Domestic Terrorism in Charlottesville?

Yesterday a young woman in Charlottesville, VA,  lost her life while “walking across the street,” during a “protest” or maybe it was a “counter-protest.” May she rest in peace. Sincere condolences to her family. We pray for them all. May they find justice. True justice, which means the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Also in Virginia yesterday, a State Patrol helicopter crashed and two troopers perished. Condolences to and prayers for their families, also.

Presidents Thomas Jefferson (whose iconic home, Monticello, is shown above) and James Madison lived in Charlottesville, VA.  A heavily Democratic city today, both the mayor of Charlottesville and the governor of VA are Democrats.

The mayor has already blamed President Trump for the violence, although the seeds of these protests were planted by progressives who decided to make Charlottesville politically correct by removing a statue of General Robert E. Lee and by renaming two parks, one of which carried Lee’s name and the other the name of General Stonewall Jackson.

These decisions were made last year, while Barack Obama was president. The Taliban-like purges of symbols of the Confederacy began throughout the country after the Charleston Church shootings, which happened more than two years ago.

The group that gathered to protest the removal of Lee’s statue had a permit, issued by the city government. When the city, under pressure, tried to change the terms of the permit at the last minute, a judge ruled that out of order, so the protesters who gathered yesterday did not constitute an “unlawful assembly,” as reported. At least not until the governor of the state, Terry McAuliffe (rumored to be running for the presidency), decided to declare a state of emergency only moments before the protest was scheduled to begin, trying to accomplish by fiat what the judge had prevented–thereby stifling the free speech rights of those with whom he disagreed, on the excuse that their mere presence incited violence.

Blaming the victim. A tactic we see on college campuses, where conservative speakers are banned lest the leftist thought police go violently berserk in response, as they are wont to do.

A 20-year-old young man has been arrested on suspicion of deliberately ramming his car into “counter-protesters,” and allegedly causing the death of the young woman. Although he’s already been called guilty and condemned as a “domestic terrorist” by people who should know better–because one is still innocent until proved guilty in this country–nobody has yet even heard his version of what happened. Was it deliberate, as so many already claim? Was it an accident? What really happened?

One thing that is undoubtedly true–the powers that be on social media are scrubbing truth before anyone can learn it. There once was a video showing so-called “peaceful counter-protesters” immediately attacking the young man’s car after the crash, rushing into the street with clubs, crawling over his car, smashing the car windows. The car then accelerated backwards, perhaps so the driver could escape this violent mob and preserve his own life. It’s unclear at what point the young woman was struck or by whom.

This raises at least the possibility that the driver acted in self-defense after a traffic accident and that those who were attacking him may be as responsible for the death of the young woman as the driver. Unfortunately, but not unsurprisingly, the video has now been disappeared, supposedly because it contained “violent or graphic content.”

Let’s hope his defense attorneys find copies of all the videos, because his family, her family, and all Americans deserve to know the truth. There’s another version of the video here, so long as it remains online. (Warning, it is difficult to watch.)

It’s hard to discern what happened. Three different automobiles came down the street. It’s unclear which first struck the people who were marching and loitering in the street. It’s also unclear what happened before the cars came down the street.

Were the drivers being menaced by the mob? Why weren’t the streets closed off? Why weren’t protesters kept out of the street? Have the authorities learned nothing over the years about how to deal with these types of confrontations? Have they learned nothing since Ferguson, since Berkeley? Why weren’t the two groups kept apart? So many questions, so few answers forthcoming.

There have been reports that counter-protesters arrived at the so-called peaceful protests in body armor and helmets, wearing masks, carrying sticks and clubs (as easily seen in the disappeared video), and toting soda cans filled with hardened cement as well as pepper spray and tear gas, which they used to attack the “legal” protesters, who did have a permit to assemble. Did counter-protesters have a permit? Apparently some did, for a different location.

President Trump has been criticized by politicians on the left as well as by many in the biased mainstream media for deploring the violence and hatred evidenced by all sides yesterday.

In their opinion, he ought to have criticized only one side–the original protesters, those the media and some politicians label as “white supremacists.” Strange, isn’t it, that they don’t label Black Lives Matter counter-protesters as black supremacists, nor do they even report much about black-on-white racial violence.

Expecting the president to choose up sides when he’s the president of all, expecting him to condemn violence only on one side of the political spectrum, is reminiscent of those who claim that simply saying “ALL lives matter” is somehow equivalent to saying “black lives don’t matter.”

Even mainstream media reporters (those who retain a modicum of objectivity) have reported that both sides, including and especially the “antifa” counter-protesters, engaged in violence yesterday. The VA State Police spokesperson agreed with President Trump, saying:

We were hoping that it would not elevate to this level of the violence that we witnessed amongst the participants, in the crowds, on all sides.

(She’ll probably lose her job now.)

It’s also reported that the police stood down and did not even try to stop the violence because, in their opinion, it was “too dangerous” for them to intervene. However, it’s far more likely that they stood down because, as in Ferguson, MO, they had been ordered to stand down by progressive higher authorities who hoped to make political hay out of these events, yet that backfired when events quickly spiraled out of control.

It behooves us all to ask and to search out the answer to this question:

Who were the domestic terrorists in Charlottesville?

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