At JohnKassNews former Chicago mayoral candidate Paul Vallas declaims:
The public must recognize that the radical left and its Islamist allies are not movements of liberation but of domination—one secular, one religious. Both use moral rhetoric as the Trojan horse for authoritarian control. Their alliance seeks to replace liberal democracy with systems that subordinate the individual to ideology and silence dissent about the atrocities committed in their name.
True justice requires consistent moral standards. Atrocities committed by Islamists, left-wing revolutionaries, or right-wing extremists must be condemned equally. Equality and opportunity cannot rest on collective guilt or selective outrage.
To restore trust and civic unity, politics must return to first principles: equality of opportunity, safety, education, and democratic accountability. Western institutions are imperfect but vital—they are the walls protecting liberty from every new Trojan horse disguised as justice and compassion.
I materially agree with Mr. Vallas but I do see one glaring problem with what he’s saying. It is hortatory. Vallas is engaging in moral philosophy when the situation requires governance.
He is arguing within a moral universe that the “radical left and Islamists” explicitly reject. It will convince precisely zero of them. It does nothing to solve the problems that face us.
The immediate problems are not theoretical. Radical Islamists are violently suppressing dissent in Tehran, while the radical left is tolerating and encouraging disorder in American cities.
My prescription, akin to Mr. Vallas’s, is that we should enforce the law as it is written, cognizant of its context. That pertains both to U. S. law and international law. Show mercy to those to whom it can be shown without risking the lives and property of others.
And then we should hope for the best. While law enforcement is insufficient for moral renewal it is a necessary precondition for it. Liberal democracy survives not because everyone agrees with it but because the law restrains those who do not.
That won’t solve every problem or right every injustice. But without it none of the others can even be attempted.
