On Friday, in speaking of the previous night’s atrocity, President Obama said, “I believe that I speak for every single American when I say that we are horrified over these events and that we stand united with people and the police department in Dallas.” One need only wade ankle-deep into some of the more septic regions of the Internet to know that not all Americans share this sentiment, and that indeed there are those who have no qualms about taking to Twitter and elsewhere to laud the killer and celebrate his crimes. But why?
Perhaps it is because they have been led to believe the lies peddled by the Black Lives Matter movement, to wit, that the greatest menace to black people in America is that posed by racist and trigger-happy police officers looking for the merest excuse to gun them down. Just before the shooting began in Dallas, marchers were repeating what has become the standard chant at such events: “Hands up, don’t shoot.” This of course is what Michael Brown is falsely claimed to have said before he was shot to death in Ferguson, Mo. When the truth finally emerged, that Brown had committed a robbery and attempted to disarm the officer who shot him, it was too late to stop the lie that persists to this day.
And it persists, sadly, with the aid of President Obama himself, who, even as he spoke on the horrors in Dallas, could not resist the impulse to refer to the “racial disparities in our criminal justice system.” These disparities are a myth, and the president either knows this and lies about it, or he is so steeped in leftist ideology that he is content to remain ignorant of the truth.
Proof of this truth is laid out in Heather Mac Donald’s new book, The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe, which couldn’t have been published at a more opportune time. The book was already selling well for one of its type, but after Mac Donald’s appearance on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program on Friday, it rose from number 480 on Amazon’s list of bestsellers to number 2 in a matter of hours. My review of the book will appear in the next issue of National Review, but I’ll summarize it here by saying Mac Donald’s research was thorough, and that she is on solid ground when she asserts that “the Black Lives Matter movement is a fraud.”
I am aware that the toxic opinions expressed in the Twitter posts linked above are held by a tiny minority of Americans, but as was proven in Dallas, even one man alone can do a lot of damage. On Friday, police officers were shot in Valdosta, Ga., and Ballwin, Mo. We can find some satisfaction in knowing that as of this writing both officers are alive and their attackers are in custody, but that satisfaction is tempered in the knowledge that these attacks will surely not be the last.