The news from across the pond lands with the weight of a judicial sledgehammer: eight individuals have been sentenced to a collective 450 years in prison for their role in a riot that escalated into a shooting targeting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. My initial reaction, dear reader, is not horror but a grim satisfaction that the American justice system, so often maligned as toothless in our own intellectual circles, has finally remembered the concept of deterrence.
Let us not mince words. This was not a peaceful protest that spiralled out of control. This was an organised assault on the very apparatus of state sovereignty. When the mob turns its ire on those tasked with enforcing immigration law, they attack not merely a federal agency but the principle of national borders itself. The rioters, in their misguided fervour, sought to emulate the mobs of revolutionary France or the anarchist riots of late Imperial Russia. They have now learned, as all such mobs must learn, that the state has a monopoly on violence and that the courts will defend it.
The UK government’s swift affirmation of support for American law enforcement is both predictable and welcome. It signals a transatlantic consensus that order must prevail over chaos. One can almost hear the echoes of the late Victorian era, when the British Empire and the United States stood as twin pillars of civilised governance against the lawless frontiers. Today that frontier is domestic: the leftist agitators who mistake criminality for activism.
Critics will wail about the severity of the sentences. 450 years, they will say, is excessive. But consider the context. These are not teenagers caught shoplifting. They are adults who conspired to commit violence against federal officers. In a society where respect for the rule of law is eroding, such robust sentencing is a necessary tonic. The Romans understood this: severity in punishment reinforces the dignity of the law. The late Empire, in its decadence, abandoned draconian measures and saw the limes collapse. We must not repeat that mistake.
Moreover, this case illuminates a deeper intellectual crisis: the romanticisation of civil disobedience. We have allowed a generation to believe that rioting is a legitimate form of political expression. It is not. It is a juvenile tantrum writ large, and treating it as such in the courts is the only cure. The UK’s endorsement therefore is not just diplomatic support; it is an ideological commitment to the principle that law must be enforced without apology.
One hopes this sends a clear message to similar movements in Europe: the era of leniency may be waning. When the mob realises that every brick thrown at a police station adds another decade to a prison sentence, the allure of the barricade diminishes. This is not cruelty; it is clarity.
Let the intellectuals, comfortable in their seminar rooms, denounce this as authoritarian. Let them. For those of us who believe that a nation must first be secure before it can be free, the sentences handed down in that American courtroom are a welcome return to sanity. The law has spoken, and the United Kingdom has nodded in agreement. Good.
