St. Louis University student Amy Lutz connects the news that former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich stepped down after the heat he received for donation to California’s Prop 8 and Condi Rice’s cancelled Rutgers commencement address to a disturbing national trend: The rise of “mob rule” in America.

…This kind of mob-like behavior works. It’s effective. And it’s accelerating in its practice. In both of the cases above, the target of the mob was “defeated” without a board directive or university ruling, respectively. Proponents of this tactic have come to realize that they can enact change, however small, without an official pen-stroke or legislative action. That’s dangerous. An effective mob can threaten the livelihoods and businesses of those with whom they disagree. …

I tend to believe that social media perpetuates this type of behavior and thinking. It’s so easy to tweet a hashtag or read the title of an article on Twitter without doing any actual research into the subject in question. It’s easy to stoke the emotions of a virtual, disinterested audience. What results is a virtual mob. Perfect example: Remember the #HasJustineLandedYet debacle from a couple months ago? A PR exec was virtually mauled by Twitter users for tweeting, “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding-I’m white.” Justine Sacco lost her job and was attacked, and stalked by people all over the globe for a single tweet. Was is a “mockable” tweet? Sure. While she probably deserved a bit of mockery, the response was blown way out of proportion.

Let me add here, that, while we’ve seen this behavior more prominently displayed among leftists and the so-called “tolerance brigade,” we on the right are not immune to this type of behavior. The second we assume we are immune is the second the mob mentality starts to sink in. James Madison and many of our Founders knew that, Federalist or Anti-Federalist, Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal, we’re all flawed humans and equally capable of making mistakes. While I believe that the conservative principles honoring individual rights and a reverence for the Constitution do tend to curb the tendency toward mob action (and groupthink as well), the temptation is still there. At the end of the day, regardless of what side we rest on the political spectrum, we’re all still human and all still susceptible to making the mistake of subordinating our individuality to the collective….