It's Been Worse. Will it Get Better?

The events of the last few days have caused some people, especially younger people, to think that things have never been worse, but they have as Jim Geraghty reminds us:

It may feel like our political rhetoric has never been so heated — that’s debatable — but within living memory, we’ve had periods of much more widespread political violence. Bryan Burrough’s Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence is the most complete history of the political violence perpetrated by groups such as the Weathermen, the Symbionese Liberation Army, FALN, and the Black Liberation Army.

Early on, Burrough quotes retired FBI agent Max Noel:

People have completely forgotten that in 1972, we had over 1900 domestic bombings in the United States. People don’t want to listen to that. They can’t believe it. One bombing now and everyone gets excited. In 1972? It was every day. Buildings getting bombed, policemen getting killed. It was commonplace.

All true, and the above doesn't even mention the multiple riots in our cities every summer with hundreds of dead and millions in property loss.

Extremists have, throughout the last century or so, constantly probed for weaknesses in our polity. When they've found them they exploit their advantage by launching spasms of vitriol and violence in an attempt to destabilize and wear down resistance until citizens tire of the struggle and finally yield to those who would make themselves our masters.

Every presidential candidate, Republican and Democrat, runs on the promise of bringing us together, uniting us, but unity today between progressives and conservatives seems out of reach. In any case, as Jonah Goldberg has said recently, it's not what we need anyway. He wrote:

We don't need this country to be more unified - we need this country to be better at disagreeing with each other.

I think he's right, but we'll only get better at disagreeing with each other if we share some common core values. Right now, I don't know that we do.

Meanwhile, Megyn Kelly explains why few conservatives are inclined to be lectured to by Democrats about turning down the rhetoric. She delivers a real stemwinder after her guest, Dennis Prager, is done speaking.