hostility to tyranny is well-known, even notorious in some circles, it is perhaps necessary at times to remind others that my hostility to anarchy is just as profound as my hostility to tyranny. During times when tyranny and oppressive governments threaten liberty, it is sometimes a temptation for people to go to opposite extremes, to oppose the rule of law and to champion mob rule and vigilante “justice” to right the wrongs that exist in this world, and the worse wrongs we fear from the future if trends continue as they are going.

We must be rather careful in avoiding one extreme not to fall into the opposite extreme. It is far easier for us to oscillate between one evil extreme and another than to tackle the difficult task of maintaining balance among the many pressures and pulls that we face in our lives, especially in questions of justice or in questions of leadership. What we must remember is that in mob rule the same power that people hate to see concentrated in the hands of the state becomes concentrated in a mob without legal protections. If legal orders become places where technicalities and loopholes present problems, mob rule becomes a place where there are no protections for those who for whatever reason offend a sufficiently large number of people. It is obvious that mob rule would be unacceptable to me on those grounds alone.

But there are plenty of reasons to mistrust mob rule and challenge its legitimacy. For one, mobs are not bound by structure or law or order, but are simply responding to a situation. Worse, the response is emotional and not based on evidence, and done in such a way where people feel cornered into a conviction so as not to waste their time and effort, conditions that are not calculated to lead to proper results. When one adds to this peer pressure and a lack of concern for the rights and protections of the accused, it is clear that mob rule is a terrible model for achieving justice. It is true that our justice systems are not just, but the solution for that is not to adopt extralegal means of vigilante justice, which are even more subject to abuse, but rather to engage in the difficult but necessary practice of reformation of our legal and societal order.

We have to remember these shortcomings of a mob because often a mob is appealing as a solution to our problems. When we think we know a situation and have all the answers, it is tempting to want action now and not be patient to discover what we may not yet know. When we think that we or someone we care about is getting a raw deal, it is easy to band together with like-minded people to do something about the problem before we know or examine what is going on. Because we are impatient beings with very inadequate knowledge of the hearts and minds, and often even the facts, involving others, we therefore ought to limit those occasions where we act rashly and without accurate knowledge.

We must remember that engaging in lynch mobs is taking the position of judge, jury, and execution for ourselves. It is deciding that an unruly and disorganized mass of people has the power of life and death, when they are being swayed by emotions like fear and pride and anger, conditions that are not amenable to good decision making. And we must be fully aware that this is a general human problem and not simply a problem somewhere else. It scarcely matters whether this job is a mob of commoners or a junta of military leaders, or a group of conspirators, the problem is the same–a lack of transparency and a lack of legitimacy, as well as the fact that their actions destroy legitimacy within a social order by making force appear legitimate as a problem-solving tool when one is too impatient to persuade or gather further evidence. And that is not a temptation we ought to grant anyone, regardless of their social standing, for no human being or group of human beings ever ought to consider themselves uniquely appointed by God to determine life and death apart from the standard of God’s laws, for whether we are talking about one person or a group of people, tyranny is tyranny, whether through the apparatus of a statist bureaucracy or through a lynch mob. We cannot decry the evil in others without staring at the dangers within ourselves, especially since the temptation to mob action springs out of a legitimate desire for community with others that is perverted for the sake of injustice and impatience.