Miranda Devine: Riots Are The Price Of Liberalism

Absolutely none of this comes as any kind of surprise to anyone who has been paying attention:

Videos abound on social media of shadowy figures, dressed in black, systematically smashing store windows, but not looting, cutting through fences outside police stations, but not pushing the fences over; softening defenses for the rioters.
   These are the domestic terrorists who have hijacked peaceful protests across the country. Attorney General Bill Barr described them in his Saturday press conference as “outside radicals and agitators [who] are exploiting the situation to pursue their own separate and violent agenda.
   “In many places, it appears the violence is planned, organized, and driven by anarchistic and far-left extremists, using Antifa-like tactics.”
   This is why Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison pretends that the external agitators in Minneapolis’ riots were Trump-voting “white supremacists,” because the former DNC deputy chairman is one of those in his party who has normalized Antifa as a useful part of the political process.
   See his twitter feed of January 2018, when he posed for a selfie at a bookstore holding “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook” and wrote: “I just found the book that strikes fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump.” 
   No wonder he and the rest of Minnesota’s Democratic leadership are trying to offload blame for their persistent policing failures.
   Invariably, it is cities run by soft-on-crime Democrats where police forces betray the people they are supposed to protect.
   The Minneapolis police force is the creature of a city that has had Democratic mayors for almost 50 years.

   As former Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Fox News over the weekend, “Don’t elect progressive Democrats if you want to be safe.”

…

   “Brick and mortar is not as important as life,” he blithely told a press conference Thursday night as the city burned.
   It’s just property, say liberals who have never known a life without plenty.

 That last line contains a truth that's crucial to understanding a big chunk of the right/left divide, IMO.