Here’s an icebreaker the next time you end up speaking to one of your left-wing neighbors or colleagues. Or a telling question you can pose the next person who applies to you for a job. Apropos of nothing, inquire of this person along the following lines:

Hey, I’m just kind of wondering … five years down the road … do you see your family and mine living in the same nation-state, under the same kinds of laws with equal rights and liberties? Or are you planning on people like us being driven out by angry mobs/ imprisoned for thought crimes / impoverished and intimidated into fleeing to some other region or foreign country?

Such a question might not be tactful, but the information is crucial. We honestly need to know whether the supporters of politicians such as Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Merrick Garland have any lingering peaceful, patriotic intentions toward us. Or … not.

In This House We Believe … We Are Better Than You

They certainly aren’t acting like it, and insofar as your neighbor votes for them, he’s responsible for that — as you’d be responsible if you voted for some racial segregationist, regardless of having a “black best friend” or something.

Imagine one such neighbor or colleague. Picture his hipster beard, or her Mayan bandana. Maybe the person with the sign in his front yard that haughtily announces “In This House We Believe …” followed by a long string of elitist, self-righteous nonsense. Or the Prius driver with the transgender activist sticker on his car.

What do you think he would say? Would you believe him?

Keep Pressing for Specifics

Now if you really try this, you should probably expect a wave of bland, feel-good handwaving, then rah-rah and blah-blah about “diversity” and “freedom.” (Either that or a door slammed in your face, which would at least be honest, and give you your answer.) If so, you should press the question, and probe with specifics. The test case I have in mind is in the headlines, as it absolutely ought to be. The Stream’s own Al Perrotta summed it up pungently:

[T]he phrase “Soros-funded prosecutor” translates to “saboteur of justice” … or worse. An Army Ranger was convicted of murder Friday in Austin, thanks to the connivings of such a prosecutor. Sgt. Daniel Perry was in his car, trapped amid a BLM riot, with rioters pounding on his car when a BLM soldier named Garret Foster raised and pointed an AK-47 directly at him. In self-defense, Perry fired. That’s not just me calling it self-defense. So did the Austin police.

Not only did Soro’s D.A. file Jose Garza charges against the soldier anyway, a detective on the case, David Fugitt, declared in a sworn affidavit that Garza ordered exculpatory evidence removed from his testimony to the grand jury.

So You Would Have Voted to Acquit Kyle Rittenhouse?

Tell your neighbor these details, and ask him: “Do you think Gov. Greg Abbott should pardon Sgt. Perry? If you were on that jury, would you have voted to convict?” Remind him that the legal facts were comparable in the case of Kyle Rittenhouse, and the case of Jake Gardner. Both those Americans were charged with first-degree murder, because they were white, and the mobs that attacked them were identified with the Marxist group Black Lives Matter.

You could phrase it this way: “Are Americans entitled to defend themselves against violence even if they’re white, and the attackers are black or allegedly pro-black?” If your neighbor answers “Yes,” then follow up, “So you agree with the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse?”

Anarcho-Tyranny in the U.S.A.

See what he says. Because the collapse of justice and order in America are so far advanced, that you can’t make your litmus test somebody’s position on abortion or the Constitution — as crucial as those are. What we face today is something much more radical and dangerous: a national elite and its political operatives who favor blatant Anarcho-Tyranny. As I’ve explained here before, that’s a political tactic which nods and smiles at violence, if the targets are political “enemies.”

It’s the tactic the Nazis used to come to power, deploying their brownshirts to start political fights, then making sure compliant judges and juries only convicted the socialists, Catholics, or Jews who defended themselves, while letting the Nazis walk. And it’s what the left is doing right now, even in Texas.

Thousands of Texans voted that Soros-linked prosecutor into office. A dozen Texans voted unanimously to convict Sgt. Perry for shooting someone who pointed an AK-47 in his face. They didn’t act on the legal facts but on the politics, on the fact that they favored Black Lives Matter, and resented those who oppose it. That is Kristallnacht-style mob violence, backed up by the force of the State.

Is your neighbor (or the applicant you’re considering hiring) a person who votes like that, in elections or on juries? You have the right to know.

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 is co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”