In the wake of the Charlottesville protests, we have been told by the arbiters of social justice in the mainstream media that there is no moral equivalence between the violent, racist, bigoted protesters, and the violent, anti-fascist counter protesters.  Is that proposition supported by the evidence?

First, it should be pointed out that the term “moral equivalence” is a form of equivocation and a fallacy of relevance.  The idea that action X is not as bad as action Y is popular with groups who know they are doing something immoral.  This is exactly what we are seeing in the “moral outrage” of the political and media elites in this country.  The argument goes something like this….the violence of the anti-fascist counter protesters isn’t as bad as the violence of the racist, bigoted protesters because the violence of the anti-fascist counter protesters comes from a heart of racial acceptance, while the violence of the racist, bigoted protesters comes from a heart of racial hate.

This is of course, a fallacy and absurd, but still a very popular opinion.  President Trump has now tried multiple times to point this out.  He has never been afraid of speaking truth, no matter how unpopular, and because there is no issue more sacrosanct to the left than that of social justice, they are losing their collective minds.  But he is right.

However, the moral equivalency argument continues along these lines….the violent, racist, bigoted protesters killed a person in Charlottesville, while the violent, anti-fascist protesters did not, so there MUST be a moral distinction between the two groups.  Let’s dig further into that proposition. (Of course, we will have to set aside for the moment the fact that James Alex Fields had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and prescribed anti-psychotic medication — his mental illness being a fact that the media want to ignore as it doesn’t fit nicely into their narrative.)  According to the videos of Charlottesville that have been shown over and over ad nauseam, a great many of the racist, bigoted protesters wore confederate and/or KKK paraphernalia…a group with a horrible history of killing black people.  Similarly, many of the anti-fascist counter protesters wore “Black Lives Matter” clothing or held signs associating with that particular group…a group whose supporters have a stated interest in, and have a history of killing white police officers.  For example, in July 2016, Micah Johnson, a man affiliated with Black Lives Matter and someone who had openly stated that he wanted to “kill white people,” shot and killed 5 police officers in Dallas.  Later that month, Gavin Long, another Black Lives Matter member and someone who had written that he wanted to inflict harm “upon bad cops as well as good cops,” killed three police officers in Baton Rouge.

Clearly, both groups have a demonstrated history of lethal violence.  So is there is a real moral distinction between an angry, white man killing a black man, and an angry black man who kills a white man?

Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, understands that there is not.  She agrees with the President that the evil is rooted in violence from all sides.  Unfortunately, her point gets lost when the media promote the idea that the racist, bigoted protesters are “less than human.”  Again, as pointed out by Alveda King, “racism springs from the lie that certain human beings are less than fully human.  It’s a self-centered falsehood that corrupts our minds into believing we are right to treat others as we would not want to be treated.”

There seems to be a lot of that on both sides.