Last week, The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway somberly observed, “As bad as Jay Jones is, knowing that my neighbors genuinely support him as AG while wishing death on Republicans and their children is far worse.”
On Tuesday, Virginians (or rather Richmond and the suburbs of Washington, DC) elected Jay Jones as their attorney general — a man who explicitly said he would happily kill his Republican colleague. Jones is now the top lawman in Virginia, which seems like a direct endorsement of his threats.
What do you do when your neighbors want you dead because of your political beliefs?
We can correctly diagnose the sources. We can say that the media and politicians have dehumanized conservatives. We can say that the education system has successfully indoctrinated our kids. We can even say that brain rot has been brought on by social media consumption.
Is the impetus on us to try to change their minds? Obviously. But how?
Killing Them With Kindness
Keep being a good neighbor. Help when you can and knit your community back together. The point of this exercise is to humanize yourself to your neighbor because the media, the politicians, and social media have gone to great lengths to dehumanize conservatives. We have lost common ground on so many issues, and the result is tribalism. It’s a little bit more difficult for your neighbor to want you dead if you helped him start his car yesterday or brought him food while he was recovering from sickness.
In the Bible, Jesus constantly encourages us to love our enemies. Luke 6:35 says, “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.”
This option is the one that takes the longest — and is the hardest. There’s no guarantee that any kindness will change your leftist neighbor’s heart. But it also tends to have the longest-lasting effects because a community that works together and has each other’s best interests in mind keeps the most extreme voices in their place.
Take the Kirk Route. Start Talking.
The late conservative activist Charlie Kirk famously said:
When people stop talking, really bad stuff starts. When marriages stop talking, divorce happens. When civilizations stop talking, civil war ensues. When you stop having a human connection with someone you disagree with, it becomes a lot easier to want to commit violence against that group. What we as a culture have to get back to is being able to have reasonable disagreement — where violence is not an option.
This, as we all know, is a route fraught with danger. It will put you in harm’s way — indeed, it culminated in Kirk’s assassination — but it may also give you and your community a chance to find common ground, to talk about what’s important, and to figure out how to live together. Right-leaning and left-leaning people often live on two different planets in terms of religion and worldview and morality. This duality is often played up by media narratives to further divide in order to forward a political agenda.
What we all need to figure out is what we can agree on and go from there. This may mean going back to basic questions like: What is a human? What is a good life?
Kirk really was a master at humanizing himself and debating his opponents with civility and respect. What his career proved is that people are more likely to change their minds when they are treated with dignity. He also showed that debating is a skill that anybody can become better at with education and practice.
Kirk’s highly direct method of confrontation is not necessarily meant for everyone because God has given us different gifts. But talking is a good way to fight back in a winsome and powerful way.
Move
Leaving a neighborhood, city, or state where you don’t have a community might also be an option. It’s a practical and pragmatic one that serves the individual and immediate concerns of the threatened conservative.
However, this isn’t an option for everyone, and it’s certainly the option of last resort. It’s for those who are losing their rights, their political voice, and their freedoms as a result of aggression by their leftist neighbors. The unfortunate heavy price is the further tribalization of the country.
Fight Back
I hope and pray that it never comes to this, but some on the Left actually believe that conservatives are the enemy and will resort to violence. They have imbibed a steady diet of “Trump supporters are Nazis, racists, bigots, and tyrants” dogma and are primed and ready to eliminate the existential threat: you, their conservative neighbor.
If physically attacked, defending yourself is within the bounds of the law. However, to reach this extreme means that the societal bonds listed above to bring about peace have totally broken down. It is the worst situation of all.
Concluding Thoughts
My favorite verse is 2 Timothy 1:7: “For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” In these times when the threat seems great, do not give in to fear and all that comes with it. Fear does not come from God and therefore will not lead us where we want to go, both personally and as a society.
Living with the fact that there could be neighbors who want you dead might induce fear. Do not give in to it. Stay strong and fight for our America — the one where we can disagree vehemently but still go grab a beer. The one where we argue, but at the heart of it, we want what’s best for one another.
I’ll end with a quote from Christian political commentator Allie Beth Stuckey: “Do the next right thing in faith, with excellence, and for the glory of God…that’s all we can do and that’s enough.”
