OPINION:
On June 28, 1914, 19-year-old Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, triggering one of the deadliest conflicts in world history: World War I.
Last month, we became dangerously close to another young man changing the course of world history through his attempted assassination of Republican presidential front-runner and former President Donald Trump. Whatever your political beliefs may be, it is paramount that we understand the impact we are having on our nation’s youth. Proverbs 22:6 tells us the same, saying, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
This 20-year-old attacker was 11 years old when Mr. Trump first came down the escalator at Trump Tower and spent the next years being flooded with rhetoric about how our republic was on the verge of collapse through the Trump presidency.
Donald Trump, the dictator, the fascist, the threat to democracy, the racist, the second coming of Hitler. Insert any despicable pejorative you can think of, and you would match both the rhetoric and tone of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media for the past eight years when discussing Mr. Trump. Words have power, and in Butler, Pennsylvania, we witnessed the consequences of those words. The attempt on Mr. Trump’s life is the culmination of nearly a decade of extreme rhetoric from the Democrats — echoed by their allies in the mainstream media — who essentially raised a killer and pointed him directly at Donald Trump, the father, husband and presidential candidate.
Some in the media and across the political spectrum have suggested that it is too soon to begin discussing the rhetoric that preceded this event. But I endeavor to hold people accountable, and accountability starts at the top. Last December, President Biden posted on X: “Trump poses many threats to our country: The right to choose, civil rights, voting rights, and America’s standing in the world. But the greatest threat he poses is to our democracy. If we lose that, we lose everything.”
Even more recently, Mr. Biden posted a video with the caption “Donald Trump is the greatest threat to our democracy.” Contrast those statements with Mr. Biden’s recent news conference in which he said he had spoken with Mr. Trump and stated that “there is no place in America for this kind of violence,” yet refused to address the part his rhetoric may have played in this event.
Moreover, it is not just Mr. Biden who bears responsibility for this violence. Others in elected office, such as Rep. Maxine Waters, who encouraged her supporters to harass Trump allies and recently accused Mr. Trump of being on a “mission to destroy democracy,” are worthy of condemnation as well. Others outside of political office have echoed the same militant rhetoric, such as MSNBC’s Joy Reid, who, just a few weeks ago, stated defiantly that she would “vote for Biden in a coma to avoid Hitler in the White House.”
Studies examine the impact of social media on the minds of our youth, so why pretend or ignore how this rhetoric — that was published and amplified across social media — is radicalizing our nation’s youth? Unfortunately, I believe there are more extremists and unstable people lurking, waiting for the opportunity to etch their nation into history as the person who stopped America’s decline into fascism — as suggested by the Democratic Party and the media.
Though their words in the physical realm bear much of the blame, an underlying spiritual battle is also taking place across this nation. It was Christ’s hand that saved Mr. Trump, and his survival is nothing short of a miracle. The unfolding of events is as unlikely as divine intervention. We all must repent if we are to align ourselves with righteousness and truly defend our country and our future.
As is told to Christ’s people in Malachi 4:6, “He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.” It is time to save our children, our country and our future.
• Jack Brewer is an evangelical philanthropist and chairman of the America First Policy Institute’s Center for Opportunity Now.
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