Farook and Tashfeen Malik — if what appears to have happened in California is true — were part of that campaign. Whether they took direct orders from an ISIS operative, or whether they merely harmonized philosophically with the terror group, they were in league with the Paris shooters and Charlie Hebdo shooters and, in a broader sense, with Boko Harem and Hamas.

Robert Dear, though, was on his own. He might have imagined some purpose, but it was disconnected from any genuine political or ideological movement within the U.S., much less the world. Even if we concede that it was “heated” rhetoric about Planned Parenthood that motivated Dear, no one I know writing or speaking critically about abortion advocates violence. Rather, they advocate for the cessation of violence. Dear’s actions were not supported or cheered or funded by any real church, movement, organization, think tank, or nation. And the idea that a lone psychotic (or anyone) should have veto power over political speech is deeply illiberal — although it is widely embraced by the Left today.

Rampant Christian terror exists only in fevered imagination of the far Left, who like to count every murder by a white person as a politically motivated act. That’s not to say it never happens. It’s to say that acts of violence like the one we saw in Colorado Springs are almost always self-directed and disconnected from discourse or a particular political aim, despite attempts by many Democrats to tie raucous debate they dislike to violence.