Right and left in America are not on the same page regarding acceptable public behavior. What to do?
The American left and right have vastly different toolboxes today with respect to acceptable methods for advancing their causes. The left allows itself many activities due to the self-perceived righteousness of its cause. If one is brainwashed to believe that “climate change” will end all life in a decade or that a president with Jewish grandchildren is “literally Hitler”, then any public statement or action is kosher. Picture being locked in your burning house and the only way to break a window is to use a $10,000 family heirloom to smash the glass: if it’s you or the artwork, the artwork is expendable. With the left living in Saul Alinsky’s permanent emergency, anything is allowed to defeat Trump and the right. The left has employed all of the following in recent years:
*Destruction of property
*Political assassination
*Encouragement to violence from Democratic Party leadership
*Siccing federal law enforcement on political enemies
*Swatting political enemies
*Interfering with traffic by sitting on or otherwise blocking roads
*Instigating riots with loss of life and destruction of property
*Organizing violence against political opponents via Antifa brownshirts
The death of George Floyd did not have to lead to riots, the destruction of property, and looting. Peaceful (and not “mostly peaceful”) protests were definitely an option on the table. But the left has assumed the role of the spoiled child, the one who believes that all means are acceptable for driving towards their aims. Would you sit on a street and prevent a person from getting to work or going to see a doctor for some cause that is important to you? Me neither, but the climate zealots feel no shame in blocking traffic and ruining the personal and economic lives of others. Chuck Schumer, when he is not committing crimes against hamburgers, specifically threatened Supreme Court justices after they reversed Roe v. Wade and returned the abortion issue to the states. A left-inspired assassin murdered Charlie Kirk, and many on their team are cheering openly over the killing of a young husband and father. Kirk never promoted violence, and his signature activity was respectfully debating others as to their beliefs and political views. Many on the left celebrated the death of a nonviolent political organizer because they did not like his views. In contrast, virtually all abortion clinic protests occurred across the street from the clinics. Still, the left-wing DoJ arrested individuals whose only crime was praying.
When Dr. Baruch Goldstein entered a Muslim prayer room in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and murdered 29 Arabs in 1994, Jewish condemnation was from wall to wall. There was no direct provocation for his action, though some on the far right tried to justify the shooting based on general Palestinian violence of the period. From orthodox to irreligious, Jewish organizations and individuals denounced the attack. Except for a few followers of Meir Kahane, everyone in the Jewish world came out against the cold-blooded murder of the Arabs. This is the model for what should have happened after the attempted murder of Donald Trump and the killing of Charlie Kirk. But the left, from members of Congress to media personalities, and general leftists on social media, often praised the shootings and blamed Kirk for his own death. They see the whole thing as a zero-sum game: if the other side loses someone big, then our side benefits. They have no calculation as to the well-being of society and the preservation of norms that keep us out of a civil war.
Asymmetric battles are very hard to win. After the bombing in which my son and I were injured, I scanned the news every day for information on who was behind the attack. The bombing was in March of 2002, and in October, there was a detailed description of all of the players involved in the attack. A lawyer representing the couple murdered in the bombing provided me with military indictments, which I translated. At one point in the preparation of the bomber, his handlers told him that should he be at risk of apprehension, he must detonate his explosive belt. “Kill at least one Jew,” was the order they gave him. Israel is still fighting Hamas after nearly two years because of the asymmetry of approach. For Hamas, there is no such thing as “collateral damage”. If they slay an old Jewish lady with an oxygen tank, killing her is a great accomplishment. For Israel, the bar is much higher. Israel might kill an old Palestinian lady, but only because of her proximity to a Hamas terrorist with an RPG directed towards an Israeli tank. All asymmetric wars, from Vietnam to Gaza, make victory of the good guys nearly impossible.
In cases of asymmetry, there are only a few options available to the more disciplined side:
*Act like the bad guys and lose your moral advantage
*Stay the course and absorb the losses while fighting on
The obvious argument against acting like the bad guys is the loss of identity. We don’t believe in encouraging political violence, but if we applaud it when one of their guys gets killed, then are we no better than they are? But if one does not want to be like his depraved enemy, how does he stop the other side from winning? Already after Kirk’s assassination, leftists put out lists of others on the right, from the president and on down, that they would like to see “taken care of”. When President Trump was shot, Republicans did not have control of the governmental levers of power at the DoJ and FBI. Today, when Trump appointees man these offices, is it enough to use legal means to deal with violence and destruction on the left? I am not encouraging anyone to go out and kill a political opponent. I am only asking, as with Israel and Hamas, when two groups play by vastly different rules, how long can the show continue and what is the likelihood of the good guys winning? Firing people who hold repulsive views is one response. Transvestites used to keep to themselves. Since they have demanded access to women's sports and bathrooms, the government should treat “trans” as a mental illness. On campus, the right should work to put a wedge between Muslims and the left. Let the left know about Islam’s view of women as chattel that can be beaten as required. Bombard Muslim sites with information on the left’s support for homosexuality and sexual deviance. Finding the funding behind violent groups like Antifa is an important step. For the near-terms, all speakers on the right will have presidential-level security just to address a college crowd.
When I was at Harvard, they had a very fast hockey team. The rink was super chilled to support their fast moving style of play. On the other hand, teams like Cornell had bigger players whose jersey numbers matched their IQ’s. Their approach was to smash guys into the boards in a very physical style of play. In one game, the Cornell bruisers were throwing around the quiet, quick-scoring Harvard captain. Late in the game, this fellow put his stick between the legs of one of the Cornell brutes, pulled up his handle and put the gorilla on his back on the ice. The refs missed it but we did not. We went wild with joy. Should the right use the left’s tactics? At what point will it lose its moral claim to being in the right? To date, the response to Kirk's murder has included vigils and calls to increase his efforts--but no violence. In short, how do we defeat the left while not becoming like it?