The coverage of the Sunday night’s Texas terror attack on liberal website DailyKos demonstrates how modern progressives are willing to tie themselves in ideological knots to excuse Islamist violence – even a wanton shooting that injured a police officer and left the two assailants dead.

After providing a basic account of the incident, pulled together from various media sources, DailyKos editor “Radiowalla” couldn’t help slipping in a jab at the attack’s intended victims, before adopting a courageous “anti-murder” stance.

“This sounds like another ‘Charlie Hebdo‘ attack, except that the event was a deliberate provocation with Dutch racist Geert Wilders in attendance,” wrote Radiowalla. “The Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were equal opportunity lampooners, not deliberate provocateurs. Just the same, murder is not the answer to offensive speech.”

On the contrary, Charlie Hebdo cartoonists obviously are deliberate provocateurs. When they lampoon Christians or Jews, or a variety of secular targets, no one shows up to murder them in cold blood before launching a city-wide terrorist rampage.

The comments section of DailyKos is usually a good barometer of the grassroots progressive mindset. This story is no exception.

On one hand, common decency and a shred of respect for the American value of free speech tugs at the heartstrings of the Dailykos commentariat, leading some to experience the normal, healthy reaction of (mostly) unqualified outrage.

**Jamieh wrote:** I don’t care who put this event on or how nutty they are. This is the USA and they have free speech. Saying that they shouldn’t have done it because they were being “provocative” is B.S. They had every right to do it, and if someone didn’t like it they had every right to protest it.

On the other hand, these are dedicated leftists who can barely control the hate they feel for people like Pamela Geller, a woman who has put herself at considerable personal risk by sticking up for American values against the bloody red tide of Islamism. For some DailyKos inmates, outrage over the attack on Geller’s event was qualified indeed:

**Jay Elias wrote** Pam Geller is still a scumbag racist. Let’s be clear: no one had any right to prevent her in any way from putting on this odious event. No one has the right to use violence to try to stop her, or to revenge themselves upon her for being a scumbag racist. She has the right to be as horrible as she wants. But make no mistake about it: she’s awful. **Gwennedd wrote** It was provocative. It should never have been put on at all. I’m not saying the shooters were justified in trying to kill people, they most assuredly weren’t, but the show was a deliberate jab at the Muslim community and guaranteed to raise their ire. So stupid.

And of course, some commenters are simply in an entirely different reality.