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Serious question: at what point is political violence justified? At what point is it defensible to take up arms in defense of one's community? I know we're all ostensibly against violent remedies, but at some point, practical and moral concerns ought to overtake an abstract commitment to the rule of law, yes?
Look at the Catholic just war doctrine, kind of a checklist of criteria violent action must satisfy to be right in the eyes of God: is there a competent authority organizing the armed action? A realistic possibility of success? A just cause for which you're fighting? And is it your last resort?
If so, then one is justified in extraordinary and violent action. The left seems to believe the situation is sufficiently dire as to justify violence. Is there sufficient cause for resisting them on their own terms?
If not, why? So as to not to break the state's monopoly on violence? To reap the civilizational benefits of settling disputes with words not weapons? After exactly how many presses of the "defect" button do you, too, press "defect"?
And after what point does insisting that people who've experienced "defect" after "defect" continue to play "cooperate" become itself a form of evil, of gaslighting, of denying people their fundamental dignity?
I'm not sure about the answers to any of these questions, but as I see parts of the Internet seething and roiling, and as I see other parts of the Internet gloating, and as I see it all spill over to real life --- the DNA lounge in San Francisco has a "neck shot" special tonight --- I have to wonder whether we're at one of those points in history at which it is less moral to follow man's law than to uphold God's law.
Who is 'the left' here? Do you really believe that a majority of say, US Democrat voters think that political assassination of right wingers is justified?
Yes, I do.
In the year 2025, the remaining rank and file registered democrats are amongst the most successfully propagandized people in the history of the world.
I’m not talking about the occasional voter. Imagine the modal democrat primary voter; the habitual democrat who votes down ballot every election. The people that really form the core of the Democratic Party voting bloc.
I genuinely think of you handed that person a button which would explode a bomb underneath Elon Musk’s feet they’d wait about a millisecond before slamming it.
I'll just say, I have no argument to make against your belief. But from my experience as a blue living in one of the bluest areas of the country where that modal Democrat voter you described is likely a majority (certainly D voters are a supermajority, but whether that specific modal D voter is a majority is questionable) and if not that, a plurality, I don't think many of them would murder Musk if given a chance like that. Most of them go along with the most extreme of the progressive demands, and most of them do have lots of antipathy towards Musk, but straight-up cold-blooded murder is still beyond the pale for most, by my perception. That's probably changing, with the left's reaction to Mangione pushing things somewhat and perhaps its reaction to Kirk's murder pushing things even more.
Now, if you selected for young, college-educated people among those D voters, especially women, among the modal D voters, then yeah, I'd probably take the under on a millisecond.
I'm not convinced that progressive women would be more likely to enact political violence than progressive men. That would just be woefully unintuitive to me.
I think there's simply fewer straight-laced party-line progressives among men, and my experience of liberal/progressive men is that their views are either normie and passive (and thus unlikely to make them feel a desire for violence) or weird in a way that doesn't fit the "habitual democrat" mold even if it were to drive them to extremism.
So you might find the guy who hates racism, but thinks women are stuck up; or the guy who thinks Che Guevara was awesome; or the guy who gets conspicuously upset about school board corruption; or the Soviet Union defender; or the guy who loudly insists people call it the "CPC" and not the "CCP." Not really woke capitalism, IMO. Male leftists have more of a tankie image to me. And the important bit is in the name.
That said, I do remember a few male friends I've had that I'd describe as by-the-book progressive -- but they're all gay. Straight male progressives are just weird.
I'd put Mangione in that category. And the Trump shooter whose name doesn't deserve to be remembered and also I just don't remember it. Pretty unidentifiable motivations, general grievances, not a twitter full of clapbacks. Probably this latest guy will turn out to be a dateless loser who was crushing on a trans girl and wanted to impress her by DEFENDING HER HONOR, or something really stupid like that.
I think it depends on the hypothetical of the button. Men, progressive men included, have more of a stomach for violence, for getting their hands bloody. But women are more inclined to hate.
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