So good white Christian Greg Gianforte assaulted a reporter (a fact confirmed by dangerous Marxist network FOX)…
and the Party of Brownshirt Lovers of Threats and Violence loved it, which is why Mona Charen had the unenviable task of trying to tell this party of neutronium-skulled thugs that they must stop denying, excusing and defending it. They are not listening, of course, because they are violent thugs and enemies of America. But worst of all, it is Christian thought leaders who are now orgasmic for this crude thuggery and Steven Greydanus calls them out:
I write today neither to accuse Greg Gianforte nor the voters of Montanta, neither of whom I have much to do with.
I write to accuse those who excuse, dismiss or enable intolerable behavior like Gianforte’s, or who give ear and support to those who do.
I’m talking to you, Dinesh D’Souza. I’m talking to you, Laura Ingraham.
Most of all, I’m talking to you, all my friends who still regard D’Souza and Ingraham as voices worth listening to.
It pains me to say this, because the fact is that I not only liked Ingraham and D’Souza, I *respected* them. I feel betrayed by what the American Christian conservatism I once identified with has become. I feel like a fool for not having seen it sooner.
In this words of this article, “None of this is a gray area. You either uphold certain basic standards of decency or you don’t.”
And the answer is: We don’t. Obviously. Read what Ingraham and D’Souza had to say about a now-elected official body-slamming a journalist, and realize the truth of the world we live in: The Tribe Right or Wrong; The Tribe Über Alles.
With the appropriate incantatory words (depending on your sub-tribe and the situation, they may be “But Hillary,” “The Babies,” “Obamacare,” “Immigration,” etc.), people who pride themselves on decency and traditional values will not only look the other way, but actively *defend* bad behavior and harm as long as the right people are being defended or harmed.
That’s what most horrifies me: not simply that someone might say “Unprovoked assault is obviously terrible and unacceptable but what’s on offer on the other side is even worse,” but that people will say “It was our guy hitting their guy? Eh. He had it coming. He’s a crybaby. He’s a sissy for not hitting back.” (This is paraphrase but scarcely exaggeration. Read the piece.)
I shouldn’t have to say this, but experience shows that I do: If your first reaction to this scolding is to bring up punching Nazis or what happened to Charles Murray at Middlebury, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.
Tu quoque won’t help you here. First of all, because *I’m* making the accusation, and *I* neither punched Richard Spencer, nor joined in the Middlebury mob, nor have I defended those who did.
I’m against punching Nazis and mobbing out-of-favor academics on college campuses, and *I’m* telling you that if you listen to people like Ingraham and D’Souza who defend blatant thuggishness as long as the violence goes the right way, *you’re* the one being harmed. Tu quoque is no defense when both sides are sipping arsenic.Some might be tempted to modify the tu quoque and ask me why I’m actively calling out defenders of Gianforte when I haven’t gone out of my way to call out defenders left-wing violence. There are many answers to that, but the simplest is that I USED TO LIKE AND RESPECT INGRAHAM AND D’SOUZA.
The people I’m talking to are still, in spite of my alienation from the conservative machine, very much my peeps. We agree on many of the things that matter most.
What it seems to me we haven’t yet managed to agree on is the spiritual danger of embracing The Tribe Über Alles.
To be sure, not all Republicans endorse this filth. Some of them, known by the goons and thugs who now constitute the bulk of the Party of Trump as “fake conservative” and “wusses” still speak out on behalf of civilization and are shouted down by Real Christians and Real Conservatives:
But the Good News of Trumpian violence and threats is spreading among the Brownshirts who are the Wave of the Future on the Right.
Texas Republican Called ICE on SB 4 Protesters, Threatened to Shoot Colleague
Dear Christian Party of Trump Defenders:
God’s Name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. – Romans 2:24
And if your first and only instinct is to reply, “But Hillary!”, “But Obama!” or “No! Them!” then never ever weary God again with your filthy lies about “personal responsibility”.
