By: Charles C. W. Cooke – nationalreview.com – December 9, 2024

Everyone has grievances, but no one is exempt from the rules of our constitutional order.

The murder of Brian Thompson, the late CEO of UnitedHealthcare, has been met in certain quarters with two disgraceful responses — one explicitly grotesque, the other implicitly so. The explicitly grotesque response has been to openly cheer Thompson’s death on the grounds that he deserved to die. This reaction has come largely from figures on social media who believe themselves to be proto revolutionaries. The implicitly grotesque response has been to declare that one is against assassination, but that one comprehends it — and perhaps even sympathizes with it — nevertheless. This reaction has been much more broadly on display than the other, having appeared in established outlets such as CNN, CBS, and the New York Times, as well as in the Twitter feeds of academics at Columbia and elsewhere. Within the mainstream press, only the Washington Post has found the decency to condemn the killing without reservation. “There is no justification,” the paper’s editorial board submitted this weekend, “for taking a life in this manner.”

So obvious ought that presumption to be that one should feel dirty for developing the thought any further. To ask “why” a human being was murdered in cold blood is to imply that there exists a sufficient reason for the act. There does not, and I have no interest in negotiating with those who disagree. What I will do, however, is attempt to convey to those figures exactly why their reactions are so iniquitous and so misplaced — and, indeed, why condemnation of it is the prerequisite to a functioning civil society. The Post concludes its excellent rejoinder by observing, “This violent attack on one man is really an attack on society itself.” That is correct.

Why? Well, because everyone — yes, everyone — has grievances, and there is nothing within our social compact that permits a small subset of them to exempt themselves from its elementary standards. In other countries, where some or all of the medical system has been socialized, it is politicians, rather than private insurers, who deny or delay or ration health care. Were America to adopt such a system, there would remain many Brian Thompsons, but, instead of being called “CEO,” they would be called “senator,” “representative,” “director of Health and Human Services” or the like. To establish the principle that one may take revenge against anyone who is obliged to deal with scarcity would be to greenlight the routine assassination of the elected or appointed officials who would take responsibility in an altered status quo. Is that what we want?

Those who have committed themselves to the maximalist defense of Thompson’s killing would presumably either respond “yes” to the inquiry, or make some specious distinction based on their misunderstanding of the profit margin. The weaker apologists, by contrast, will shrink back into their chairs. But they, too, ought to engage in some self-reflection, for it seems extremely obvious that, were the circumstances different, they would not have got as close as they did to making excuses for the worst of all crimes. The New York Times, in particular, has been keen to inform its readers about the “hate,” “anger,” “frustration,” and “rage” against health insurance providers that supposedly exists abroad in the land. If pushed to explain this tack, its editors would likely claim that the paper is merely stating a fact. But surely one cannot imagine that this approach would have been taken if Brian Thompson had been the CEO of, say, ABC News. Unlike with health insurance, it is an indisputable fact that a supermajority of Americans “hate” the legacy media, and that a minority of Americans exhibit “anger,” “frustration,” and “rage” toward it. Do we really think that, following the killing of a prominent media executive, the Times would have commissioned a series of indulgent pieces pointing to the legitimate feelings that culminated in an illegitimate act? Or do we think that, in such a circumstance, the Times would have recognized the evil inherent in adopting that perspective, and, instead, reminded their readers that even the most disdained human beings do not deserve to be killed?

As a matter of fact, one does not need to range outside of the health care realm to construct a useful hypothetical. In one of the Times’ many craven pieces on the topic, a doctor proposes that Thompson’s assassination “reignited people’s contempt for their health plans,” and that this “matters for how it lays bare Americans’ deep-seated anger toward health care.” Well, just 15 years ago, the United States had a president, Barack Obama, who inspired precisely these emotions in a majority of the country’s voters. Between 2009 and 2014, this country was riven by “contempt” and “deep-seated” anger toward the Affordable Care Act. Its opponents staged massive protests, they held raucous town halls, they griped to every pollster who would listen, and, in 2010, they delivered an electoral shellacking to Obama’s political party. If, in addition to all that, a mysterious figure had put three bullets into the president — perhaps with “Keep” “Your” “Doctor” inscribed on them — would the Times have explicated the act as if it were an understandable response to the immutable facts of the universe, or would it have attacked those who had exhibited any opposition whatsoever to Obama’s plan as having been accessories to the crime? I think we know the answer.

Our prohibition on murder is absolute. It is not contingent on the nature of the victim, or upon his assumed politics, or upon the legal actions he takes within a complicated social system that, by its very nature, is liable to inspire passionate debate. That being so, it remains the responsibility of every citizen who cherishes our constitutional order to understand that they have been accorded no exceptions to its rules, and that their denunciations of unlawful violence must thus stop long before they get to the “

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Source: The Left’s Grotesque Response to Murdered Health Care CEO Brian Thompson | National Review