There are monsters in your midst, too

Sometimes one sentence can be immensely clarifying.

Several years ago, when I worked at National Review, I was speaking to my colleague Michael Brendan Dougherty on a podcast about a familiar and depressing topic: partisan blindness. Why, when we can see the evil in the opposition so clearly, are we blind to our own faults?

When my opponents do something wrong, that’s emblematic, Dougherty said, but when my allies do something wrong, that’s exceptional.

Here’s what he meant. If, say, you’re a highly partisan Republican, you will often look at corruption and acts of violence by your partisan opponents and say, “That’s just what the left does” or “That’s what leftism leads to.” Corruption and violence reveals the left’s true nature.

If a right-leaning extremist commits an act of violence