At the Democratic national convention two weeks ago, speaker after speaker lauded Rep. John Lewis, a champion of civil rights who died in July, and invoked his message that citizens who saw injustice had an obligation to “get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
“Good trouble” was Lewis’s way of describing the necessary sacrifice that so many Americans have made over the years to advance the cause of freedom — by opposing unjust laws, by marching in peaceful protest, by being arrested if necessary to bring attention to injustice.
That kind of trouble is the heart of the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. and is another name for civil disobedience, the willingness to break man’s laws in order to follow God’s laws.
But the thing about civil disobedience is that in order to work, in order to bring about justice, it has to be civil.
What Democrats are applauding today is nothing like the work of Martin Luther King or John Lewis. It isn’t “good trouble”; it is “good violence.” Well, good only if you are a communist, an anarchist or a satanist — which sadly is to say a Democrat.
We waited fruitlessly for Joe Biden to condemn the violence in Seattle, Portland, Chicago, New York or Washington, D.C. Then finally last night he condemned the violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin, but way too late.
Compare that to the forceful words and actions of President Trump to stop the violence that followed the death of George Floyd. He has literally begged governors to allow him to send in the National Guard to restore order, but Democrats are afraid of making Trump look strong when they are so weak. Therefore they make excuses and wrong their hands, often trying to appease the criminals on the street by seeking to find common cause with them in their complaints about “systemic racism.”
There is no justification for rioting, burning buildings, or looting. Racial injustice doesn’t justify criminal behavior. Nor is there any explanation for why cities, counties and states are not responding to these emergencies with appropriate force. The only thing you can say is that they are afraid to respond with force because they will be accused of racism. But the only answer to “good violence” is “better policing.”
It was no surprise when people died in Kenosha this week. A 17-year-old vigilante trying to keep order in the absence of a real police force apparently shot and killed two people after he himself was attacked. That’s what happens when there is no law enforcement presence.
I won’t make an excuse for the teen-ager, Kyle Rittenhouse, who has been arrested for homicide. It was a huge mistake for him to show up there with a gun, and now he’s going to risk having his own life derailed by his decision to get involved. He will have lawyers who can make the case for self-defense better than I can, but I will note that everyplace where there has been violence for the last four months, there has been the presence of Antifa and Black Lives Matter on the streets and the absence of police who were given authority to fight back.
Of course, CNN and MSNBC and their minions in the Democrat Party are going to blame Trump and Republicans for the violence, but that is bullshit. Antifa and BLM are intentionally provoking violence with the purpose of creating chaos in the streets to lessen respect for law and order and to create a “public enemy” in the form of conservatives who fight back.
It’s the same playbook we’ve seen since Charlottesville. In that case, there was a lawfully scheduled protest against the plan to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee. If that protest had been allowed to continue, there would have been no violence. But Antifa showed up to confront the protesters and to provoke violence. If the police had made arrests and kept the two sides apart, there would have been no violence. But police did nothing, and eventually a young woman was killed when rioters on both sides got out of hand. “Good violence” has a way of escalating into “fatal violence.”
I predicted that there would be violence and death that day in Charlottesville as soon as I saw that Antifa was on site and that the police were not dispersing those thugs, who did not have a lawful permit to assemble. That doesn’t make me a genius, just someone with common sense.
Leftists don’t like common sense. That’s why they hate Tucker Carlson on Fox News. When Carlson told his audience Wednesday night that it was predictable that violence would claims lives in Kenosha when the police stood down, he wasn’t excusing violence, just explaining it.
But Democrats and their allies don’t want explanations. They want power, and the best way to get power is to scare people. That’s what Democrats do best.
The question for the rest of us is how long are we going to take it? We can’t shoot back like that young man in Kenosha or we will be targeted as racists and haters. So it’s time for conservatives to get into some “good trouble.”
When do Republicans hold hands and march, singing “This Land is Our Land,” into the crowd of Antifa and BLM thugs and let them display their true hatred by punching us and kicking us? Blows rained down on John Lewis many times when he stood up against racists in the Jim Crow South. We may have to exhibit the same kind of courage and experience the same kind of fear. That may be the only way to expose who the true haters are.
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