The Founding Fathers lived in a world of kings and emperors. There was no democracy in their time, and nothing even close since ancient Greece. Men like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, well aware of the poor track record of past democracies, feared the power of the uneducated, propertyless masses, whose sheer numbers could overwhelm wiser heads in government.

So the Founders designed the U.S. Constitution to prevent “mobocracy.” Yet despite their best efforts, they might not have succeeded.

Occasional outbreaks of violent urban protest are a feature of American history going back to revolutionary times, from the Boston Tea Party to the New York draft riots in the Civil War, to the Days of Rage in Chicago. These tended to burn out in a few days.

Since 2020, however, mob behavior has become more persistent, spilling into assault, vandalism, looting, and arson to protest everything from Israel, U.S. government policy, law enforcement, or sometimes all three. Some of these lasted for weeks or longer, as in the case of the Black Lives Matter riots that started in May 2020, the Portland autonomous zone, and the campuses from Columbia to Princeton that were occupied by student tent camps. Now in blue cities in Minnesota and other states, a new example is emerging: the anti-ICE demonstrators.

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The mob that burst, uninvited, into a church in Minneapolis earlier this month during a service broke new and dangerous ground in protesting. They physically entered a space uninvited and stayed when they were asked to leave, harassed worshipers, and shouted slogans inside and outside the church. They were not there to listen, or to pray, or talk—they were there to bully.

I lived for eight years in Africa, where fences, alarms, and guards were normal in cities. But in many U.S. cities, houses have lawns that end at the pavement with no fence at all. In smaller towns, some still leave doors unlocked. Our churches have always been open to strangers, as part of the Christian tradition of welcome.

Sadly, though, terrorist attacks on Jewish schools and synagogues have forced them to add security. And it seems Christians may not be far behind.

In the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, most of the leadership came from the church. Though fighting against great injustice, they took the higher ground. The nation saw on television well-dressed, dignified protesters subjected to shouting, police dogs, firehoses, and truncheons, and it changed American history.

In reading and teaching about the era, I do not recall protesters going into churches and disrupting worship. In the South, there were many churches whose members opposed integration and civil rights. But activist leaders like Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy chose to confront them elsewhere, in public segregated places like lunch counters, buses, and stores.

For the civil rights giants, some places were sacred. They did not pursue their ideological opponents into their private lives at all times and places. And remember—the civil rights movement was trying to overturn the evils of segregation and legal racism. Today’s anti-ICE protesters are trying to end enforcement of valid federal immigration laws, which is hardly the same.

In Washington, D.C. unhinged activists have demonstrated outside federal offices and private institutions, and harassed people on their way to Sunday worship. On numerous occasions last year, mobs of “protesters” chanted slogans, blared fake sirens, and harassed both occupants and pedestrians outside the D.C. offices of the Heritage Foundation, where I am a fellow. They screamed insults (laced with profanity, naturally) at people entering and leaving the building.

One unhinged man with a megaphone called staff at this 50-year-old conservative Washington think tank pedophiles, Nazis, white supremacists, and other epithets, and suggested that employees perform sex acts on a long-dead German dictator with whom he seemed strangely obsessed. His amplified vitriol was audible throughout the building, though he has somehow avoided triggering D.C. noise ordinances.

One of the three people arrested in the Minneapolis church invasion is also reported to have been present at protests around Heritage. If he was, his presence in Washington would appear to show the highly organized and well-funded nature of some supposedly organic and local protests against federal law enforcement.

The worst of the Minneapolis and D.C. protesters got within inches of police officers, seemingly attempting to incite them to violence, a temptation officers most often resist with a professionalism that belies idiotic comparisons by DNC chairman Ken Martin between the U.S. and Iran. In Iran, they have arrested, tortured, and shot protesters for far less. In America, so far, two people have lost their lives during confrontations with federal immigration agents. Their deaths were regrettable and could have been prevented, but comparing Iran’s regime to the U.S. is willful idiocy.

Today’s tenor of political debate is a sad echo of the era when Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton would eloquently dispute how best to govern our new nation, or when Abraham Lincoln and Steven A Douglas debated for hours over an Illinois Senate seat.

Conservative campus groups that want to present their message to other students have had their tables overturned, their materials vandalized, and their members assaulted. Instead of being schooled in better manners by their elders, sometimes they are encouraged.

Graham Platner, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Maine, wants “Medicare for all” so badly that he has suggested people follow and harass any members of Congress from Maine who oppose it. The goal is not to convince but to intimidate and coerce.

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The no-discussion culture starts early on in life. As James Papola shows in a documentary, high school debate has been captured by Left-leaning dogma.

How we got here comes down to three main reasons: ideology, ignorance, and insanity.

Ideology drives violence. Tyler Robinson, the suspected killer of Charlie Kirk, Thomas Crook, the gunman who tried to assassinate our president, and Robin Westman, who opened fire on children at a Minneapolis church, all seemed to have been mired in gender ideology and other fringe ideas aligned more with Left-wing beliefs than Right-wing.

Insanity should not be underestimated either. All three of the above appeared to have a screw loose, as did Luigi Mangione, the man accused of assassinating health care executive Brian Thompson.

But the greatest of the three is ignorance. Social media posters can have thousands of followers though they appear never to have unfolded a newspaper or cracked a book. One account with 25,000 followers tried to compare America’s belated enforcement of immigration law to the Holocaust, Rwandan genocide, and persecution of the Rohingya in Burma. Where does one even start with that incoherence?

The Founding Fathers created three, balanced branches of government to tame the mob. But the ancient force was always there, waiting for a breakdown in public morals and decency to emerge.

Unfortunately, their moment seems to have come.