How 'Hands up' becomes 'Dead cops!'

Second police car burns in Ferguson

Bestselling author Jack Cashill is back with his most timely book yet, "Scarlet Letters: The Ever-Increasing Intolerance of the Cult of Liberalism Exposed."

And Cashill, a WND columnist, is pulling no punches over what he calls the unholy rise of progressive neo-puritanism.

As in old-school puritanism, worshipers achieve a sense of moral worth simply by designating themselves among "the elect" – no good works required.

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To validate that status, they heap abuse upon the sinner lest they be thought indifferent to the sin, he says.

Rather than simply cataloging the neo-puritan assaults on reason and liberty, "Scarlet Letters" illustrates how the progressive movement has come to mimic a religion in its structure but not at all in its spirit while profiling brave individuals such as Clarence Thomas, Aayan Hirsi Ali, Camille Paglia and many lesser known truth-tellers who have dared to take a stand against this inquisition.

Released by WND Books, "Scarlet Letters" shows in detail how an allegedly "liberal" movement has become what can only be described as bizarrely punitive and inquisitional.

Exclusively at WND, you can read here the second chapter of "Scarlet Letters":

"The Scarlet A: Avenging Angels"

By Jack Cashill

Avenging Angels

In the early morning hours of December 20, 2014, after shooting his girlfriend in the stomach, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, an ex-con and aspiring jihadist, boarded a bus in Baltimore bound for New York City. He was a man on a mission. After arriving in New York, Brinsley posted online precisely what that mission was. "I'm putting wings on pigs today," he wrote. "They take 1 of ours ... let's take 2 of theirs." His post cited two men whom the media had improbably elevated to martyrdom in the last few months, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and closed with a much-too-accurate prediction, "I'm putting pigs in a blanket."

Two hours later, Brinsley secured his own place in the hard-left pantheon when he shot and killed NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos before taking his own life. Brinsley's jihad followed a month of marches and less savory madness, the most visible in those cities with a hard-left base – San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, New York. Five days earlier, on New York's Fifth Avenue, marchers abandoned the passive "Hands up, don't shoot" mantra for the proactive "What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!" They did not have to wait long before they got their way.

In an insightful City Journal article, Heather Mac Donald dissected the "big lie" at the heart of this most recent madness, namely, that police pose an ongoing existential threat to black America. "The highest reaches of American society promulgated these untruths and participated in the mass hysteria," wrote Mac Donald. Those reinforcing the lie included New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, Attorney General Holder, President Obama, and just about every media talking head not employed by Fox News. As Mac Donald observed, young black men were at least thirty times more likely to be killed by another young black man than by a police officer and ten times more likely to be murdered than young men of any other race. Said Mac Donald, "None of those killings triggered mass protests; they are deemed normal and beneath notice."

The mass protests, like those around the death of Sacco and Vanzetti, had little to do with racism, less to do with black lives mattering, and nothing to do with solving problems. Protest organizers hoped to cause problems, to provoke reaction, to hasten their long march through the West's institutions. The Comintern may have passed into history, but its evil spawn have lived on. "We will not let recent tragic moments derail this movement," said an unblushing member of the hard-left Answer Coalition after the death of the two NYPD cops. "This is the revolution and we will not be repressed."

The NYPD assassination and other recent events suggest that progressivism may be moving beyond its neo-puritan phase. No longer content to brand enemies with a letter, neo-puritan shock troops now threaten to brand those enemies with bullets. Although the psychos are the ones pulling the trigger – Brinsley in New York, Corkins at the FRC in Washington, Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood – thousands endorse this insanity behind their balaclavas and Twitter tags.

In Europe, the situation is more ominous still. In many countries, the state has already assumed the power to punish unorthodox speech, and Islamic terrorists are ready to make that punishment capital. The murderous January 2015 assault on the Parisian satire magazine "Charlie Hebdo" merely continued a tradition that began with the assassinations of Pim Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh. If the Islamic assassins in Paris, like Brinsley in New York, troubled the more respectable among progressives, it was by getting too far ahead of the moral curve. Their cause may have been just – "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam," Obama reminded the United Nations in September 2012 – but their lack of subtlety was embarrassing.

For all the millions marching in Paris or tweeting "Je suis Charlie" from their Tribeca lofts, what seems undeniable is that "liberalism" of the Atticus Finch school is dead. Today, progressives are not the ones standing outside the jailhouse, shotgun reluctantly in hand, protecting the "mockingbird" within. No, they are the mob in front, clamoring for the mockingbird's head. That mockingbird could be George Zimmerman or Darren Wilson or Brendan Eich or Clarence Thomas or the Duke lacrosse players or Molly Norris or some pariah yet unknown. The neo-puritan hunt for new offenders has not ceased or even slowed.

Almost uniquely among those who have been assigned a scarlet letter in recent years, Phil Robertson seems to understand the religious nature of the conflict at hand. He sees it as one between the "politically correct" and the "biblically correct," between the "new man" of the progressive imagination and the "new creation in Christ" that he and others strive to become. This is the same struggle Solzhenitsyn and Whittaker Chambers identified, but Robertson, unhardened by history, expects to win. He does not fear the enemy. In fact, he does not fear evil. "We're all sinners," he readily concedes. "We never, ever judge someone on who's going to heaven, hell," he told GQ's Magary. "That's the Almighty's job. We just love 'em, give 'em the good news about Jesus – whether they're homosexuals, drunks, terrorists. We let God sort 'em out later."

As Robertson sees things, the "hate" neo-puritans impute to those who resist their call is in reality a hatred of God. He knows whereof he speaks. Robertson was once a hater himself. Now repentant, his goal is not to make enemies. His goal is to make converts. He knows that to make them, he has to be heard. And to be heard, he has to speak out. "I judge no person and condemn no one," says Robertson. "I only want America's culture to change for the better." That change, Robertson knows, will come only when many others do what he does – tell the truth, tell it loudly, and refuse to back down.

Although he sets an excellent example, Robertson does not have voice enough to change the culture. No individual does. To reverse the progressive tide will take a thousand acts of courage or more. It is not a task we can leave to others. We must be more than Charlie Hebdo for a day or two. Every day, we must be the wedding cake maker in Colorado, the cartoonist in Seattle, the cop in New York, the college president in Massachusetts. We must let these good souls know that their scarlet letters are ours. We must stand beside them on their scaffolds and give them courage to hold firm.

If we act soon enough and stand strong enough, we can shame the neo-puritan mob into submission. If we hesitate, it will take a whole lot more than shame.

Click here for your copy of "Scarlet Letters."