Over the past several months hundreds, if not thousands, of acts of violence have been perpetrated against the Tesla Corporation and its creator, Elon Musk. Tesla auto dealerships have been torched and vandalized and thousands of individually owned Tesla automobiles have been vandalized and defaced. Literally thousands of Tesla cars have been damaged or defaced with graffiti condemning Elon Musk as a Nazi or the car as a “Swasticar.”
The irony here is that until very recently Elon Musk was a “darling” of the left because of how environmentally friendly Tesla cars were. Teslas had become what Volvos became in the 1960s, the trendy car of the “touchy-feely” left.
Now, Elon Musk has become an arch-villain of the left. Why? First, Musk became the driving force behind the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which has been the instrument used by the Trump Administration to expose mind-boggling waste in federal government expenditures.
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Second, Elon Musk bought X, formerly known as Twitter, thus severely limiting the Biden Administration’s ability to continue censoring social media of conservative speech. Many people believe that without Musk having purchased Twitter, and making public the manifest attempts to exercise censorship by the Biden Administration, President Trump would not have won the 2024 election.
Whatever is motivating the manifest animosity toward Mr. Musk, the violent expression of that opposition to Mr. Musk is both illegal and profoundly disturbing. This nationwide outburst of violence is yet one more disturbing evidence that increasing segments of the American population have rejected the rule of law and embraced violence as a legitimate alternative.
This societal slide into the mainstreaming of violence as legitimate political speech has been gathering force and metastasizing for decades. The violence generated in conjunction with the “Black Lives Matter” movement in 2020 illustrated the exponential growth in the acceptance of violence as legitimate political expression. The groundswell of popular support for alleged New York assassin Luigi Mangione and death threats against U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi for seeking the death penalty for Mangione underscores the extent to which the acceptance of politically motivated violence has poisoned our culture.
As Americans, we must heed these danger signals and collectively, vehemently reject this destructive development. The widespread acceptance of violent behavior as a legitimate form of political protest will inevitably undermine the rule of law which is the bedrock foundation of our whole system of government. The “rule of law” is the widespread acceptance that people obey the law, even when they disagree with it, and do not take unto themselves the “right” to protest by employing violence.
The rule of law (rather than the tyranny of a majority or a minority) is codified in the Constitution. Its glorious “Bill of Rights” is the bedrock of the American system and philosophy of government.
A classic example of how the system works and why it is the wonder of the world is Bush v. Gore in 2000. As many of you will remember, the 2000 presidential election came down to whether Bush or Gore would be awarded the electoral votes in the state of Florida. The case eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court and they ruled 5 to 4 that Bush won.
Polls at the time showed that about 4 out of 5 Gore voters disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision, but they accepted it and moved on, determining to make a more convincing argument in the next election.
There were probably not more than five or ten nations in the world where the Bush v. Gore election would have been decided as peacefully as it was in America. I seriously doubt a Bush v. Gore scenario would be decided as peacefully today as it was in 2000.
So how do we combat the assault of political violence on the rule of law? We need to return to an emphasis on rejecting violence and accepting the rule of law.
What do we do if we fundamentally disagree with a government action or law? The First Amendment to the Constitution says that we have “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Please note it says “peaceably.” Evidently, some Americans need to be reminded of this. After all, during the violent days of the Black Lives Matter protests, ABC and CNN commentator Chris Cuomo actually asked, “Who said the protests had to be peaceful?” The answer is, the Constitution, Chris.
Fortunately, we have a truly inspirational example of how to protest peacefully what we believe to be unjust laws. That example, of course, is the incomparable Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Confronted with the manifest injustices of the Jim Crow segregation system, he deployed the strategy of nonviolent protests. As Dr. King explained in his magnificent “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” he was in jail because he refused to obey what he believed to be an “unjust law.” He did not employ violence, but sought peaceful redress and then peacefully went to jail.
One of the facts that gave “the Letter from the Birmingham Jail” its moral power and conviction was that it was written from the Birmingham jail, not the Birmingham Hilton.
Dr. King’s nonviolent, peaceful protests forced Americans to confront the moral hypocrisy of Jim Crow segregation in “the land of the free.” Without his courageous leadership, and that of the multitudes that were inspired to follow him, America would certainly have had more difficulty ridding itself of segregation and the journey would have been far more violent.
