The Capitol building.
(Image credit: Illustrated | iStock, REUTERS)

Where do riots come from?

This is not a facile question. But it is one in which we have become curiously uninterested. Not so long ago this was because political violence was accepted by our opinion-making classes and the older of our two major political parties as an unremarkable feature of American civic life: "People will do what they do," as Nancy Pelosi put it last year.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.