The Left remains the principle source of post-America's ills

Okay, I've had another 24 hours to sort through all the crossfire and draw a few conclusions:

• White nationalism / white supremacy is a problem and to be oblivious to that is to forfeit at least some credibility as a participant in our nation's polemical discourse.
• Some good people went overboard with the whataboutism charge against those who pointed out the number of shootings and casualties therefrom in Chicago over the weekend. Urban violence is more of a problem than white supremacy, and it gets meager media coverage. 
• Red flag laws should not be dismissed out of hand as a constructive measure, but would have to be crafted with extreme care.
• Donald Trump is not a racist. He does have a reckless mouth / Twitter habit and his remarks often leave him prone to the charge of racism in this age of hyper-sensitivity.
• Leftists / Democrats are going to make every effort to make the racism charge stick in the case of Trump. In fact, it's increasingly clear that they are going to trot out that weapon with anybody who opposes their program.

But I would caution folks to the right of center not to make more of the impact of fringe alt-right activity than is warranted. It's not the equivalent of jihadism and here's why:

The answer can essentially be boiled down to one word, which is freedom. Associating with a foreign terrorist organization is essentially an act of treason. Being a white supremacist jerk, even a potentially violent one, is not. The difference really hinges on the foreign aspect. Foreign-based ISIS organizations do not have a constitutional right to form and operate within the United States. White supremacists do.

It gets us back to the argument - which is no less valid after this past weekend - against hate-crime legislation: the inside of an American citizen's noggin is his or her business. Your thoughts should not be subject to examination by the state.

No, the principal source of societal agitation remains leftist thuggery.

Consider how the New York Times, which commendably originally headlined its story about Trump's speech condemning white-supremacist ideology "Trump Urges Unity vs. Racism." You can't get more objective, more factual than that.

That got them this:

Joan Walsh‏Verified account @joanwalsh

Joan Walsh Retweeted Beto O'Rourke

I canceled my subscription. I know a lot of folks will tell me I'm wrong. I will miss it. But I can't keep rewarding such awful news judgment. "Trump Urges Unity Against Racism" is almost as bad as their full-page Comey letter coverage just before 2016 election. Nobody learns.

And this:

Cory Booker‏Verified account @CoryBooker

Cory Booker Retweeted Nate Silver

Lives literally depend on you doing better, NYT. Please do.

And more along those lines. So they changed the headline to "Assailing Hate But Not Guns."

Meanwhile, the savages were right on the case in Louisville:

Twenty to thirty left-wing agitators gathered outside of Senator Mitch McConnell's house in Louisville, Kentucky, Monday night and made a ruckus to agitate for gun control in the wake of two mass shootings that roiled the nation over the weekend.

In addition to gun reform, one activist told WHAS11 News that the protesters also wanted to address immigration and LGBTQ rights.

The protesters told the local media they had been trying to reach the Senate Majority Leader but he hadn't answered his phone. McConnell has been convalescing at his home since he fractured his shoulder in a fall on Sunday.

One of the agitators, a local Black Lives Matter leader ostensibly upset about gun violence, said on Facebook Live that she hoped someone would “just stabs the mother f*cker in the heart, please.”

Protesters chanted, rang cowbells, banged drums and scraped shovels across the sidewalk in an effort to disturb the senator's peace while several Louisville Metro Police officers monitored the situation from their squad car on the street. McConnell's security detail stood in front of the house to make sure none of the rabble-rousers got too close.

Actual conservatives don't behave anything remotely like this.  For that matter, neither do Trumpists.

Trumpists do skirt the possibilities of responses to leftist thuggery outside the bounds of accepted norms by chiding conservatives for insisting on behavior that upholds civilization, pointing out that the Left no longer has any regard for agreed-upon rules of disagreement. But conservatism by definition is not going to be goaded into mob tactics.

I'm glad I didn't have a whole lot to say about any of this for a couple of days. It would have been gratifying indeed to let loose with a barrage of hot takes and then defend them against all comers, but self-restraint wasn't really that hard to exercise since the immutable principles involved are no less immutable just because a lot of people stake out territory that they then have had to scramble to defend.

The fine line to be walked is what it has been for some time: We want neither to be incendiary just for the sake of being obnoxious ("owning the libs") nor to refrain from stating plain truths about matters such as illegal aliens and ungodly sexuality.

It requires having one's wits about one, because the attempts to distort such a position will come fast and furious. As will the threats and even attacks.

Courage and clarity are going to be indispensable going forward.