The Culture War Turns Hot

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins was at the hospital just before midnight last Wednesday when Leonardo Reno Johnson was wheeled out of surgery, a bullet having been removed from his left arm. Earlier that same day, Johnson was in the lobby guarding the conservative Christian think-tank when a man possessing a Sig Sauer automatic handgun, two loaded magazines, 50 rounds of ammunition and 15 Chick-Fil-A sandwiches, attempted to enter the organization's offices.

When an alert Johnson stopped the unfamiliar visitor and demanded identification, the man pulled his weapon and fired, wounding Johnson in the arm. Injured but undeterred, Johnson rushed the armed man, wrestling alleged shooter Floyd Lee Corkins to the floor and called the cops. Corkins never had the chance to deliver his sandwiches.

Washington, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray said Johnson's actions saved lives. "What a hero," Gray told the Washington Post, "This could have been a horrific tragedy. We have no idea how widespread this may have become ... Even while being shot, he [Johnson] still had the wherewithal to be able to stop this man from doing any further damage than he already had done."

Johnson's mother, 72-year-old Virginia Johnson, told the Post her only child is "a good person who tried to help people and never got into trouble."

Thursday's New York Times' story made a point of noting that "the Family Research Council is known for wading into fights over social values." That's Progressive, mainstream-media-speak for "they got just what they deserved."

And that takes us to the crux of the matter. There is a war waging in America. It has been waging since domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and his marry band of Weather Underground comrades built bombs, planned attacks on U.S. military installations and robbed armored trucks. These 60s radicals failed in their attempt to take America by force and changed their failed strategy. Instead, they chose to radically transform America through the nation's educational system and the popular culture.

Bill Ayers, the old domestic terrorist, is a retired professor from the University of Illinois' College of Education. His graduate students don't build bombs. They shape educational curriculum that shapes future community organizers and future voters. One such community organizer, Barack Obama, launched his meteoric political career from Ayers' front parlor.

These hope-and-changers are determined to shake the foundation of American society in ways the homemade bombs of the past never could. However, underlying the compassionate platitudes of the "social justice" brigades is the same mad demand for conformity. It's when that socio-political conformity fails to materialize that we see the old-style 60s terrorist manifest itself like Dr. Jekyll's Mr. Hyde.

Recently, the FBI disrupted a plot by five Occupy Wall Street members to bomb a bridge outside Cleveland, Ohio. As National Review's Rich Lowry aptly noted, "If their stupidity and recklessness are different in degree from their fellow self-styled revolutionaries, they're not different in kind, they're the left's homegrown terrorists." We can laugh only because they failed.

Back in the nation's capital, Leonardo Johnson isn't laughing - and neither is his mother. The nine millimeter slug removed from his arm is a reminder that, for many, the culture war must be fought with deadly force.

According to an FBI affidavit, the alleged shooter's parents informed federal agents of their son's "strong opinions with respect to those he believes do not treat homosexuals in a fair manner."

While media outlets focus on the assailant's weapon, and spin the event as fodder for America's perpetual gun debate, I'm more interested in the mad culture-warrior's choice of battlefield and what he tucked alongside his handgun: The Family Research Council (FRC) offices and 15 Chick-Fil-A sandwiches.

Both the FRC and Chick-Fil-A are decidedly Christian in their worldview. They believe the left's efforts to radically transform American society - which includes redefining marriage - should be opposed by lobbying the nation's lawmakers. Their only weapon, if you choose to call it that, is persuasion.

The recent "Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day" sent a collective shiver up the spines of the transformative left. The outpouring of support for the fast-food chain by America's excruciatingly normal was seen by many as a foreshadowing of this November's outcome. What the media calls "The Christian Right" came out in numbers so great, some Chick-Fil-A outlets were unable to meet the demand.

It can only be described as cultural push-back. That culture predates the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx, Bill Ayres, Barack Obama and the Washington, D.C. shooter. That culture's values informed the philosophy of our nation's Founders.

Like Leonardo Johnson, who took a bullet defending the familiar faces he sees every day, members of the Family Research Council now risk their lives defending the familiar traditional values it believes makes for healthy families, communities and nations.

The big question is — is this guy a fringe kook or does he come out of the LGBT activist mainstream? We’re tolk these types of killers are psychotics, and that has been the pattern lately, but that is not always the case. For instance Bill Ayers and his pals weren’t psychotics. They were perfectly sane. They were motivated by ideology, not by the voices in their head. I wonder this guy fits that profile. If so, that would be highly significant break from the recent pattern. He would be an example of precisely what the left loves to accuse conservatives of creating — a killer motivated by his political animosities, inspired by an atmosphere of hate and accusation, in this case leftist rage over Chick-fil-A and the FRC.

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