Violence and Threats in Politics Must Not Be Tolerated. Period.

My friend, Josh Shapiro, and his family nearly lost their lives last night to a violent man bent on political destruction, fire-bombing the PA Governor's mansion with Molotov cocktails made from beer bottles and gasoline. Horrific, nasty and brutish does not begin to describe the mood of our political landscape in America today. That this attack occurred on the first day of Passover, a day when Josh and his family had welcomed many Pennsylvanians of the Jewish faith for a seder in their home, cannot have escaped notice of the law enforcement professionals investigating this incident.

Where politics and religion intertwine, violence often follows. History is rife with this theme, and centuries of violence all over the globe are replete with examples. The irony of using a faith that holds "love they neighbor" as its Golden Rule into a justification for violence is not lost on any thinking person.

It is through the hard-earned wisdom of this that our nation's Founders enshrined two clauses in the First Amendment to try to prevent religious wars from infesting America's shores. The Establishment Clause requires that the American government shall have no established religion, thereby leaving our citizens, who were arriving to colonial America from many nations and many faiths, the freedom to worship in the individual way they so chose, or not to worship if that was also their individual choice. Our Founders had seen war and strife over faith rip the nations of Europe and their colonies apart for centuries, and hoped that this might stave off similar religious strife in America. The second protection is the Free Exercise Clause, which allows Americans to choose their own faith in accordance with their own beliefs.

Anyone who tries to sell you the fact that America was founded solely as a Christian nation is lying to you to sell you a belief that allows them to profit from your faith. Simple truth. Worse, they sell you the idea that your faith is being persecuted unless everyone believes the way that you do, which enables them to politicize it and weaponize it into hatred of people who do not believe as you do. That leads to authoritarianism fueled by religious fervor, which is exactly what the Founders were trying so hard to avoid. It is profoundly un-American.

Were several of our Founders christians? Absolutely, yes. But they were of multiple sects of Christianity, including Catholics, Anglicans, Puritans, Quakers, and other faiths, and also agnostics and, in at least one case, a deist who leaned toward atheism.

When we turn faith into a mechanism of hatred, and politics into a mechanism of violence, we rend this entire nation apart. As Americans, we need to stand up and say a firm and loud "not in this nation" to that, and do it right now.

As Josh said this morning:

"Shapiro said that if Balmer was trying to stop him from doing his job, then he’ll work harder, and he added that Balmer will not stop him from observing his faith.

“When we were in the state dining room last night, we told the story of Passover” and the exodus of the Jews from slavery in Egypt to freedom, Shapiro said. “I refuse to be trapped by the bondage that someone attempts to put on me by attacking us as they did here last night. I refuse to let anyone who had evil intentions like that stop me from doing the work that I love.”...

Shapiro said the fire was set in the very room where he and his family celebrated Passover with a seder with members of Harrisburg’s Jewish community on Saturday night.

“We don’t know the person’s specific motive yet,” Shapiro told the news conference. “But we do know a few truths. First: This type of violence is not OK. This kind of violence is becoming far too common in our society. And I don’t give a damn if it’s coming from one particular side or the other, directed at one particular party or another or one particular person or another. It is not OK, and it has to stop. We have to be better than this.”

Political expression is protected speech. Under our First Amendment, you have the right to petition your governmental officials for redress of your grievances about how government is operating. Under our laws of free speech, I have the right to then say that your opinions are specious and lacking merit. We can argue together about the best solutions to our worst problems in the grand tradition of American citizens operating a government by and for the people, and we can together hold our governmental officials accountable to do their jobs well on our behalf each election cycle.

But in a civil society we must maintain some actual civility when we do so. Violence is not the answer. Vitriol is not the answer. Civil dialogue and discussion which lead to political compromise is the way forward, and the way to better government for all of us. Without civility, anarchy, violence and chaos rule the day, and this cannot be the governmental and societal legacy that we leave our children.

To ensure that government functions smoothly, we need to elect people of good character, who wish to serve the American people, and not themselves. We need a free press which reports on corruption and holds politicians accountable for what they do, not just what propaganda their campaign puts out. It is up to every individual citizen to determine what that means when they cast their ballots, but we should all want honest people with integrity and decency and honor in positions of power, who hold the rule of law as the most important foundation of our government, and apply it equally to themselves as to anyone else.

What the Constitution does not protect is violence as a means of political expression.

Violence is the language of thugs, criminals, and people who mean to strike terror in the heart of the American populace to turn that fear to their own political ends. We need to stand up - together, regardless of party or affiliation - and say in one voice, as Americans, that violence and threats will not be tolerated in our politics. Period.