As the Kyle Rittenhouse case continues to draw out, I don't know if explosive is the right word, but details continue to come to light. I want to discuss the Rittenhouse case, but in the context of the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan. It seems like a parable that has nothing to do with Rittenhouse, but I think it does.
As the parable goes, the Good Samaritan is a kind of big-hearted guy. He's coming down the road, and he sees a victim who has been beaten up by thieves. He takes care of him, he provides first aid, and he helps him to his feet and helps him get back to normal. The Good Samaritan is commended for providing this kind of solicitude, this kind of aid. It's a morally unambiguous case — who can be against the Good Samaritan? But here's an interesting conundrum, kind of a thought experiment that puts moral reasoning to the test. What if the Good Samaritan had come early when the thieves were beating up the victim? Should he say, "I'm the Good Samaritan, I can't get involved, I'm not going to use violence against violence, I'm going to wait until they finish beating the guy up and then run away, then I'll move in and do my Good Samaritan thing"? Obviously, this would be ridiculous. If the Good Samaritan has the ability and the means, he should intervene and prevent the violence from occurring in the first place.
This brings me to Kyle Rittenhouse. We're having a little bit of a family debate about this, by the way, with my stepdaughter. She's at Texas A&M, and she's picking up from the culture that says, "Kyle Rittenhouse is a bad guy, a vigilante." She's echoing what's been said about the Rittenhouse case for a whole year. For example, Rep. Ayanna Presley called Rittenhouse a 17-year-old white supremacist domestic terrorist who drove across state lines armed with an AR-15. Rep. Ilhan Omar said similarly that Rittenhouse was a domestic terrorist who executed two people.
So this is the mood. And let's remember, Facebook shut down Kyle Rittenhouse's page. PayPal and GoFundMe prevented him from raising money for his defense. It was a coordinated effort to demonize this kid, make him into the bad guy, and, in fact, Republicans sort of kept their distance. The GOP stayed away, and even the NRA stayed away, so this kid has been, in a sense, going through this virtually alone.
The point that my stepdaughter keeps making is: Why was he there? He didn't even have to be there? He doesn't even come from that state; he's not from Kenosha. We grant that, and I suppose it could be said, in her defense, that if I were Kyle Rittenhouse's parent, I would be reluctant to send him — he's only 17 years old at the time, and it would seem to be sort of asking for trouble.
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But everybody who asks, "Why was Kyle Rittenhouse there?" never asks, never thinks about, "Why were the looters there? Why were the rioters there? Why were the arsonists there?" They weren't from Kenosha, they came from other places and many of them came from out of state. They came to cause the trouble that Kyle Rittenhouse was there to sort of tamp down.
The truth of it is that if you're living in a sort of lawless environment where the authorities have backed off and stepped down — either because they don't want to get involved or they don't have the means or ability to stop what's going on — then I would say in that kind of environment we do need people like Kyle Rittenhouse. We may not need 17-year-olds to do it, but we do need people who are going to protect businesses, lives, and the safety of citizens.
Now, as we go into this case, the details are eye-opening at every level. To summarize for people who were born yesterday, Kyle Rittenhouse is accused of gunning down three people, killing two — Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber — and wounding one Gaige Grosskreutz, who has actually been testifying in the trial.
The remarkable thing about this is — I have to commend the video journalists who have been covering this. These are conservatives, and the simple truth of it is these video journalists, in my view, are going to save this kid's life. Why? They recorded what actually happened. If it weren't for them, the prosecution would be lying through its teeth.
Let's look at how the video is playing out in the Rittenhouse case. It's clear that a bunch of people, leftist Antifa types, were chasing Rittenhouse. That's obvious from the video; you can see it. And here comes a detective asserting that no, they're really not chasing Rittenhouse. They were merely running in the same direction. If you didn't have a video, you'd have to trust what the detective said.
Let's turn to Grosskreutz, who, yes, is a medic — but he's also a felon. He's also a mental patient, and he's also a medic with a gun. Why is a medic A) carrying a gun, B) loading his gun, C) pointing the loaded gun at Kyle Rittenhouse? That's when Kyle Rittenhouse shot him because those were the circumstances that led to this. This medic's testimony has an element of comedy because he says at one point that he wasn't trying to hurt Rittenhouse, in fact, he was trying to help Rittenhouse, and the reason he was running toward Rittenhouse and the reason he drew his gun is because he was trying to prevent Rittenhouse from hurting other people or himself. According to Grosskreutz, he wasn't up to any trouble at the scene.
In a nutshell, and the context of this just couldn't be more clear, this guy Grosskreutz at one point, did put his hands up. And no, Rittenhouse didn't shoot him then. It was only when he reached for his loaded gun and pointed it directly at Rittenhouse, that's when Rittenhouse shot him. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is an almost textbook definition of self-defense.
If there's any justice in the world and if there's any justice in that courtroom, Kyle Rittenhouse will walk and will walk because he really did nothing wrong as far as I can see that day. He was, in some respects, the Good Samaritan.
