We all know the Vice-President has frequently had a slight(or more)issue with the truth. To use only recent memory, we can see it ranges from the ludicrous(immigrants eating animals in Ohio)to the seriously disturbing and dangerous(an out & out claim, in the wake of the Kirk tragedy, that the left is far more involved in political violence than the right). President Trump has been pushing the same idea.

This is simply not true as I think the President and the Vice-President both know perfectly well. I felt I had to say something about this, and I am starting here but may go further later. I am going to tell you about two or three articles by other people, offer my assessment and suggest you might want to read them. I acknowledge that it likely is impossible for everyone who’s interested to detach their emotions and opinions from entirely balanced study, but I’ll do the best I can and a suggest everyone do the same.

On Sep 16(Tue this week) Steve Benen published an article on msnbc.com. Admittedly this is not what you would call a neutral site, but, hey, check out the article and judge it on its own. He gave it, by the way, the title “J D Vance’s ‘statistical fact’ on political violence is neither statistical nor a fact.” I’d say this is true. Here’s a summation of his argument.

About year ago, during the campaign, Vance said he was willing to “create stories so that the American media actually pays attention.” He’s still at it now. After the tragedy in Utah he said “People on the left are much likely to defend and celebrate political violence.” He also said this is not a “both sides problem” because the left is worse than the right, a fact which would fairly obviously true if the first statement were true which is isn’t.

Benen said Republicans need this to be true to justify “a broader crackdown on the left.” This was a day, maybe a day and a half before the ABC-Kimmel controversy became public. Benen obviously read the political tea leaves with considerable accuracy.

Then he trots out a few interesting facts: 1) “research from recent years makes clear that right wing violence has been more dangerous in the US than left-wing violence.” 2) A few years ago(2022) the NYT writer David Leonhardt said the right “has a violence problem that has no equivalent on the left.” 3) The New Republic pointed out that the Cato Institute(a libertarian-oriented think tank) said since 2020 the right was responsible “for over half of terror related deaths in the United States, with left wingers at 22%”

Another NYT man, Thomas Edsall this week stated that the (non-partisan) Center for Strategic and International Studies announced that most US terrorist attacks in recent years were by “violent far-right perpetrators.”

From outside our country, a Polish lady, Professor Katarzyna Jasko, who teaches psychology at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, contributed to the 2022 study, “A Comparison of Political Violence by Left-wing, Right-wing, and Islamist Extremists in the United States and the World.” She told Edsall that the White House claims “are not justifiable.” She added that “far-right extremists have been responsible for more …political violence than far-left …their attacks are more violent than those by left-wing extremists.”

Edsall also spoke with the Carnegie Endowment’s Rachel Kleinfeld who said that since the early 1990’s, actual violence has risen, largely from the right.

Benen concludes with “To the extent that research and statistical evidence have any bearing on the public conversation, there can be no doubt that Trump’s and Vance’s ideological campaign is based on demonstrable nonsense.”

OK, Benen is a producer of the Rachel Maddow Show,” so not a non-partisan or non-involved person. But look at the research cited above and, if you like, check it out on the net. He makes a strong case.

On the same date a reporter named Rebecca Schneid published an article in Time Magazine which I think is also important and leads us towards a similar conclusion. Time is not, of course, a source of great depth, but it has been getting the basics of the news out to America for the better part of a century and rarely been accused of intentional distorting. Of course, everyone interested knows its founder, Henry Luce, was a conservative, a fact he did not try to hide.

This article also points out something I’ve recently run across in other writings. Some students of this grim issue do not confine themselves to right- and left-wing violence. They include a third type, Islamic violence, which I think is a rational and useful thing today, since it does not fit neatly–or maybe fit at all–with the other two. It is a separate kind of action and to be accurate and complete it needs to be included.

The CATO Institute study is cited here too and with more detail than in the Benen article. CATO went back to 1975 and found the following interesting facts–Looking at politically motivated murders, since 1975 but excluding 9/11, their breakout is that 391 came from the Right, 143 from the Islamists, and 65 from the Left.(There were about 20 others from varying sources, but I’m going to stick with these three).

Schneid also points out that Colin Clarke, a researcher at the Soufan Center “focusing on domestic and transnational terrorism, “says the data shows a clear disparity in lethality between left and right.

Clarke himself pointed out that Trump’s anti-left statement dodged rightist terrorist actions. He asked, “So do we only care about one type of extremism? And if so, why wouldn’t we care about the more lethal threat?” I think this question has troubled, not to say obsessed, a lot of us in recent days, particularly the second part of it.

The “Time” article also gives us a little more informtion about the CATO study. It divides the attacks as to motivation which I think is important to understand. The study regards left-wing attacks as motivated by animal rights, environmentalism, and “anti-police sentiment,” plus some other leftist targets. Right wing attacks they regard as motivated by such things as “white supremacy and anti-abortion beliefs”

But, Ms Schneid says, experts do note political violence has been increasing in recent years. Jan 6, then over 9000 threats against members of Congress, and the assault on Paul Pelosi, husband of the former Speaker of the House are examples, as are the two assassination attempts on President Trump. Earlier this year there were the attempt to burn down the Pennsylvania Governor’s residence, now home to Gov Josh Shapiro and his family, the attacks on two MN state legislators, which killed one state legislator and her husband, and the two Israeli Embassy Employees murdered outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington
One of Ms Schneid’s interviews was with Benjamin Rad, a political scientist and a law professor at UCLA. He indicated that Trump’s allegation of a big rise in leftist violence is not supported by data available. It has risen but it started with a very low base number and more information is needed.(that is, if you start with a year of 2 crimes of a certain sort and the next year there are 3, this crime rate has risen by 50%–if you start with 20 cases it’s only risen by a single percent)

After all the talk of the CATO Institute’s study, I did take a quick look at it. The CATO Institute, you may know, is often described (as above) as a Libertarian think tank. It is dedicated to free speech, free markets, and overall opposition to government interference in the economy and other “private matters.” This means it has usually sided more with Republicans than Democrats, although I don’t think it’s particularly tried to be partisan. And it also opposed getting into wars and having the government messing around with individual matters such as sexuality issues. This means that occasionally it has taken what many would describe as leftist positions

I have always been a bit suspicious of it since it usually opposed my party’s(and my personal)views, but I know of no instance of chicanery on its part, no playing fast and loose with the facts. I trust its integrity.

I have already mentioned that both Benen and Schneid cited the Institute’s recent study of political violence. Here are a few extra matters I got from looking more directly at the report

–Since the beginning of this decade terrorists have murdered 79 people in attacks on US soil. The right-wing terrorists account for over half of these(didn’t see a specific number)left wingers for 22% and Islamists for 21%

Significantly, I found the following: “The big fear from politically motivated terrorism is that the pursuit of justice will overreach …and end up killing far more people while diminishing our freedom.” This was, of course, written before the recent Administration shenanigans on freedom of the airways–so ask ABC how they feel.)

“The government can and should vigorously pursue justice …and should do so without new political witch hunts(and) … expanded government powers.”

The author of this article I have been quoting is Alex Nowrasteh, an analyst of, mainly, immigration matters, and an employee of the CATO Institute.

I won’t say this is all there is up to date, not considering the current brouhaha over television and late night freedom. There’s a lot more to be said there and elsewhere. But do keep track of this and check out some sources(including the ones I cite if you wish), as this is one of the more important items to affect the US Constitution and individual Americans’ freedom in quite some time.