Often, with events, people want to simplify a complex matter. For example, with the murder of Charlie Kirk, many are being fired because they only view Kirk through a narrow thread of politics. The loss of life of a debater, a religious man, and a father does not get factored in for such people. At the same time, there should be a level of mercy to allow people to correct their errors.
But this is also true of past events. Congressman Don Bacon favored a change to the National Defense Authorization Act, prohibiting the Department of Defense from naming military assets after Confederate leaders and requiring the establishment of a Naming Commission. This was stupid because it judged many people through a very narrow viewpoint of one war instead of their full contributions to America.
For example, General Braxton Bragg, according to Wikipedia, was a West Point graduate and served in the Second Seminole War and the Mexican–American War, where he gained recognition for bravery and discipline, particularly at the Battle of Buena Vista. After the Mexican–American War, Bragg was admired for his tactics and discipline. This is taking nearly word-for-word from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braxton_Bragg). Yet Fort Bragg has to have a name change because he served in the Confederate forces. Perhaps Washington DC should be rename Floyd DC after George Floyd since George Washington owned slaves.
At the same time, Bacon rightly takes issue with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Yet, he ignores his hypocrisy in failing to realize: the Union invaded the Confederacy.
So to the point of this essay. Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute put out a report stating most political violence comes from the “right” (https://www.cato.org/blog/politically-motivated-terrorist-killers-data-sources-methodology). This ”study” is a sloppy put-together of scattered data. First, the study arrogantly presumes it can sort killings based on the vague terms of “right wing” and “left wing”.
For example, Richard Snell is listed as “right wing,” but only in the laziest way can he even come close to fitting such a definition. This is like calling Decarlos Brown Junior, a Black man, a left winger for stabbing a white woman to death, happily declaring he killed a white woman. Extremism often is hard to categorize in political terms as it involves crime, yet Nowrasteh plows on.
David Nolan, who was one of the founders of the Libertarian Party, would object to Nowrasteh’s framework, as should anyone familiar with the Nolan chart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart). Instead, Nowrasteh takes Nolan's chart and perverts it like so:
In addition, the study covers too many decades to be relevant and is highly misleading because the scope and focus of organizations have changed. How the USA went from President Obama’s and Trump’s strong anti-immigration stances to Biden’s open border approach, but back to Trump’s merely closing the border is enough to cause people whiplash. This is why extending this study beyond a decade makes the study untenable.
But the worst part of the study is the flat avoidance of the vast array of intimidation used in politics by merely focusing on deaths. Tim Pool, a podcaster, has been attacked many times and says he is liberal. Does this mean the attacks on him are from the right? Considering how much he criticizes the progressives, the attacks are coming from the left. Yet these do not register in the Cato study.
There is also the matter of Andy Ngo (https://www.andy-ngo.com/), who was attacked for merely exposing Antifa. He has been labeled right-wing merely for pointing out the violence. Again, this does not register in the Cato study. Yet, he has written a book about this problem with the left.
Complicated as it may seem, people can learn about the complexity of human existance if they take the time to listen, and contemplate instead of being too strident and judgemental.