Are there limits to what nonviolent protests can achieve? History would suggest that the ultimate answer is yes. Reportedly, Dr. King was once asked about the conflict between two of his heroes, Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), two of the most famous advocates and practitioners of nonviolent protest. Dr. King was supposedly asked about the fact that Bonhoeffer ultimately abandoned nonviolent protest by agreeing to participate in the unsuccessful plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler.
Dr. King allegedly replied, “If your opponent has a conscience, follow Gandhi. If your enemy has no conscience, then follow Bonhoeffer.”
If Dr. King did not say this, I wish he had. The statement underlies the essential truth that there is a fundamental difference between Gandhi’s opponent (the British Empire) and Bonhoeffer’s opponent (Nazi Germany). Nonviolent resistance eventually led the British to do the right thing and grant India its independence. Nonviolent resistance would not have worked against the personification of evil that was the Third Reich.
The lesson for Americans is clear. Our opponents politically ultimately have a conscience that can be appealed to, and nonviolent protests combined with active participation in the political process will prevail if we can convince enough Americans of the rightness of our cause. Thus, the threshold for resorting to violent protest is much, much, much higher in a country where you can resort to a peaceful political process.
Under any fair standard, the United States of America is a society with an incredibly high bar before resorting to political violence would be justified. We should vigorously resist, by all lawful means, those who would destroy the rule of law by resorting to political violence.
Dr. Richard Land, BA (Princeton, magna cum laude); D.Phil. (Oxford); Th.M (New Orleans Seminary). Dr. Land served as President of Southern Evangelical Seminary from July 2013 until July 2021. Upon his retirement, he was honored as President Emeritus and he continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor of Theology & Ethics. Dr. Land previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) where he was also honored as President Emeritus upon his retirement. Dr. Land has also served as an Executive Editor and columnist for The Christian Post since 2011.
Dr. Land explores many timely and critical topics in his daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive,” and in his weekly column for CP.
Over the past several months hundreds, if not thousands, of acts of violence have been perpetrated against the Tesla Corporation and its creator, Elon Musk. Tesla auto dealerships have been torched and vandalized and thousands of individually owned Tesla automobiles have been vandalized and defaced. Literally thousands of Tesla cars have been damaged or defaced with graffiti condemning Elon Musk as a Nazi or the car as a “Swasticar.”
The irony here is that until very recently Elon Musk was a “darling” of the left because of how environmentally friendly Tesla cars were. Teslas had become what Volvos became in the 1960s, the trendy car of the “touchy-feely” left.
Now, Elon Musk has become an arch-villain of the left. Why? First, Musk became the driving force behind the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which has been the instrument used by the Trump Administration to expose mind-boggling waste in federal government expenditures.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Subscribe to get daily/weekly email with the top stories (plus special offers!) from The Christian Post. Be the first to know.
Second, Elon Musk bought X, formerly known as Twitter, thus severely limiting the Biden Administration’s ability to continue censoring social media of conservative speech. Many people believe that without Musk having purchased Twitter, and making public the manifest attempts to exercise censorship by the Biden Administration, President Trump would not have won the 2024 election.
Whatever is motivating the manifest animosity toward Mr. Musk, the violent expression of that opposition to Mr. Musk is both illegal and profoundly disturbing. This nationwide outburst of violence is yet one more disturbing evidence that increasing segments of the American population have rejected the rule of law and embraced violence as a legitimate alternative.
This societal slide into the mainstreaming of violence as legitimate political speech has been gathering force and metastasizing for decades. The violence generated in conjunction with the “Black Lives Matter” movement in 2020 illustrated the exponential growth in the acceptance of violence as legitimate political expression. The groundswell of popular support for alleged New York assassin Luigi Mangione and death threats against U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi for seeking the death penalty for Mangione underscores the extent to which the acceptance of politically motivated violence has poisoned our culture.
As Americans, we must heed these danger signals and collectively, vehemently reject this destructive development. The widespread acceptance of violent behavior as a legitimate form of political protest will inevitably undermine the rule of law which is the bedrock foundation of our whole system of government. The “rule of law” is the widespread acceptance that people obey the law, even when they disagree with it, and do not take unto themselves the “right” to protest by employing violence.
