Yesterday, John and I wrote about suggestions that harsh criticism of Planned Parenthood is to blame for the attack on a PP facility in Colorado. Pointing to the attack on the Family Research Council two years ago, I noted the selective nature of this type of argument.
Jim Geraghty has compiled a thorough history (complete with links, a few of which I have omitted) of the double standard at work here:
Let me get this straight. In the eyes of the Left… ….criticism of Planned Parenthood means something like the shooting in Colorado “was bound to happen”……but chants where people describe police as ‘pigs’ and call for them to be ‘fried like bacon’ doesn’t lead to attacks on police……when an event by Pamela Geller is targeted by an Islamist shooter, it is “not really about free speech; it was an exercise in bigotry and hatred” and the attempt to kill her means she has “achieved her provocative goal”…… while at the same time, investigators contend we may never know what motivated a 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez to kill four Marines and a sailor in an attack on Chattanooga’s U.S. Naval and Marine Reserve Center last July…… a shooting by a diagnosed schizophrenic, who believed that grammar was part of a vast, government-directed mind control effort, is characterized by the Southern Poverty law Center as having views that are the “hallmark of the far right and the militia movement” …… while the shooter who opened fire in the lobby of the Family Research Council in downtown Washington in 2012, who planned to target the Traditional Values Coalition next, does not spur any need for a broader discussion or societal lessons about the demonization of political opponents…… a California killer, who was treated by multiple therapists and already had police checking on him after posting disturbing YouTube videos, is a reflection of “sexist society” ……but there’s little reason to ask whether the Oregon shooter’s decision to target Christians reflects a broader, societal hostility to Christians, or whether it reflects his personal allegiance to demons…… When white supremacist Dylann Roof committed an act of mass murder in an African-American church, Salon declares “White America is complicit” andthe Washington Post runs a column declaring, “99 percent of southern whites will never go into a church, sit down with people and then massacre them. But that 99 percent is responsible for the one who does”…… but the Roanoke shooter’s endless sense of grievance and perceptions of racism and homophobia in all of his coworkers represents him and him alone…Do I have all that right? And does that make sense to anyone?
It does to me. It’s part of an attempt by the left and its allies in the mainstream media to put conservatives on the defensive and to discourage them from speaking freely. We see the same phenomenon on college campuses and in efforts to curb speech by climate change skeptics and deniers.
The authoritarian tendency of the modern American left is hiding in plain sight in the news and editorial pages of our major newspapers.
NOTE TO READERS: Please don’t shoot anyone after reading this article.
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