Political violence, whatever its source or support, its affiliation or who are its apologists, is never acceptable in this Republic. We do not and cannot permit it, any more than we can and do permit politics to go about in uniform or in vestments. Nor does it matter to our purpose ‘cui bono?’, or if the conspiratorially minded obsess over to which party any given incident is more convenient. Nor ought support for any candidate or party to increase or decrease owing to such an act: that does nothing save to reward, and thus to encourage, political violence. Any given party, any given candidate, remains either worthy or unworthy of office when judged on character and principles, or the lack thereof, or, where there is a choice to be made, which is more lacking in character or principle. Whether your reaction is glee at a violent act or glee that it was partly or wholly foiled and is thus become politically useful to whichever side you support, you are failing as a free citizen in a republic. Violence remains utterly unacceptable, whether you think in a partisan madness that a politician or a party was preserved by Almighty God or that the Devil looks after his own; that a party or politician nearly became or attempted to appear to be Lincoln, or Horst Wessel. You all of you need to do better. Political violence; its encouragement or embrace; your allowing it to influence your vote; your obsession with imagining some overarching occult meaning in it: all of these unfit you for liberty, and, if indulged, make you one who deserves to lose the freedoms to which you pay lip service.
You are all to cease this nonsense at once.
Markham Shaw Pyle, author & historian 