Author, columnist, speaker
The Consequences of Rationalizing Evil
By Robert Knight
When I was working as a reporter on a small newspaper, a colleague came into the office with a brand new, very expensive camera he’d just bought.
For a struggling journalist, it seemed like an outsized purchase. When I asked how he could afford it, he chuckled and said, “Easy. Insurance paid for it.”
Insurance?
“Sure. I broke a window on my car and then reported to police that a thief had taken a camera just like this one.”
“You broke your own window? And was the camera you said was stolen as good as this one?” I asked.
“Hardly,” he said. “There wasn’t any camera in the car.”
“So, you lied and ripped off the insurance company?”
“Why not? They rip us off every day and make millions off us.”
I was stunned by his moral ambivalence and the way he rationalized his thievery. By his reasoning, you could justify any theft from a large corporation.
In fact, that’s become a rampant theme today, so much so that a New York Times editor, Nadja Spiegelman, came up with the term “microlooting” to describe stealing from large corporations and feeling fine about it.
From university professors to progressive politicians, we’ve heard a litany of rationalized wrongdoing that goes like this: Victims of an unfair system are entitled to get what’s coming to them, and so are the perpetrators on the wrong side of social justice.
On a large scale, think of the looting in any leftist-inspired riot, such as the George Floyd “unrest” in 2020 that liberals largely excused as an understandable reaction.
A shocking number of people have made a folk hero out of Luigi Mangione, the man accused of murdering United Health executive Brian Thompson in cold blood on Dec. 4, 2024, on a midtown Manhattan street.
Mr. Mangione, who didn’t even have a United Health policy with a disappointing claim result, allegedly shot Mr. Thompson in the back.
That’s the act of a murderous coward, not a hero.
Yet, Mr. Mangione’s legal team has raised about $1.5 million so far from donations from people who feel the shooting was justified.
Thousands of people have sent him letters and gifts, and the “Free Luigi” movement has held rallies outside the New York courthouse.
The internet is full of T-shirts, tote bags, and merchandise with his image and the slogan “Free Luigi.” Mr. Mangione’s next court appearance is slated for May 18, with a flock of supporters expected outside.
In a recent Wall Street Journal column, “When Rationalization Turns Deadly,” psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert wrote, “Once frustration is aimed at a broad target—corporations, the wealthy, the system—it starts to act like moral credit. …The question quietly shifts from, ‘Is this right?’ to ‘Who deserves it?’”
Last month, Hasan Piker, who is part of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s entourage, appeared on a New York Times podcast, in which he justified the killing of Mr. Thompson, a father of two teenaged sons.
“Friedrich Engels wrote about the concept of social murder,” Mr. Piker said. “And Brian Thompson, as the UnitedHealthcare CEO, was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder.”
Engels was Karl Marx’s co-author of “The Communist Manifesto” and other collectivist works. Their communist worldview has directly caused unfathomable misery, including the murders of more than 100 million people during the 20th century alone.
Mr. Piker has said, “America deserved 911,” called America’s flag “a symbol of terrorism and oppression,” and described both America and Israel as “evil.” He has jokingly floated the idea of “killing landlords,” said “billionaires should be guillotined,” and that straight, white males are “the most privileged group in human history.”
This goes down like butter among the lunatic fringe like the “transtifas,” a transgender anarchist movement implicated in many recent murders and terrorist plots. Mr. Piker is also a hero to the anti-Semitic “river to the sea” crowd that openly wishes for another Holocaust.
Despite these extreme views, or perhaps because of them, Mr. Piker is quite welcome in the Gracie Mansion, where Mr. Mamdani is busy turning New York City into a version of North Korea, albeit with Broadway plays.
Someday, perhaps not until the afterlife, these men will have to face a justice system that cannot be manipulated.
“Most people don’t need to be told that stealing, much less murder, is wrong,” Mr. Alpert wrote in his Journal column, adding, “It isn’t just a failure of knowledge but a failure of restraint.”
Indeed, the Apostle Paul wrote in the Book of Romans that people of faith and those of no faith are “without excuse” since God’s natural law is “written on their hearts.”
The problem with aiding and abetting immorality is that it comes back to bite you.
During my college days, one of my off-campus roommates often surprised me with his carefree thefts. When one of his car’s hubcaps went missing, he found a similar car in a school parking lot and stole a matching hubcap off it.
“I needed it, so I took it,” he told me with a shrug.
After graduation, he went on to law school and then founded a small business.
Without any irony, he lamented to me about the biggest problem he faced: dishonest employees who stole from him.
Illustration by Linas Garsys / The Washington Times.
Beware of the Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
By Robert Knight
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear appears to be readying for a presidential run in 2028.
