Ben Shapiro of National Review Online explains why no amount of political violence is acceptable.
America can survive crappy ideas.
America can survive nasty statues.
America can’t survive normalization of political violence.
That should be the takeaway over the last two weeks. The latest round of racial and political recriminations began with a horrifying alt-right white-supremacist torchlight rally around the base of a statue of Robert E. Lee in Virginia, developed into a street brawl between white supremacists and antifa thugs, and culminated in one of the white supremacists ramming his car into a crowd of innocent counter-protesters. President Trump exacerbated tensions by failing to clearly condemn the white supremacists, then condemned them, then seemed to un-condemn some of them by stating that there were some “very fine people” marching with them.
And then it escalated. Over the past two weeks, we’ve seen antifa attacking police officers in Boston and Dallas, vandals breaking a Christopher Columbus statue and tearing down Confederate monuments, and one man attempting to bomb a Confederate statue in Houston.
Meanwhile, members of the mainstream Left have excused violence in the name of “anti-fascism.” …
… So, what’s scarier: a thousand pasty and pathetic would-be tough guys marching around in the middle of the night shouting, “Jews will not replace us,” then weeping openly when arrest warrants are issued for violence, or the mainstream Left embracing violence in the streets? Some college-age dweeb goose-stepping around with a flag created 50 years before his birth, or somebody punching that guy, to the cheers of the media?
