Josh Horwitz at The Hill:

No matter the political leanings of the perpetrator, no matter the political climate, political violence is never acceptable.

And while language alone is not to blame for this vicious shooting (see: weak laws that allow domestic abusers to purchase and possess highly lethal weapons), we must acknowledge that rhetoric — especially rhetoric espousing a violent political philosophy — can inspire such attacks.

If Republicans truly want to address such rhetoric, however, they need to start in their own camp. Because in mainstream American politics, there is no more violent philosophy than the National Rifle Association’s longstanding embrace of insurrectionism.

I have been studying, tracking, and writing about insurrectionism  —  violent revolt against one’s government  — for years.

In my 2009 book, “Guns, Democracy and the Insurrectionist Idea,” co-author Casey Anderson and I dissect the NRA’s belief that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to commit acts of violence — specifically gun violence — against government officials.

The NRA marketed this anti-democratic, insurrectionist philosophy aggressively during President Barack Obama’s time in officer.

Using myth-based fear-mongering and race-baiting, NRA leadership perpetuated the myth that Obama was planning to confiscate guns.

Gun sales soared.

Then the NRA indoctrinated GOP leaders, asking them to buy into the concept of armed political violence and spread it to their constituents.

Republicans complied …

The gunman in Alexandria resorted to “Second Amendment remedies” to deal with the tyranny he perceived under the Trump administration and the current Congress.

There is a clear parallel between the NRA’s reprehensible philosophy of insurrectionism and gunman’s horrific act of violence — the only difference is the political affiliation.

Sure.  We all jump when the NRA says so.  This is beginning rather stupidly, but okay, if you want to discuss insurrection, let’s do that.

All relationships on earth now and forever, whether economics, marriage, church or government, should be seen in terms of covenant.  When the covenant is broken, the agreement is null and void.  Furthermore, breakage of covenants doesn’t simply exonerate the guilty.  There are blessings for oath-keepers and curses for the guilty.  Breakage of covenant invokes said curses, whether enforced by man, God or both.

We do not obtain or receive our rights from any piece of parchment.  Our rights are granted by God, and are to be recognized by men in their covenants with one another.  That’s what the constitution is – a covenant.  It has both blessings and curses appurtenant to it.

If you’ve heard what you consider to be “insurrectionist” talk of second amendment remedies by anyone today, it’s likely not associated with people like the murderer Hodgkinson.  He was a fanboi of Rachel Maddow and a progressive willing to kill people in order to increase state control.  Again, let’s rehearse what the second amendment remedy is all about.

Their experience in Presbyterian polity – with its doctrine of the headship of Christ over the church, the two-powers doctrine giving the church and state equal standing (so that the church’s power is not seen as flowing from the state), and the consequent right of the people to civil resistance in accordance with higher divine law – was a major ingredient in the development of the American approach to church-state relations and the underlying questions of law, authority, order and rights.

[ … ]

It was largely from the congregation polity of these New England puritans that there came the American concept and practice of government by covenant – that is to say: constitutional structure, limited by divine law and based on the consent of the people, with a lasting right in the people to resist tyranny.

Does that sound like Hodgkinson?  No, it’s directly contrary to his world and life view, and ideas matter.  The right to resist tyranny isn’t the same thing as the alleged right to impose tyranny of which Horwitz speaks, and this redounds to more than just his party affiliation.

Above I said that Hodgkinson was willing to kill people to impose tyranny.  Was he really, or was this a front for something else?

Teenager Cathy Rainbolt told a judge her foster father hit her in the face when she failed to mow the lawn correctly. She got hit in the face when she argued. She got hit and dragged by the hair when she tried to get away.

Her foster father was James “Tom” Hodgkinson, who is now infamous after shooting U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, two police officers and a staffer on a Virginia ballfield Wednesday. Rainbolt told the judge that Hodgkinson drank every day.

“I didn’t mark a time when (Hodgkinson) started hitting me,” Rainbolt told St. Clair County Circuit Judge James Radcliffe during a hearing Nov. 21, 2006. “It’s been hard to live with (an alcoholic) and how (he) treated me,” Rainbolt said.

[ … ]

Cathy was the first of two Hodgkinson foster children to die young. In 1996, 17-year-old Wanda Ashley Stock, who had been living with the Hodgkinsons in Belleville for just three months, drove to a lonely rural road, doused herself with gasoline and set herself on fire.

It’s fairly well known that Scalise was after human traffickers and abusers.  Was this an attempted assassination because of that?  We’ll never know, but one thing is certain, morals matter.

I’ll put the collective moral constitution of the American founders up against the creepy pervert and abuser Hodgkinson any day.  Despite Horwitz’ attempt at moral equivalence, he has hung himself on his own petard.  His selection of a hero of the left for his points about insurrection make him look like the fool and ass clown he really is.  He chose a pervert, child abuser and murderer for his moral equivalence.

That’s enough, except we are informed once again what Horwitz would do in the case of governmental genocide.  He makes it clear: “No matter the political leanings of the perpetrator, no matter the political climate, political violence is never acceptable.”

Never, says he.  Not in the case of the Armenian genocide, not to save the millions of people Stalin starved out of the Ukraine, not to save the Jews and Christians killed by Hitler’s minions, not to save the Christians who have been slaughtered in Mesopotamia.

Never.  And thus we learn all we ever really need to know about the moral constitution inside Josh Horwitz.  It’s very dark, and we’re best to stick with better men and better ideas.