The telegenic Democrat was on a speaking tour last year in early primary state South Carolina. In September, he has a book coming out entitled, “Go and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country,” a reference to Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan.
His publisher summarizes it this way: “By regrounding faith in compassion and kindness, he believes we can start to heal as a country.”
Compassion and kindness are God-given, but I thought we were in the midst of healing from the nightmare of the Biden years, with its promotion of atheism, illegal immigration, sexual anarchy, and attacks on Catholics and pro-lifers.
Mr. Beshear, like Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, identifies as a Christian and a moderate and gets priceless media cover while supporting the Democratic Party’s radical social and economic agenda.
In 2023, for instance, he tried to block a state bill protecting minors from “gender affirming care.”
The law prohibits doctors from subjecting gender-confused teens to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible, disfiguring surgeries.
The law also bans males from competing on girls’ sports teams. Most people think this makes sense.
Beshear insisted that such a law “would hurt kids and their families” and violate “parental rights.”
He claimed there was no evidence of widespread harm. To which I would say one butchered child is too many and that evidence of harm is voluminous, including the growing number of suicides and trans-related violence.
On the same day of Mr. Beshear’s veto, both houses of Kentucky’s Republican-controlled legislature overrode it. Naturally, a federal judge, Rebecca Grady Jennings, issued an immediate injunction halting enforcement. The case is still in litigation.
A year earlier, Ms. Jennings, one of President Donald Trump’s few clunker appointees, struck down a Kentucky law prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks and requiring medical oversight for abortion pills.
Gov. Beshear also vetoed that bill, and the legislature overrode him.
In South Carolina, which went for Mr. Trump by 30 points, Mr. Beshear emphasized his Christian faith while boasting that he was “a proud, pro-LGBTQ+ governor.”
This is a stance that ignores Jesus Christ’s clear restating of God’s creation of male and female and God’s marriage-based sexual morality from Genesis.
According to the Washington Post, Mr. Beshear said, “My faith teaches me that all children are children of God, and I didn’t want people picking on those kids.” How about protecting them from quacks who sterilize them and turn them into lifetime medical cases?
By the way, politicians love to haul out the term “children of God” like a magic amulet. The Bible says we’re all created in the image of God, but that we’re not children of God unless we believe in Him and submit to God’s authority. Until then, we’re on the other team, and I don’t mean the New Jersey Devils.
“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name,” John 1:12 says. If we’re automatically children of God, we wouldn’t need to be, as Jesus said, born again.
Anyway, Mr. Beshear is not the only wolf in sheep’s clothing. Democrats have become quite adept at using Christianese and buzzwords to fool people. President Barack Obama often gave biblical scholars heartburn over his misappropriating Jesus’s words to justify sexual sin and confiscatory redistribution of wealth.
In Texas, state Rep. James Talarico is battling hard-left U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett for the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator. Like Mr. Beshear, Mr. Talarico touts his Christian faith while cleaving to a radical agenda.
“He delivers left-wing orthodoxy in centrist packaging and fights Christian nationalism with Scripture,” the Wall Street Journal explains.
If you’re a patriotic Christian, he’s talking about you and your family as a threat to America.
Much of his rhetoric revolves around Marxist class envy, such as, “Make billionaires pay their fair share in taxes.”
During remarks opposing a bill protecting kids from transgender treatments, he said, “Jesus never once condemned transgender people.”
Well, Jesus didn’t need to, and He welcomed all repentant sinners. The Hebrew Scriptures are crystal clear on sexual morality. Sexual confusion is the province of paganism, which historically often involved child sacrifice as well.
Any comparison to the pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ Democratic Party inferred by readers at this juncture may not be coincidental.
In a 2024 interview with MSNBC, Mr. Talarico said, “Christian nationalism is dangerous. … When politicians use the Bible to push division and hate, they’re not following Jesus; they’re using His name for their own agenda.”
This is classic projection, accusing your opponents of exactly what you’re doing.
At the University of Texas on Feb. 6, Mr. Talarico said, “I’m a Christian progressive. I believe the Gospel is inherently radical—it challenges the powerful, lifts up the poor, and calls for justice in every sphere of life.”
When progressives talk about “justice” they mean “social justice.” This is envy, disguised as compassion and politicized to enable governments to redistribute income and rewrite society’s moral code.
In the first six weeks of 2026, Mr. Talarico raised $7.5 million to Ms. Crockett’s $2 million, even though she still has a lead in polls. He has raised $20 million since September.
Will Texas, like Mr. Beshear’s Kentucky, fall for a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
Gov. Andy Beshear (D-Ky.) in Frankfort, Ky. on June 8, 2025. (AP photo in The Washington Times.