A conservative voice understands why crowds loot -- or at least he did, once.

In the wake of rioting and looting in Baltimore, just as in Ferguson and Watts and other places where angry crowds have vented their long-suppressed emotions, conservatives especially have been quick to condemn and tarnish a whole protest movement for the rioting and looting that sometime follows.

Here's one notable exception from a bona fide, law and order conservative from the past:

"While no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime. . . . And I don't think there's anyone in any of those pictures ... (who wouldn't) accept it as part of the price of getting from a repressed regime to freedom."

Thanks to Daily Kos contributor AnnieJo for digging up this quote from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on April 11, 2003, explaining the looting in Baghdad by Iraqis after the Saddaam regime had been toppled.

Seems very apt today where black urban communities go up in flames in response to police brutality.   It's reassuring to know that conservatives can understand the underlying causes, despite the condemnation they proclaim in public.

Or am I mistaken?   Does that conservative's empathy and clarity about underlying resentment and rage only apply to foreigners that our military has set free -- and not to urban poor people in our own country?

Ralph