The rule of law (rather than the tyranny of a majority or a minority) is codified in the Constitution. Its glorious “Bill of Rights” is the bedrock of the American system and philosophy of government.
A classic example of how the system works and why it is the wonder of the world is Bush v. Gore in 2000. As many of you will remember, the 2000 presidential election came down to whether Bush or Gore would be awarded the electoral votes in the state of Florida. The case eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court and they ruled 5 to 4 that Bush won.
Polls at the time showed that about 4 out of 5 Gore voters disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision, but they accepted it and moved on, determining to make a more convincing argument in the next election.
There were probably not more than five or ten nations in the world where the Bush v. Gore election would have been decided as peacefully as it was in America. I seriously doubt a Bush v. Gore scenario would be decided as peacefully today as it was in 2000.
So how do we combat the assault of political violence on the rule of law? We need to return to an emphasis on rejecting violence and accepting the rule of law.
What do we do if we fundamentally disagree with a government action or law? The First Amendment to the Constitution says that we have “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Please note it says “peaceably.” Evidently, some Americans need to be reminded of this. After all, during the violent days of the Black Lives Matter protests, ABC and CNN commentator Chris Cuomo actually asked, “Who said the protests had to be peaceful?” The answer is, the Constitution, Chris.
Fortunately, we have a truly inspirational example of how to protest peacefully what we believe to be unjust laws. That example, of course, is the incomparable Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Confronted with the manifest injustices of the Jim Crow segregation system, he deployed the strategy of nonviolent protests. As Dr. King explained in his magnificent “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” he was in jail because he refused to obey what he believed to be an “unjust law.” He did not employ violence, but sought peaceful redress and then peacefully went to jail.
One of the facts that gave “the Letter from the Birmingham Jail” its moral power and conviction was that it was written from the Birmingham jail, not the Birmingham Hilton.
Dr. King’s nonviolent, peaceful protests forced Americans to confront the moral hypocrisy of Jim Crow segregation in “the land of the free.” Without his courageous leadership, and that of the multitudes that were inspired to follow him, America would certainly have had more difficulty ridding itself of segregation and the journey would have been far more violent.
Are there limits to what nonviolent protests can achieve? History would suggest that the ultimate answer is yes. Reportedly, Dr. King was once asked about the conflict between two of his heroes, Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), two of the most famous advocates and practitioners of nonviolent protest. Dr. King was supposedly asked about the fact that Bonhoeffer ultimately abandoned nonviolent protest by agreeing to participate in the unsuccessful plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler.
Dr. King allegedly replied, “If your opponent has a conscience, follow Gandhi. If your enemy has no conscience, then follow Bonhoeffer.”
If Dr. King did not say this, I wish he had. The statement underlies the essential truth that there is a fundamental difference between Gandhi’s opponent (the British Empire) and Bonhoeffer’s opponent (Nazi Germany). Nonviolent resistance eventually led the British to do the right thing and grant India its independence. Nonviolent resistance would not have worked against the personification of evil that was the Third Reich.
The lesson for Americans is clear. Our opponents politically ultimately have a conscience that can be appealed to, and nonviolent protests combined with active participation in the political process will prevail if we can convince enough Americans of the rightness of our cause. Thus, the threshold for resorting to violent protest is much, much, much higher in a country where you can resort to a peaceful political process.
Under any fair standard, the United States of America is a society with an incredibly high bar before resorting to political violence would be justified. We should vigorously resist, by all lawful means, those who would destroy the rule of law by resorting to political violence.
Dr. Richard Land, BA (Princeton, magna cum laude); D.Phil. (Oxford); Th.M (New Orleans Seminary). Dr. Land served as President of Southern Evangelical Seminary from July 2013 until July 2021. Upon his retirement, he was honored as President Emeritus and he continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor of Theology & Ethics. Dr. Land previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) where he was also honored as President Emeritus upon his retirement. Dr. Land has also served as an Executive Editor and columnist for The Christian Post since 2011.
Dr. Land explores many timely and critical topics in his daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive,” and in his weekly column for CP.
