INGERSOLL: Your Boos Mean Nothing To Me. I’ve Seen What Makes You Cheer
Greetings, Dear Reader,
Hooodoggie was that a ride.
I hope it’s over, but we’ll see. Let’s get to it, shall we?
YOUR BOOS MEAN NOTHING
My Friday morning newsletter calling for a return of self-defense, violent if necessary, caused quite a stir, as I was expecting.
It was predictably maligned as a generic call for violence, but any good-faith reading of the copy would not come away with that idea. I don’t think people should be assaulted for their ideas or their speech — I aggressively reject the notion entirely — and that’s precisely why I called for vigorous self-defense.
Way too many people are using summary acts of violence as a means of political suppression. They’re also getting away with it, as we saw recently in Manhattan and at Tennessee State University. Often, authorities tasked with upholding the law witness this lawlessness and do nothing. That inaction breaks overwhelmingly in one political direction.
If I regret anything, it’s that I caused trouble for the good people at the Daily Caller. I spent eight years running the brand, one that so many liberal organizations deeply want to destroy. So I understand how it feels to be the focal point of so much incoming.
My conversation with majority owner Neil Patel later on in the evening was fairly brief.
“I got your back, man,” he said, “but while I agree with the sentiment, you’re a good writer, and that was probably the most inartful way possible to put it.”
In other words: Why’d you have to be such an a**hole about it?
Okay, Let’s Be Artful
On the same day that I published my column, Greg Lukianoff weighed in on the case that inspired me to write it.
Pro-life journalist Savannah Craven had been brutally assaulted in broad daylight on camera during a man-on-the-street debate. District Attorney Alvin Bragg, best known for torturing statutes in order to prosecute Donald Trump on a lapsed misdemeanor, dropped the slam-dunk case against her attacker.
His office said it had failed to file discovery on time, basically copping to rank incompetence.
Lukianoff, who is the CEO of free-speech org FIRE, summed it up perfectly.
“When you refuse to prosecute violence against your political enemies, that violence starts to look a lot more like a formal part of the system,” he wrote on X. “Violence is not an extreme form of speech. It is the antithesis of what speech is for.”
In other words, when summary acts of violence from leftist agitators go deliberately overlooked or explicitly excused, it starts to “look a lot more like a formal part of the system.”
My case, in more artful terms, is simple: Conservatives planning to demonstrate their right to peacefully assemble have not just a personal obligation to consider beefed-up security, that security has a moral obligation to react if the “formal part of the system” — i.e., implicitly endorsed leftist violence — presents itself.
“Blood In The Streets”
This is one of the quotes from my column that really got people riled up. I’ll admit I was angry. I’ve been angry. I can’t say I’ve felt anger like I felt over the assassination of Charlie Kirk since at least my first tour of duty in Iraq.
For the record, there’s already been blood in the streets.
Ask Erika Kirk. Ask Craven. Ask guys like Billboard Chris, who are routinely assaulted for simply walking around with a sign. Ask any random Jewish student who simply tried to go to class at an Ivy League school after the Oct. 7 attacks.
I would say ask Iryna Zarutska, but you can’t because she’s dead. She was brutally killed by a man with 14 prior arrests who was let out by an activist judge with no background in law.
You could ask 73-year-old Mark Crosby and 84-year-old Richard Schaefer, who are thankfully still alive. The two elderly pro-life activists were both hospitalized with serious injuries when 28-year-old Patrick Brice savagely pummeled them.
Brice faced 30 years in prison, but was given a “get out of jail free card” when he was instead released on probation.
There’s been plenty of blood in the streets already, and authorities are really not doing enough to stop it. The sad and considerably messier reality of state inaction is then citizens will take their defense into their own hands.
But that too is problematic in the eyes of the liberal bureaucracy.
“Your Boos Mean Nothing To Me, I’ve Seen What Makes You Cheer”
The same crowd that cheered the death of Charlie Kirk, or at least took great pains to explain why he was a morally repugnant, even evil person, immediately took it upon themselves to send me death threats.
They did a lot of this anonymously, but some were bold enough to visit my once-public Instagram page.
They even expressed violent intent on images of my one-year-old son.
The people doing the booing are in part the loyal foot soldiers of a schizophrenic liberal bureaucracy that at once casts speech as a form of violence, but then also seeks to viciously prosecute acts of self-defense.
Two quotes come to mind. Here Barack Obama calls “broad claims” — like men can’t be women, illegal immigration is bad, and so on — a form of “violence.” To use another term coined in Obama world, the idea that speech is violence gives activists a “permission structure” to assault conservatives over mainstream views.
Nikole Hannah-Jones of fundamentally flawed 1619 Project fame recently made the case in the New York Times that Charlie Kirk’s public rhetoric was essentially terrorism and a form of “violence.”
To deranged leftists and their intellectual elites, assaulting people who say men can’t be women has become an acceptable form of self-defense. This is, of course, delusional and corrosive and flat-out wrong.
The second quote is Tucker Carlson.
“Self-defense is the cornerstone of all liberty,” he said. “A healthy society celebrates and venerates men like Jose Alba — men with jobs and families, men with independence and dignity. Above all, a healthy society affirms the right of men like this to self-defense.”
Alba, 61, is a Harlem bodega clerk who found himself under vicious assault one night. Rather than allow the criminal to have his way, Alba chose violence. He grabbed a knife and stabbed his attacker, killing him.
New York City authorities attempted to throw the book at him. Eventually CCTV video of the attack and resulting fatal act of self-defense was released. Conservatives rushed to Alba’s defense. The video and debate went widely viral, forcing prosecutors to drop the case.
It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last time that schizophrenic liberal bureaucracy tries to make self-defense illegal.
Ask Kyle Rittenhouse. They wanted him locked away for life. Or Daniel Penny likewise. They tried to ruin the McCloskeys for simply standing on their property with guns as a Black Lives Matter mob descended on their neighborhood.
“Societies that prefer violent criminals over citizens will not last,” Carlson concluded.
My case Friday and today is simple. I believe that vigorous self-defense can help restore the once-assumed public compact that we do not assault people we simply disagree with… ever. We don’t destroy their property. We don’t attack them. We never murder them.
Acts of self-defense will help disrupt the “formal part of the system” that excuses, encourages or overlooks summary acts of violence because they will be faced with calls to prosecute, and they’ll have to choose whom to prosecute: the criminals, or the people defending themselves against them?
To me, the choice is simple.
And as for the call to self-defend, that’s simple too. It is a moral imperative. It’s something we must do if we want our country to heal.
Force the schizophrenic state to admit speech is not violence. Force them to prosecute the people who would harm us for speaking.
It is our civic duty in this moment to be brave. We must draw a line.
WHAT I’M READING
Is this seriously on the table? Richardson has the deets!
What Would It Really Take To Overturn Obergefell?
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We’re winning.
Never-Ending Line Of People Show Up For Charlie Kirk T-Shirts Before Oregon-Penn State Game
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Utterly deranged.
Democratic Congressional Candidate Laughs At ‘Irony’ Of Charlie Kirk Assassination
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How to get kicked out of a protest: