Two pieces on deck today. The first comes from my friend Michael Davis, who last month warned of uncomfortable parallels between the America of today and the Spain of the 1930s. Back then, a radical and vandalistic left pushed the right into rallying behind Franco; today, conservatives feel similarly menaced by a Democratic Party that threatens to make nuns pay for abortifacients and enables those who deface monuments.

Michael’s piece was attacked on Twitter for supposedly shrugging at political violence (it did no such thing). Yet even if you quibble with his individual points, his overall conclusion seems unassailable. Political aggression on one side begets political aggression on the other. And when an illiberal left that views politics as war goes up against an illiberal right that views politics as war, very bad things happen. Chisel that on a monument; print it on a Snapple cap. More on this in a moment.

The second piece is an editorial from the Washington Examiner, which I think nails the Kamala Harris nomination better than anything else I’ve read. Harris, the piece warns, far from being a safe pick or a moderate, is a “vindictive culture war cop whose political and prosecutorial career has been built upon punishing those she finds deplorable.” It continues:

The Left has largely won the culture war, securing gay marriage, saving Roe v. Wade, and normalizing transgender ideology. Now, they want to punish all dissenters. This is Harris’s area of expertise. You can call it “cancel culture,” but that term is too benign when it comes to Harris. She is not a mere demagogue. She is a demagogue who will use the power of the federal government to punish “the other side.”

Harris, as the Examiner notes, has argued that the federal government should treat pro-life states like those that backed segregation. She’s implied that membership in the Knights of Columbus should disqualify one from a federal judgeship. She seems to think her job as a senator is to badger conservatives at hearings with all the guilty-until-proven-innocent presumption of an inquisitor. As attorney general of California, she ordered a raid on the home of David Daleiden, the pro-life activist who recorded Planned Parenthood ghouls discussing the sale of unborn baby body parts. Daleiden later became, under Harris’ watch, “the first journalist ever to be criminally prosecuted under California’s recording law.”

Elsewhere, Kevin Williamson recalls that Harris joined several Democratic attorneys general to harass and subpoena those who dissented on climate change. Elsewhere, too, Brad Polumbo notes that she thought a future president ought to ban assault weapons by executive fiat.

Viewed in light of all this, Harris’ record as a prosecutor—cracking down on marijuana possession, fighting to uphold questionable convictions, treating the parents of truants like criminals—seems less like a tough-on-crime stance than a general promiscuity towards the exercise of power. We don’t yet know what a Harris presidency would look like (though it’s an urgent question, as Ol’ Joe leers at the malarkey-infected koalas in his backyard). But we do know that, if past is prologue, she would be utterly unabashed about using the federal government to muscle those she doesn’t like. Which is to say: Christians, pro-lifers, gun-owners, climate change dissenters. Which is to say: conservatives.

That brings us back to Michael’s point. What we desperately need in America today is a cooling down, a granting of space, an acknowledgement that not everyone is going to agree in a country of 330 million and that such variety isn’t an invitation to start kicking down doors. That starts on the left, which wields great cultural power. Kamala Harris is a move in the opposite direction, a caudilla imperiously pointing her sword at those arraigned beneath her bench. In which case, the right will fight back, perhaps seeking another Trump-like protector, and our politics will further disintegrate.