Earlier this week I wrote about something that should have shocked the entire country: two radicalized young men attempted to throw improvised explosive devices into a group of demonstrators in New York City.
Let me repeat that.
They tried to blow them up.
The demonstrators were protesting the ongoing shutdown of public spaces in New York for large-scale Islamic prayer gatherings and amplified calls to prayer broadcast through city streets.
You can debate the tone of the protest. Some moderates I spoke with afterward pointed out that the “pork roast” the demonstrators held beforehand was intentionally provocative. I’ll concede the point. It wasn’t exactly designed to calm tensions.
But let’s be honest about something.
Being provocative is not the same thing as throwing bombs.
One is speech.
The other is terrorism.
Yet in the hours after the attack attempt, much of the national media behaved as if that distinction were somehow difficult to grasp.
Instead of clearly identifying the attack for what it was, some outlets hedged. Others treated the motive as “unclear.” The tone suggested confusion rather than clarity.
And then came the moment that perfectly encapsulated the problem.
CNN host Abby Phillip stated that the incident was somehow directed against New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, rather than acknowledging that the intended targets were the demonstrators themselves.
That claim quickly unraveled.
Even Phillip later acknowledged the reporting was incorrect after pushback and clarification on social media.
But by then the damage was already done.
This is the pattern.
When violent extremism emerges in certain ideological contexts, the press becomes strangely hesitant. Words are softened. Motives become murky. Responsibility is diluted.
But when violence comes from other directions, the language becomes immediate and definitive.
That inconsistency is not journalism.
It’s narrative management.
Now let me address the criticism from some of my moderate friends who read my earlier column.
They objected to my description of the demonstrators as “pro-American.”
Their argument was simple: if the protest included intentionally provocative elements like a pork roast, perhaps that label was too generous.
Fair enough.
I’m willing to concede that the protest itself wasn’t exactly designed to foster interfaith harmony.
But here’s the part that cannot be lost in the debate.
No matter how offensive someone finds a protest, attempting to blow them up crosses an absolute line.
There is no moral equivalence.
You can criticize someone’s speech.
You cannot answer it with explosives.
Yet in the media coverage that followed, the outrage often seemed directed more toward the demonstrators than toward the individuals who attempted to carry out the attack.
That inversion tells us something deeply troubling about the current media environment.
Too many journalists now approach stories with pre-written moral hierarchies.
Certain groups are presumed virtuous.
Others are presumed suspect.
And facts get bent accordingly.
But beyond the media malpractice lies a deeper cultural question — one that Americans increasingly feel but are often discouraged from saying aloud.
There is a profound difference between belief systems that respond to disagreement with coercion or violence and belief systems that respond to disagreement with persuasion, sacrifice, and grace.
The Christian faith, at its center, is built around the story of a Savior who laid down His life for others — including those who rejected Him.
Jesus Christ did not command armies.
He carried a cross.
He did not call for revenge against His enemies.
He prayed for them.
“Father, forgive them,” He said, “for they know not what they do.”
That is not weakness.
That is moral authority.
And it stands in stark contrast to ideologies that treat perceived insults as justification for violence.
Free societies can only survive if that distinction remains clear.
Because if every offense becomes grounds for retaliation — if speech becomes provocation and provocation becomes justification for violence — then the very idea of civil discourse collapses.
This is why the First Amendment exists.
Not to protect polite speech.
But to protect speech that someone, somewhere finds offensive.
The demonstrators in New York may have been provocative.
They may have been crude.
They may have said things that offended others.
But they were still exercising the freedoms that define America.
And those freedoms cannot survive if journalists, politicians, and cultural gatekeepers refuse to defend them consistently.
The media’s job is not to soften reality.
It is to clarify it.
Two individuals attempted to use explosives against a group of protesters.
That is terrorism.
It is not confusion.
It is not ambiguity.
It is not a misunderstanding.
And the willingness of parts of the media to blur that reality is precisely why so many Americans no longer trust them.
Because when the facts become inconvenient, too many journalists reach for narratives instead.
But the truth doesn’t disappear just because it makes someone uncomfortable.
Violence against peaceful demonstrators must be condemned without hesitation.
Free speech must be defended even when it offends.
And the moral difference between a faith built on sacrifice and ideologies that justify coercion should never be obscured.
Because when bombs are thrown at people for speaking their minds, the question is no longer whether the protest was polite.
The question becomes whether America still believes in freedom.
If journalists cannot bring themselves to say plainly that violence against demonstrators is terrorism, then they have abandoned the very profession they claim to practice. If political leaders are more comfortable condemning offensive speech than attempted murder, then they have forgotten what their oath requires.
Free societies do not survive long when violence is excused and truth is blurred.
And this is where the deeper moral contrast becomes impossible to ignore.
At the center of Christianity stands a Savior who responded to hatred by giving His life for those who hated Him. Jesus Christ did not demand the death of His critics. He endured death Himself to redeem them. His kingdom advances not through bombs or intimidation, but through grace, sacrifice, and truth.
That is not weakness. That is the foundation of Western civilization.
So no, there is no confusion here. There is no moral equivalence. And there is certainly no mystery about what happened in New York.
Two radicals tried to silence speech with violence.
The media tried to soften the story.
But the American people can still see the difference between intimidation and liberty, between propaganda and truth, between fear and faith.
And in the end, that difference leads to only one conclusion.
Jesus Christ is the King of Kings.
Full stop.