Below is a response to a comment I received on a previous post re: the sucker-punch of Richard Spencer and "punching Nazis" in general. I figured I'd share it:

You have your list of beliefs—perhaps even words or phrases—that justify a sucker-punch or worse. Other people have theirs. Your lists may overlap.

Yours may be longer than theirs or vice versa.

You may want to live in a world where the families of dead soldiers are within legal bounds to sucker-punch members of the Westboro Baptist Church who protest their loved ones’ funerals.

You may want to live in a world where commuters pull in to Penn Station on the Ronkonkoma line and when they hit 34th Street and 7th Avenue are fully justified to sucker-punch members of the Hebrew Israelites. (Every day, even during off-peak hours.)

You may want to live in a world where someone wearing a Ché Guevara T-Shirt is tacitly giving permission to any non-comrade to break his orbital.

You may want to live in a world where carrying the Workers’ Flag—plus or minus the black balaclavas, bandanas, and the rest of the black bloc uniform—is reason enough for them to be mob sucker-punched.

You may want to live in a world where the streets of the Village of Skokie ran with blood instead of free speech.

I don’t want to live in that world.

It might be because I’m smaller than you are and not as tough. It’s selfish, I know, but I don’t think I'd survive in a world where I’m one word away from a justified sucker-punch.