Yesterday, bright-eyed young children woke up for the first week of Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. Two of them, tragically, will never go home. Early in the morning, a gunman barricaded the doors of the nave, locking the children inside during the morning mass. He opened fire on the faithful, killing two children, aged eight and ten years, as they prayed in the pews. Seventeen more people were shot before the man finally turned the gun on himself. To honor their memory, President Donald J. Trump has ordered flags across America to fly at half-staff through September. This was no mere shooting, however, and the United States cannot simply move on. This was a targeted attack against the Catholic Church, and America’s response must be prayer as well as action.
The man behind the gun, a transsexual biological male named Robert “Robin” Westman, may well have been the Devil incarnate. Along the length of his rifle’s magazine, he wrote the words “Where Is Your God?” in bold white lettering. Above this was the message “GET CLAPPED”; below this, the Russian word for “bitch.” On the wall of his room was a shooting target silhouette with the face of Jesus Christ pasted over it. Another magazine said, “K*ll D*nald Tr*mp.” The scope said “K*ll Tr*mp N*w!” His notebook was filled with long ramblings in Cyrillic phonetics; a sticker on the inside cover sported a rifle and rainbow flag, blazed with the caption “DEFEND EQUALITY.”
Robert Westman was an evildoer, not an anomaly. His actions were obscene but not erratic; his violence was a consequence of the anti-Catholic system that enabled his hatred, illness, and malignant beliefs. As the bodies of the victims still lay in the pews, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said not a word about the gunman, but instead launched a broadside on the faith of the victims: “Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now – these kids were literally praying.” With these words, he demonstrated that his personal views are of one mind with those of the gunman. “Where is your God?” asked the shooter. “What are your prayers worth?” echoed Jacob Frey, so to speak. Because of his prominence, Frey’s statement is in some ways more horrifying than the shooting itself.
Jacob Frey, the fairy godfather of the George Floyd riots, is a prime example of how so-called “tolerance” and “inclusion” have emboldened psychopaths, criminals, and the mentally ill. The consequences of modern liberalism are not a fairer, more equal society – as Frey and his ilk would have you believe – but are violence, bloodshed, and innocents’ deaths. Tolerance of transsexualism, which is a mental illness, allowed Robert Westman to slip under the radar. Tolerance of illegal immigration led to the murder of Laken Riley. Tolerance of crime has caused thousands of murders, assaults, rapes, and robberies on innocent men and women. The murder of these children as they prayed in church yesterday morning must be a wake-up call for America: liberalism has failed you, especially in your largest cities. Urban liberalism and progressivism are roads to ruin. Our patience for tolerance has exceeded its limit.
As Minneapolis reels from this attack, the New York Young Republican Club decries this assault on faithful Catholics. We call on President Donald J. Trump to federalize law enforcement in the Twin Cities and restore law and order to its streets. Criminals must be locked behind bars, illegal aliens must be deported, and the mentally ill must be placed in institutions that can care for them. In short, the guiding principles of America must be rules, not “tolerance.” This horrific shooting must be an inflection point. No more. Not on our watch. Jacob Frey, enemy of God, will not lift a finger to protect the victims of liberalism. And yet, this attack on innocent children and the Christian faith demands justice. America can do no better for the legacy of the victims than to secure the safety of their brothers and sisters across the United States.