A few weeks ago I posed 33 questions — one for each year of Our Lord’s earthly life — to pose to befuddled, Woke folks whom you encounter. People seemed to find them helpful. And events keep spinning out of any rational control, as the left continues to escalate its violence, and demand more raw power on America’s city streets.

Each outrage, each morally blinkered or factually challenged assertion by these elites, raises new questions. Let me formulate mine for you. See if they come in handy.

Twenty Questions. Expect Zero Answers

• Why are people demonstrating in American cities, burning police stations and throwing bottles at cops commanded by Democratic mayors? What specifically do they want? How do we get them to go home? The cops in George Floyd’s case have been in jail for months.
• What exactly do you mean by “systemic racism”? Is it different from what Christians face in the Muslim world, minorities face in China, and ethnic minorities have faced in virtually every society known to man? How?
• Why hold white people to standards you plainly don’t hold Chinese or Africans to? Do you think whites are superior?
• Is that why the Smithsonian, and other white-run institutions, are designating things like punctuality, professionalism, rational thought and diligence as part of “white culture”?
• You say that racism is so deeply entrenched in America that to eliminate it we need to uproot our whole culture, history, and political system. That’s exactly what the white segregationists warned us in the 1950s. Martin Luther King, and before him Frederick Douglass, vehemently disagreed. Are you happy taking the Klan’s side against them?

• Assuming that Black Lives Matter and the Klan are right about America … is solving racism worth all that destruction? All that power handed to the government? Aren’t there other evils beside racism, some of them even worse?
• What would you think of pro-life zealots who trashed public buildings and attacked cops, and demanded we rip up America from the roots?
• Since you’ve shown pro-lifers that violence works, and there’s no civil peace left to disrupt, why shouldn’t they try it? Or the same for any group that really, really believes in a cause?
• With our massive bureaucracy that polices every employment transaction for even accidental, unintentional “disparate impact” on minorities, is it really likely that racism is the reason blacks are poorer? Is it “racist” even to look for other causes? Assuming you want to solve these problems, not just milk them.
• Do you want to help solve black Americans’ problems, or are you just milking them?
• If you compare intact, two-parent black homes to white, the disparities between them virtually disappear. That suggests that the Sexual Revolution, enabled by the welfare system, does most of the damage to black people. Not “racism.” Are the Sexual Revolution and the welfare system too important to you? Is that why you silence such questions with smears that skeptics are “racist”?
• Why does Black Lives Matter oppose the nuclear family, and favor letting kids be raised by “the community” (i.e., the government and street gangs)? Is that proposal meant to actually help black people, or just to apply Friedrich Engels more consistently?
• Just a crazy hypothetical here. Imagine that I could prove to you that outlawing abortion, deepening welfare reform, and cutting low-skill immigration would eliminate most racial disparities. Would you be willing to do any of that? Try to answer honestly here.
• Which is more important to you: consequence-free sex, or black lives?
• Which matters more, rising wages for black citizens, or cheap immigrant labor/votes?
• How is a mayor fulfilling his oath of office when he orders the police not to enforce the law? When he lets mobs of well-organized activists trash people’s property and threaten their lives?
• Why shouldn’t police in cities where mayors are doing that arrest the mayor, and operate in defiance of any politician who issues such illegal orders?
• Why shouldn’t citizens organize into armed militias, as some are doing in Minnesota now, to defend their homes and families against these mobs? Isn’t it better to be judged by twelve than carried by six?
• While Donald Trump tries to protect Americans from chaos, despite local officials, increasingly senile Joe Biden hides in his basement. We know he won’t really serve as president. Who will be on the secret committee that really makes the decisions? Did you get that memo?
• Andrew Cuomo said that New York State is no place for pro-lifers or faithful Christians. Do you think America has any room for us? Then why don’t you act like it?

Push Back, Don’t Back Down

Do pose these questions, and the 33 previous ones, to people you encounter. But don’t expect cogent answers. We’re slipping into an ugly, scary period of tribalism and groupthink. The best precedent I can find for it is the build-up to the U.S. Civil War in the 1850s. Back then, Southern states outlawed abolitionist newspapers, and pro-slavery mobs ran their opponents out of town. Meanwhile, rich progressives in the north bought the guns for John Brown to try to start a slave revolt. 

Pray for peace, my friends, but don’t beg for peace at any price. That’s how bullies come out on top.  

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream, and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He’s co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”