The Rhetoric of Black Lives Matter Matters

Two fine minds with but a single observation about the horrific assassinations of police in Dallas:

Here’s Ben Shapiro at the Daily Wire:

When a white racist, Dylann Storm Roof, shot up a Charleston black church, the left immediately blamed a widespread culture of racism, and insisted that states across the country tear down Confederate war memorials and stop sponsoring the Confederate flag at state capitols. When non-black cops shoot black suspects, the left insists – without a shred of evidence – that such killings are endemic among police officers, and that the entire system is racist. When anti-Donald Trump protesters riot against Trump supporters, the left blame Trump’s rhetoric. When a nutcase shoots up an area near a Planned Parenthood, the left blames the pro-life movement. When another nutcase shoots Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, the left blames Sarah Palin’s Congressional targets map. But when obvious anti-white racists murder white cops, the left suggests that gun control is the issue; when obvious Islamic terrorists murder gay people in a nightclub in Orlando, the problem is white Christians who don’t support same-sex marriage and Republicans who defend gun rights.

In other words, for the left, rhetoric can only connect with murder when it’s rhetoric they don’t like. If they do like the rhetoric — or at least if they want to defend the people responsible for the rhetoric — then the actual motivation for murder will be [omitted].

And here’s National Review‘s Jonah Goldberg:

There is something particularly vile and disgusting in the way many of the leading masters of sanctimony keep changing their standards. When a registered Democrat and Muslim murdered people in Orlando in the name of ISIS, it was outrageous to suggest that maybe we shouldn’t point fingers at Christian conservatives or the NRA. When Gabby Giffords was shot by an utterly apolitical schizophrenic, Paul Krugman blamed it on Michele Bachmann’s “eliminationist rhetoric.” The Democratic party almost en masse blamed it on some crosshairs on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page. The Orwellians leapt out of their bunkers and started memory-holing martial metaphors. 

But now, I gather, any suggestion that rhetoric from Black Lives Matter influenced these murderers is beyond the pale.