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Politics & Policy

Biden’s Old-Time Liberalism Finds Its Moment

The Democratic candidate’s speech repudiated progressives by condemning riots.

Church and state.

Church and state.

Photographer: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

As racial unrest has spread to more and more cities following the police killing of George Floyd, the far left has been busy devising excuses for riots.

These progressives have frequently quoted Martin Luther King Jr.’s comment that “a riot is the language of the unheard,” with less attention to his simultaneous insistence that “riots are socially destructive and self-defeating.” Property is less important than people, they proclaim on Twitter, as though damage to the one offers protection for the other — and as though violent crowds are fastidious in observing the distinction.