Libs of TikTok has been documenting everyone who has been fired for celebrating the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, and hoo boy has it caused a firestorm.

The firing of a woman who works at Home Depot was the final straw for many:

There are two main camps. On one side are the charitable free-speech advocates who say it is not right to punish someone for saying something disagreeable, or even abhorrent.

On the other, you have battle-hardened culture warriors who have seen the scorched-earth destruction of the Left, which goes after little kids wearing football regalia.

The Left has coldly, systematically, unrelentingly pushed for the actual destruction of anyone who thinks differently than them for well over a decade at this point. Anyone who steps out of line, even the tiniest little bit, is hunted down and destroyed.

Here is the principle: Turning the other cheek does not mean allowing bullies and tyrants to destroy your neighbor.

How can you love your neighbor if you force them to suffer just so you can celebrate your own virtuous persecution? How rotten of an idea that is!

I understand that my job comes with risk. I put my face publicly on my words because I stand behind them. By doing so, I understand that I have cut off many avenues and opportunities. If someone wants to target me for what I have said publicly, so be it.

But what if my neighbor was targeted for donating twenty bucks to the defense fund of Kyle Rittenhouse?

It is right for me to love my enemies, pray for those who persecute me, turn the other cheek when injured, and give to those who abuse me.

It is not right for me to use that as an excuse to allow them to abuse my neighbor or countryman.

There is a time for the application of force. It is why Christian nations have armies. You cannot have a country if you are unwilling to protect your kinsmen from raiders and foreign empires. This does not mean that you hate the raider and the foreigner. It does mean you understand that you have an obligation to your family, neighbor, and countrymen - to love them as yourself (Leviticus 19:18).

If hostile people who oppose everything you believe are actively trying to destroy other people for posting memes or wearing hats or not getting a vaccine - and you do nothing - then you are worse than useless.

You are a coward. You are a whitewashed tomb full of dead men's bones.

Action, then, must be taken. This involves the taking of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

"GASP!" some will audibly say while reading this, "But Joel, Jesus said we shouldn't take an eye for an eye!"

Perhaps you should read the Bible more.

In Matthew 5, Jesus does teach that we are not to take an eye for an eye, but what is he talking about: Individual conduct, or civil justice?

You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I tell you, don't resist an evildoer.

The Bible must be understood in the entirety of its context. Jesus is not saying that you should let a robber break into your home in the middle of the night, assault your wife, kill your children, and steal your valuables.

God gave the Israelites the command to take an eye for an eye, which means Jesus agreed with it. People's natural tendency is to escalate their retribution. In Genesis 4, the son of Adam and Eve, Cain, murders his brother Abel and is exiled by God. After Cain complains that he will be killed, God says that anyone who tries to kill Cain "will suffer vengeance seven times over."

God has the right to make that kind of ruling. But just a few verses later, the great-great-great grandson of Cain decided to warp God's justice and turn it into escalating personal retribution. After marrying two women, he said this:

I killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is to be avenged seven times over, then for Lamech it will be seventy-seven times!

I just read a book about the life of King Alfred the Great where he was faced with such problems. One murder would turn into all-out war between families, with dozens of deaths over generations. In every human society, escalating violence has been the norm.

Reigning in the bloodshed requires a limiting principle - a system of equal justice with fair standards. When rules are in place, they allow society to function. Consider two passages:

'Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury. Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a human being is to be put to death.' - Leviticus 24:19-21

'If a malicious witness takes the stand to accuse someone of a crime, the two people involved in the dispute must stand in the presence of the Lord before the priests and the judges who are in office at the time. The judges must make a thorough investigation, and if the witness proves to be a liar, giving false testimony against a fellow Israelite, then do to the false witness as that witness intended to do to the other party. You must purge the evil from among you. The rest of the people will hear of this and be afraid, and never again will such an evil thing be done among you. Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.' - Deuteronomy 19:16-21

We still have arguments about these very concepts today.

In the #MeToo era, it has become profitable for some women to falsely accuse men of rape - either for personal revenge or a desire for attention. This has happened everywhere from college sports teams to congressional Supreme Court nomination hearings.

People have argued out that the penalty for a false accusation of rape should be the same as the rape itself. If the man was to receive life in prison, then his accuser should receive that same penalty if it is determined that her accusation was false.

God wants us to have equal and fair systems of weights, measures, and justice. He despises cheating, lying, and injustice.

In our personal lives, we should be loving toward those who slander and accuse and hurt us. We should show them the love and grace of God. But as a society, we must have an equal system of justice.

I never thought I would be quoting Bible Ref, but whoever wrote this had a slam dunk:

Christ's teaching on the matter, given in the next few verses, reveals the true intent God has for His people. So far as it goes between individual people, God's will is that we do not take revenge, at all (Matthew 5:39). This doesn't mean being weak or passive in the face of blatant violence (Luke 22:36), but it does prohibit seeking to 'get even' when we're insulted or abused (Romans 12:19).

Not revenge, but equal justice.

If one side believes it is right and just to destroy a man for wearing a MAGA hat, then there must be some level of pushback from the other side. Celebrating the attempted assassination of a president seems like a low bar for that pushback.

It is right that God has given us the right to free speech. It is also right, as the Left is fond of saying, that you may also face "accountability" for what you say. We used to live in a nation where people allowed each other grace for wildly differing opinions, including hateful speech.

Now you get slapped with a hate crime if you offend someone by not baking a cake to celebrate gay sex.

They want this man to go to prison so badly that even the AG of New York chimed in:

Society cannot function this way.

Yes, the right to free speech must be preserved.

But there must also be a fair system of mutually assured destruction that makes the woke Left afraid of coming after other people's free speech.

'What king, going to war against another king, will not first sit down and decide if he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If not, while the other is still far off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.' - Luke 14:31-32

If you do not push back on their assault on free speech with the "eye for an eye" principle, there will be no more free speech. You will have conserved precisely nothing by holding onto your out-of-context, lofty ideals.

The way to go about this isn't targeting Home Depot employees, however. Libs of TikTok has been indiscriminate in her campaign to out anyone and everyone who made a joke about the attempt on Trump's life.

This is wrong. It makes you the bully. It looks like revenge. As Nietzsche famously said, "Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster ... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you."

Do not become tyrannical and oppressive like those we fight. Satan would love nothing more.

Auron MacIntyre has a better solution:

The way forward isn't to just forget that the Left hasn't destroyed many good people for the sin of disagreeing with them. You don't call for unilateral disarmament in a war at the expense of your neighbors and loved ones.

That is not justice.

The way forward is not capitulation nor revenge.

We must re-learn how to fight justly.

The response should be to focus on taxpayer-funded officials, institutional leaders, celebrities and other public figures - especially those who have tried to cancel others. The focus should be on protecting our neighbors who have lost their jobs and lives to the horrific, violent behavior of the woke.

One might say it is the Christian thing to do.

(PS - Go read your Bibles. You aren't going to fight justly if you don't.)