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TIME TO COOL DOWN

 

 

Yes, we're into autumn now – the temperature is cooling down. With all the political violence recently – murders and attempted murders – it's also Time to Cool Down politically: take several deep breaths, relax, and let those boiling brain cells cool. What kickstarted this topic in my thinking was an article about a U.S. DOJ report that began: "Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism. Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists...."

This didn't sound quite right, and this U.S. DOJ report had been taken down in January 2025, but other sources recovered a copy (click the above photo). Where did this seemingly official-sounding government report get its statistics from and what were the specific events it referred to? These statistics didn't seem to match up with the descriptions of many violent incidents that I have been reading over the years. As I studied the report, I found lots of footnotes to further articles by the report's authors, but no descriptions of specific categories of violence.

For example, under previous administrations, freedom of speech when protesting peacefully against abortion has been criminalized under the FACE (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances) Act, so that people who are simply on public sidewalks holding posters stating "Abortion takes a human life," "Abortion is not healthcare," (both obviously and objectively true) and praying silently on the street or sidewalk, or not even saying a word, just recording these peaceful protests on a smartphone, have been arrested and sentenced to prison time.

Parents speaking up at school board meetings about their children being taught gay and transgender ideology have been arrested as "domestic terrorists" and given heavy prison sentences. Sometimes each person arrested at pro-life demonstrations and given a different-length sentence was counted as a unique act of terrorism or domestic violent extremism. This could easily skew the count of "far-right attacks" mentioned in the beginning of my article. Why?

For many on the Left, especially in universities, "speech is violence" when they disagree with opposing views. When some Christian or conservative students were bold enough to speak or display literature in public opposing Antifa or LGBTQ+ issues, their free speech was accused of commiting acts of violence and they were attacked by a literally violent staff member... with a machete! Even "misgendering people can be considered an 'act of violence.'”

Legally, "hate speech" is defined as "credible threats of physical harm to people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability or medical condition." Rude, profane, cursing or other mean-spirited speech by either Left or Right is technically and legally not "hate speech." But the expression "hate speech" is often misused to describe free speech that others strongly disagree with. For example...

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