Hate and Violence on the Left

Christians I know have expressed concern about the popularity in some quarters of what's called Christian Nationalism, and, despite the difficulty in defining exactly what Christian Nationalism is, there are some characters on the Christian right who justify that concern.

Nevertheless, I think there's much greater cause for concern with the increasing viciousness on the left, particularly among the atheistic left. Jim Geraghty acknowledges (he provides links to his claims) the troubled individuals on the right,

I know the right side of the American political spectrum has its share of yahoos — the guy who mailed pipe bombs to Trump critics, the PizzaGate conspiracy theory believer who fired an AR-15 inside the D.C. restaurant Comet Ping Pong. Abortion clinic bombers.

Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh often gets inaccurately characterized as Christian extremist — he described himself as an agnostic — and while he was indisputably vehemently opposed to the federal government in a way that we usually define as “right wing,” he also believed the U.S. government had implanted a computer chip in his buttocks.

I would note that a couple of examples that get cited or remembered as “right-wing violence” really were nothing of the sort. The man who shot Gabby Giffords was a paranoid schizophrenic who believed that grammar was a sinister form of mind control used by the government.

The man who murdered the Minnesota House of Representatives speaker and her husband and shot a state senator and his wife earlier this year wrote in a letter addressed to FBI Director Kash Patel that Democratic Governor Tim Walz selected him to kill Democratic lawmakers, including Senators Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar.

So, there's a bacillus in our culture that can be found in some precincts of the right but which seems especially virulent on the left. The murder of Charlie Kirk and the vile reaction to it on social media is the most recent expression of the depravity of those on the left who choose to settle political disagreements with a gun. And the horrific attack on the Catholic schoolchildren in Minnesota is the most recent expression of the utter moral rottenness of those who choose to vent their resentments by killing children.

Geraghty cites former Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz's comments about Luigi Mangione to illustrate what can only be seen as moral perversity on the left:

CNN aired a prime-time special allegedly about “disinformation” and interviewed journalist Taylor Lorenz, in which she argued that Luigi Mangione, who shot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in the back, is “a person that seems like this morally good man, which is hard to find.” She also swooned about the killer as “a man who’s revolutionary, who’s famous, who’s handsome, who is young, who’s smart.”

Astonishingly, no one stopped her and asked, "What on earth are you saying?" Geraghty continued:

And as mentioned above, yes, the right side of the spectrum has its yahoos and nuts and violent types, but . . . do they get CNN talking heads on national television making an unrebutted argument for how “morally good” they are? How “handsome” and “smart” they are?

Could you imagine any scenario where any two figures who appear on CNN talked about how handsome, smart, and “morally good” a right-wing assassin was? You think any guests would gush about Timothy McVeigh or Eric Rudolph?

Maybe you could envision more than 34,000 people contributing to a right-wing assassin’s legal defense fund, raising more than $1.2 million. Could you envision a merchandise store about a right-wing assassin? How about prayer candles? Could you envision a fashion company “accidentally” using an image of a right-wing assassin to model a shirt?

The moral stench to which Geraghty alludes does not just emanate from those who pull the trigger. It clings to those who celebrate what the shooters do as well. For examples of this in the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk read what some educators are quoted as having said in this column.

According to HotAir (paywall) on Reddit they're celebrating Kirk's murder, and on Bluesky they're soliciting names for who should be next.

The sheer anger on the left is profoundly shocking, as a perusal of this article, or this, or especially this one, will show.

When a Republican Congresswoman called for public prayer after word of Kirk's passing reached the House, she was greeted with groans and shouts of "No!" from across the aisle.

We don't know the background of all these people, but I'm fairly confident that most if not all of the reprehensible tweets and posts are authored by either atheists or Islamists. They're filled with a deranged hatred and resentment against Christians, frequently, no doubt, because they see Christianity as a moral firewall against, and indictment of, their sexual or political preferences.

The man who shot Charlie Kirk is just the latest instantiation of this sickness, and tragically, if the above-linked columns are any indication, he won't be the last.