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On November 3, 2017, Senator Rand Paul was mowing his lawn, when neighbor Rene Boucher blindsided him in a vicious and unprovoked attack. Paul was wearing noise-cancelling headphones, and was thus unable to hear Boucher approaching. While initial media reports described Paul’s injuries as minor, it has subsequently emerged that he had broken six ribs, suffered lacerations to his lungs, and extreme pain.
In an oped written by his wife, she lambasted the mainstream media’s inaccurate coverage of the event, and noted that Paul has not had one peaceful breath or one peaceful night’s sleep since the attack.
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So what precipitated this incident?
Boucher and Paul are both doctors, and have lived next door in the same tony gated community in Bowling Green, Kentucky for years.
Boucher’s attorney has described the attack as “a very regrettable dispute between two neighbors over a matter that most people would regard as trivial,” denying any political motivation.
There have been media reports that the matter was triggered by landscaping issues, but the Paul family has dismissed these allegations.
Some media outlets have reported that Boucher blamed trees on the Paul’s property for obstructing his view of a nearby lake, and devaluing his property.
Boucher was an outspoken socialist who was well known for pontificating upon the virtues of single-payer healthcare, and opposing free-market economics.
Was the motivation for this attack political? That is going to be hard to determine without injecting the good Dr. Boucher with a truth serum.
But it was only five months ago that Bernie Sanders campaign worker James Hodgkinson, another advocate for socialized medicine, opened fire on Congressional Republicans at a baseball practice near Washington DC. In this instance, the political motivation for the attack was clear and certain.
Police found in Hodgkinson’s pocket a list of Republican Congressman, and Hodgkinson stopped to ask two Congressmen whether it was Republicans or Democrats on the field. Hodgkinson was severly wounded during the incident, and died of his injuries at George Washington Hospital. Despite firing off 70 rounds, he miraculously did not kill anyone.
Regardless of Boucher’s motivation, one thing is certain: Boucher has thus far gotten off extremely light.
He was released on $7,500 bail and charged with fourth degree criminal assault, which is punishable by a maximum one year sentence.
In what jurisdiction anywhere in the world can you blindside someone in a vicious attack, break six of their ribs, and be out the next day facing a fourth degree misdemeanor charge?
In what jurisdiction anywhere in the world can you attack a Senator and be out in 12 hours facing a insignificant charge?
In the highly politicized era in which we live, the mainstream media has an agenda to ram down the American public’s throats.
From NPR to the New York Times, to the Washington Post and CNN, the mainstream media seeks to push a narrative that portrays anyone with conservative or libertarian ideology, anyone opposed to the new dogma of political correctness, socialism, and collectivism, as dangerous and violent.
Rene Boucher and James Hodgkinson do not fit into that narrative. Radical, violent socialists who seek to impose their will upon their neighbors and the country through violence…it is an inconvenient truth that such people exist.
The Bernie Sanders campaign was full of enthusiastic idealistic young people; but many in the Democratic Party were treated to a darker side of the campaign…Case in point: the Nevada State Democratic Convention which featured violent confrontation between Clinton and Sanders supporters over rules pertaining to the inclusion of delegates at the county level.
At a rally in San Jose, Bernie Sanders supporters were alleged to have attacked Trump supporters at a rally, prompting a call from Sanders to knock off any violence.
The relative absence of political violence in the United States, Canada, and Europe is a key factor that has separated these societies from their counterparts in parts of Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, where political violence is often the norm. From repressive dictatorships that crack down on religious, ethnic, or linguistic minorities, to armed rebel groups battling national governments, to bloody civil wars, the course of the 20th century has been marred by myriad unpleasantness related to the intersection of politics and violence.
Of course, it should go without saying that political violence, of the left or the right, should be condemned.
It is time for the mainstream media to accurately report on violence on the political left. As it stands now, one would be led to believe that it is only Donald Trump and his followers who are violent.
On this Thanksgiving Day, we can be thankful that we now have independent, conservative, and libertarian media to challenge the old dinosaurs and provide us with a more rich and nuanced perspective.
