No, America Doesn’t Have a Christian Terrorism Problem

No, America Doesn’t Have a Christian Terrorism Problem December 1, 2015

One of the more frustrating aspects of modern political discourse is the automatic, knee jerk reaction from some segments to appropriate the latest tragedy to promote their political point of view.  Dan Arel, a prominent Patheos Atheism blogger, jumped to some illogical conclusions in the emotional aftermath of the tragic Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado Springs, when he wrote, “I am far more afraid of the white male, American pro-life advocate than I am of any single Syrian refugee.” The title of the post, by the way, is  “Christian terrorism is a bigger threat to U.S. freedom than Islamic extremism.”

Arel wasn’t alone in his erroneous way of thinking.

Radical leftists’ favorite new term is “Christian terrorists” though they do their best to minimize the threat of actual jihadists. The gray lady herself, the New York Times promoted a similarly ludicrous story that homegrown extremists were deadlier than jihadists.  Their “extremists” were mainly right wing and they came to this conclusion by — as David French wrote — “excluding from the death toll the almost 3,000 Americans who died on 9/11 and the nearly 7,000 Americans killed — not to mention the more than 52,000 Americans wounded — at the hands of radical Islamists overseas.”

So, is America being overrun by domestic terrorism?  Nothing is further from the truth.

French writes in National Review about this odd line of reasoning: 

“The pro-life movement consists of millions of Americans who fiercely oppose abortion through peaceful speech and protest, and a tiny, evil minority of those who resort to violence. Though the abortion debate is a matter of life and death for hundreds of thousands of innocent children a year, since 9/11 exactly one abortion provider has been murdered, and two clinics have been bombed. That’s hardly a crime wave…”

Remember, that Planned Parenthood shooter was an odd-ball loner who had no known connections to any organizations.  He registered to vote as an independent… woman.

French goes on to say that this is a tired old tactic of the Left:

Following the dreadful Oklahoma City bombing, many on the left tried to pin Timothy McVeigh on Rush Limbaugh, and despite the fact that McVeigh called himself an agnostic, some leftists still refer to him a “Christian terrorist.” Gabby Giffords’s shooting was somehow blamed on Sarah Palin, and this year’s Charleston church massacre was allegedly an indictment of all white southerners, even those who’ve condemned racism their entire lives.

It’s weird how liberals will say that conservative rhetoric causes violence, while “leftist rhetoric” is just a spirited debate.

(Need proof?  They never vilify the #BlackLivesMatter crowd for inciting violence against the police, even though some of them actually do use violent language and perpetrate violent acts.  Additionally, do they ever blame eco-terrorism on Al Gore?)

Articles that claim that “white Christians” are the really scary subgroup simply lie.  David also writes that they “cause causes Americans to “take their eyes off the real threat to our security — a rapidly growing mass movement that is wholly and completely dedicated to violence. Our real worry shouldn’t be an alienated teenager with a Confederate flag or an angry hermit who hates the government. It should be the fully mobilized jihadist armies controlling nation-sized chunks of territory, the entire governments dedicated to the spread of jihad and seeking nuclear weapons, and their tens of millions of supporters and sympathizers. These are the evil fanatics who have killed and maimed thousands of Americans, and aim to kill thousands more. They continue to show us what a true terror threat looks like, but too many of us still refuse to look.”

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