When such acts as this occur, we should rediscover the concept of personal responsibility.
Remember that terrible day in June 2017 when a crazed gunman shot up a baseball field full of Republican members of Congress? Remember when we learned in the immediate aftermath that he was a former Bernie Sanders presidential campaign volunteer? And do you remember the parade of Republicans and conservative media figures who blamed Sanders for the attack, and smeared other Democrats and millions of voters for “contributing” to it?
You don’t remember that last part, because it never happened. Similarly, nothing like that happened in June of this year, when a would-be assassin turned himself in near the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. As he was being charged with attempted murder, no one flipped over to Fox News to find a litany of pundits blaming every liberal in America who had vented about the Court and its constitutionalist justices.
When Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) was brutally attacked by a neighbor five years ago, the suspect said it was over tree clippings. Paul and his wife Kelley pointed to the neighbor’s hate-filled Facebook screeds against President Donald Trump as evidence of a politically motivated attack. But did they use that as a springboard to blame legions of other people for one person’s crime?
They did not. Because this seems to travel in only one direction these days. There are acts of ideologically fueled violence that can be found across the spectrum. But the weaponization of those events as a vendetta against political opponents? That’s from the playbook of the Left.
In the horrible hammer attack on Paul Pelosi last week, we don’t even have a firm grasp on the suspect’s political motivation.
