"She is a public figure and deserves no special dispensation from debate."

In the Federalist, David Harsanyi writes,

Democrats have spent the past two-plus years accusing the president of the United States and his allies of seditiously conspiring with our enemies to destroy “democracy.” For the most part this fairytale has been cynically deployed by politicians to undermine the legitimacy of a Republican presidency, yet millions of Americans now believe their votes were upended by a foreign power. There is no more serious charge against an elected official than treason.

Then again, for decades before the 2016 election, Democrats argued that Republicans were literally killing their fellow Americans when cutting taxes, murdering the sick when rejecting nationalized health care, and sentencing the poor to death when rejecting socialist schemes. Not to mention suppressing the minority vote when asking for ID, engaging in Nazi-like actions when enforcing existing border laws, and destroying the world when failing to embrace a takeover of the economy. And so on.

...Do reporters and columnists consider the safety of the Trump administration before writing critically about them? I hope not. Because free speech—political discourse and good faith political reporting included—shouldn’t be inhibited by prospective actions of third-party nuts. It is imperative, in fact, that we don’t let those nuts undercut our ability to freely express our political disagreements. If Americans pondered the actions of political terrorists every time they took a position, they would only be empowering criminals.

...Let’s remember one of the times we actually saw overt political violence was when progressive activist and Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer attempted to assassinate the entire Republican congressional delegation. As far as I can tell, no one in the media asked Sanders or any other Democrats to temper their political rhetoric about Republicans. If the reverse had occurred we would have been plunged into a national discussion about right-wing rhetoric. (Wait, what am I saying, Republicans are already asked to take responsibility for violent actions of people who have nothing to do with them!)

...Of course, the notion that someone’s color or ethnicity or religion offers them a dispensation from the political debate is one of the most destructive aspects of this debate.

Democrats chose to rally around Omar, celebrating her immigrant story and appearing with her on magazine covers. Now those Democrats are compelled to cover up and rationalize her comments (though we shouldn’t underestimate how popular some of her anti-Jewish tirades and ugly views of America are among progressives). There is no freshman-level Marxist gobbledygook or conspiracy theory that Omar won’t regurgitate, from claiming that the US was “founded by genocide” to claiming that American power is built through “neocolonialism” to embracing morally decrepit ideas about the Middle East and Jews.

...Now, they’ve moved onto covering for her with “fact checks” and feigned indignation. It is clear to me that Omar was minimizing 9/11, as she does Islamic terrorism in general. It’s clear to me she is a defender of theocrats and an apologist for terror organizations like Hamas. You might disagree. You can view her comments and decide for yourself. Whatever the case, threats of violence against politicians are illegal and should be condemned by any decent person. In the end, though, whether Omar has increased threats against her or not, she is a public figure and deserves no special dispensation from debate.

Read more here.