Like most Americans, I was shocked by the vicious inhumanity that the coward terrorist group Hamas carried out in Israel last weekend. Unfortunately, organized evil is neither unique nor surprising. The Nazis were equally evil across Europe, as were the Japanese at Nanking, Stalin with Ukraine, and Mao with his own people. Sadly, evil happens, devils exist, although, thankfully, they are rarely celebrated.

But “rarely” doesn’t mean never, and the most shocking thing last week wasn’t the evil Hamas perpetrated but, rather, the extraordinary support it has received. Not only is Hamas’s evil finding exuberant support in places like Iran and Qatar where you might expect it, but there were tens of thousands of Muslims—and their liberal comrades—in places like New York, Detroit, and Washington out en masse vocally demonstrating their support for these monsters.

And it wasn’t just on the streets, in places like Harvard and Yale and NYU, you had students and professors and organizations blaming Israel for Hamas’s inhumanity. Even as the full extent of the carnage emerged, days after the world was able to see the barbarity of what the savages carried out, the rallies in support not only didn’t diminish, but they seemed to grow. I couldn’t help but wonder what that portends for our future.

As an American, I shook my head, stunned as I watched the scenes unfold. I wondered how so many people, with smiles on their non-hidden faces, could cheer such evil and how supposedly intelligent people could put their names in support of such barbarism. My reaction to a few posts on Twitter was, “Send them to Gaza.” Not that it was going to happen, but it’s one thing to cheer the beheading of babies and raping of women from five thousand miles away, it’s another thing to do so when there’s a realistic possibility of the IDF ending you.

Image: Pro-Hamas march in Chicago. YouTube screen grab. (Note, please, how it’s filmed so the reporter covers the sign saying “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea,” which is a call for the genocide of all Jews in Israel.

Of course, that’s not going to happen, but then I wondered to myself, what is wrong with these people, and why are they allowed to do this? Before the words even formed in my head, I answered my own question: Free speech… that extraordinary thing we have that Muslim countries don’t.

All of that led my brain to a quote that is often falsely attributed to Winston Churchill: “When Muslims are in the minority they are very concerned with minority rights, when they are in the majority there are no minority rights.” The British Bulldog may not have said that, but a look at a map of nations with Sharia law suggests that it’s correct.

“But we don’t live in one of those countries, the ones with the radical Muslims,” you might say, “these people are just fringe wackos.” Not so much. A 2015 poll of Muslims in America showed the following:

More than half (51%) of U.S. Muslims polled also believe either that they should have the choice of American or shariah courts, or that they should have their own tribunals to apply shariah. Only 39% of those polled said that Muslims in the U.S. should be subject to American courts.” It also found “nearly a quarter of the Muslims polled believed that, ‘It is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed.’” and “Nearly one-fifth of Muslim respondents said that the use of violence in the United States is justified in order to make shariah the law of the land in this country.

Anyone watching the thousands of protesters in Atlanta, Chicago, and Tampa could easily see that it’s likely the percentages listed above have only grown, something troublesome in a free republic.

Now, support for Sharia doesn’t necessarily equate to support for Hamas’s actions last week, but a Venn Diagram would likely demonstrate a great deal of overlap.

But then you say, “Muslims are barely 1% of the population, so they can’t be a threat.” Maybe, but think about this: trans people are far fewer in number yet, today, we find ourselves amid national fights about bathrooms, sports, and the “medical” butchering of children. Interestingly, most of the people who support the LBGTQXYZ123 agenda also support “Palestine.” The irony, of course, is that Gazans would almost certainly throw the alphabet people off the tops of buildings were they to go there. Note, too, a fascinating essay summing up Peter Hammond’s analysis of the effect Muslims have on a country as their numbers grow.

So, the question becomes, how does a pluralistic, secular state that values individual liberty deal with vile ideas that are repugnant to the basic elements of the culture, as well as with those who espouse those repugnant ideas? Is the Constitution a suicide pact that allows those who object to its foundational principles to use the document’s freedoms to take power in order to eliminate our constitutional republic?

In his autobiography, Malcolm X talks about being invited to speak at Harvard and other prestigious universities when he was still spewing much of his anti-white racist venom. He marvels that, while he was invited to speak and said things that most of the audience disagreed with, they were always courteous and usually engaged in a healthy, respectful dialogue.

Contrast that with today’s conservative speakers such as Heather MacDonald, Ann Coulter, or Ben Shapiro, who have had events canceled or found themselves drowned out and threatened by leftists who equate speech they don’t like with violence. Not surprisingly, a recent poll showed that 66% of college students find this acceptable, while another showed that 65% of Democrats supported censoring “misinformation.”

Now, maybe this vile and public championing of hate will be a tipping point where the Democrat coalition fractures as the various victim classes it has nurtured twist themselves into pretzels trying to be good team players. I doubt it, though, because Democrats in toto hate America, hate freedom and, most of all, hate Donald Trump and MAGA. They are bound together by these hatreds and will always put power above everything else.

Nonetheless, what we saw over the last week should, I hope, cause more people to take notice of those who would use our freedoms to end them for everyone else. The adage of “One man, one vote, one time” refers to the idea of someone or some group using the democratic norms of a nation to win an election and then using that victory to eviscerate freedom. Think Hitler in Germany, Chavez in Venezuela, or Erdogan in Turkey.

If we’ve learned anything since the reign of Barack Obama, it’s that America is not immune to the danger of political parties weaponizing government for their own purposes. Given that the people cheering on the butchers of Hamas are a core part of the Democrat coalition, we should not be too quick to dismiss them as fringe. If we do so, we could all live to regret it.

Follow Vince on Twitter at ImperfectUSA or you can visit his new website Gratitude for America.