Photo Credit: Image via Pexels.
Pexels
If 40 percent of Americans approve of cold-blooded murder, then we are headed for the moral abyss.Now we can add to that fictional list of grotesqueries a few not-at-all fictional categories which not long ago would have been regarded as quite simply unthinkable.
After the hell on earth that descended upon innocent Israeli families in their homes and young people attending a music rally on October 7, 2023, and the sickening campus protests in support of the Hamas animals who conducted the slaughter:
Barbarity is heroism.
After the true heroism of Daniel Penny in that subway car in May 2023, which may have saved the lives of several people who could have been assaulted by a drug-addled and mentally disturbed person screaming threats at them, for which he was charged by the radical Manhattan D.A. with a felony carrying a prison sentence of up to 20 years:
Heroism is murder.
And after the stone-cold murder of the CEO of an insurance company executive on the street in New York City — shot in the back, which until only recently was regarded as the most heinous of cowardly acts — the murderer is widely admired as “the hot assassin” by his many cult followers online because he “took out” the head of a despised “evil” health care insurer:
Murder is heroism.
Nineteen Eighty-Four was, of course, fiction — a cautionary tale about the horrors of living in a purely socialist state. As the meme circulating online states, quoting Orwell, “I wrote 1984 as a novel, not as an instruction manual.”
With these vignettes from the world we live in today in mind, I am prompted to ask: How is American society different from the dystopian world Orwell created in his novel?
Thankfully, the answer to that question lies in the system of government our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us over two centuries ago: a Republic with many freedoms, most important of which is the right to express our choice of leaders through our franchise on Election Day. Thus, unlike Winston Smith in the novel, we are not doomed to a drab life of miserable servitude with no way out. We had the right, and exercised it resoundingly on November 5, to say we would not permit the pseudo-Marxist regime of Obama-Biden-Harris to continue.
Although that result is a glorious event to celebrate, we would be wise to heed the words of one of the truly great presidents in American history, the sorely missed Ronald Reagan, who warned:
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
The bizarre saga of America’s new folk hero and what all this strange adulation of a murderer really means was treated recently by Heather Mac Donald in the City Journal in her usual thorough way. Although statistics can often be boring, some of the figures she sets forth in her article are also quite chilling, if not downright frightening:
The only relevant question in the wake of the Thompson murder, however, is: What has gone wrong with Americans’ moral compass that so many could cheer the extrajudicial killing of an innocent man? That question has not been deemed worthy of exploring. [snip]
Over 41 percent of respondents supported the Thompson assassination or were at best ambivalent about it. Nearly 16 percent of respondents were “unsure” or “neutral” about whether the killer’s actions were “acceptable or unacceptable.” A little over 8 percent of respondents found Mangione’s actions “completely acceptable.” Another 8.4 percent found those actions “somewhat acceptable,” and 9 percent found them “somewhat unacceptable.” (It is not clear how “somewhat acceptable” differs from “somewhat unacceptable.”) Four of every ten Americans, in other words, will not unequivocally condemn the killing.
The younger the voter, the greater the level of support for political killings. Sixty-seven percent of voters aged 18 to 29 were ambivalent about or supportive of Mangione’s actions, with only 33 percent finding those actions completely unacceptable. Fifty-seven percent of voters aged 30 to 39 were unwilling to condemn the killing unequivocally, with only 43 percent finding it “completely unacceptable.” Democrats were nearly twice as likely as Republicans to find it either somewhat or completely acceptable.
These figures paint a bleak picture of where we are morally as a nation. It is impossible for the majority of us to grasp the idea that 8% of those polled found this murder “completely acceptable,” and an aggregate of 40% of all those polled would not unequivocally condemn this murderer.
As I never claimed to be a statistician, I would not venture even a guess as to what an 8% finding in a poll might equate to in terms of the total population. However, it is safe to say that it means that many millions of our fellow citizens feel that shooting a man in the back was justified because he led a company that might have treated policy-holders unfairly — but not the murderer, as he was not even insured by that company.
Millions of Americans apparently approve of a person acting as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner. As Mac Donald observes after relating a litany of unhinged statements from academics at some of the most prestigious universities in the country:
But Thompson broke no law in his management of UnitedHealthcare. (The allegation that he was involved in insider trading has no bearing on the alleged justification for his assassination.) Even if UnitedHealthcare were violating the regulatory superstructure governing insurance, Mangione had no authority to “hold [Thompson] accountable” for that violation. License private citizens to roam the streets slaying alleged enemies of the people and you guarantee anarchy.
These observations should be obvious. And yet Mangione’s fans are unencumbered by even a passing acquaintance of due process. This ignorance represents a disastrous educational failure.
Her analysis is heavily populated with quotations from academics, which causes one to shudder at the disdain for the rule of law held by those charged with the education (indoctrination?) of our children.
I urge you to read this essay in its entirety. It will be time well spent, albeit not comforting as to the moral future of our country. Mac Donald concludes with this sobering sentence: “Unless our leaders and teachers fight the ignorance on evidence this month, we could be heading toward the abyss.”
Does the election of President Trump give us a real reason for hope? Or is it too late?
<img alt="
Image via Pexels.
” captext=”Pexels” src=”https://conservativenewsbriefing.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/the-cult-of-the-hot-assassin.jpg”>
Image via Pexels.
