Living In an Age of Hate [Updated]

Byron York takes a dispassionate look at today’s political/cultural landscape, which is beginning to resemble the one that preceded the Civil War:

The toxicity of the resistance to President Trump has risen in recent days, with the nation’s most respected newspapers publishing rationalizations for denying Trump supporters public accommodation and for doxxing career federal employees, while a journalist found himself under physical attack from the so-called anti-fascist group Antifa, which has stepped up its violent activities since Trump’s election.

Advocacy of incivility and violence isn’t coming only from the zany far left. It finds a home in formerly respectable news outlets, like the Washington Post and the New York Times, as well as among Democratic Party office-holders.

The justification for denying public accommodation came from the Washington Post in an op-ed by Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of a farm-to-table restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. Wilkinson became famous in June of last year, when she refused to serve White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders and and told Sanders and her family to leave the restaurant. Wilkinson’s staff then followed the Sanders group in protest as they tried to find another place to eat.
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In her new article, Wilkinson discussed the case of The Aviary, a trendy bar in Chicago where a waitress recently spat on Eric Trump, the president’s son. Wilkinson wrote that the incident, along with her own decision to oust Sanders, shows that in the age of Trump “new rules apply” in public accommodations: Americans who work for the administration or support the president should stay away.

Democrats obviously think that the “new rules” will never apply to them. Why is that? Evidently, they believe–correctly–that we conservatives are better people than they are. But our patience is not infinite.

The apology for doxxing came from the New York Times in a piece by Kate Cronin-Furman, an assistant professor of human rights at University College London. The article focused on the treatment of illegal immigrant children in detention centers near the U.S.-Mexico border.

Which has actually improved somewhat since the Obama administration. And, in any event, if a Central American is concerned about how his children will be treated if he brings them along as he tries to cross our border illegally, he should consider not doing that.

Cronin-Furman discussed the detentions, as well as actions by employees of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in terms of the Holocaust and genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda. Those are, of course, contexts which most Americans would likely dismiss as preposterous and offensive but which Cronin-Furman and the New York Times apparently take seriously.

These comparisons are so idiotic as not to require refutation. But the New York Times publishes them; not because they are remotely plausible, but because the Times doesn’t care. The Times exists solely to launch one hysterical attack after another against President Trump on behalf of the Democratic Party.

Then we have the case that I wrote about earlier today:

Finally, there was Antifa’s recent attack on Andy Ngo, a freelance journalist often associated with the pro-free thought cultural publication Quillette. At a demonstration in Portland, at which Trump was a focus of dispute, Antifa fighters beat up and milkshaked Ngo, apparently because he was there and he was not on their side.

The Democratic Party has abandoned all norms of civility and constitutional government. Somehow, though, liberals believe they are immune from having to live by their own “new rules.” They sow the wind, but think they never will reap the whirlwind. Why?

Liberals act as though they are spoiling for a civil war, or at least a slow-motion approximation thereof. Is that really what they want? Fighting in the streets? And, evidently, the restaurants? Do they have reason to think they would fare well if they actually got what they claim to want?

We conservatives are, of course, morally superior to leftists, and far more pacific, as they believe. But, as I said, our patience is not infinite. There are many places in America where, unlike Portland, fascists would meet with a strong reaction if they tried to beat up bystanders on the street, burn down buildings, and smash store windows. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and their Democratic Party seem entirely oblivious to this fact.

UPDATE: Commenter Devilpup writes:

So cake bakers have to serve everyone but liberal cafe owners can pick and choose who they will serve??????

Good point! Just another instance of how the liberals’ “new rules” are a one-way street. They can get away with such nonsense to the extent that we on the right have no political power.

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