In religious philosophy, the "profane" refers to that which is not sacred.  We associate the term most commonly with its linguistic extremes, exclamations that reflect a rejection of value or are designed to hurt.  The modern left has adopted the profane both linguistically and in its most dangerous practical form, which is nihilism.  This phenomenon was disturbingly reflected in the attack on congressional Republicans practicing for a baseball game but is underpinned and encouraged by the left's ceaseless and profane attacks on President Trump.

The attack on the congressmen was also a direct assault on the sacred by a modern leftist imbued with the profane.  Members of Congress, though hardly angels, and justifiable targets of legitimate political criticism, nonetheless reflect something sacred in America: our unique and enviable form of government.  In a land without an established religion, the Constitution and its designated representatives of the people represent a kind of secular sacredness.  Consider in addition that the congressmen and their aides were playing the national pastime at the time of attack, in its own way a sacred and again uniquely American activity.

The congressional shooter might have been disturbed, but his actions were not at all illogical in the context of modern American leftist politics, which embraces the most extreme political rhetoric and ideas, as well as violence.  From leftist American college campuses to the "occupy" movement to Black Lives Matter and the anti-Israel BDS to leftist anarchists, physical confrontation and violence have become a useful tactic to gain publicity and intimidate opponents.  Add to this the far left's infatuation with and practical alliance with radical Islamism, which is the world's primary source of murderous terrorism, and a deliberate if largely unacknowledged link to broad-based political violence is hard to ignore.

The left's profane rhetorical, graphic, theatrical, and "comedic" attacks on President Trump, which overwhelmingly dominate the mass and social media, could reasonably encourage a completely rational person to act out violently.  This may be dismissed by coastal elites as merely the emanations of an increasingly flatulent pop culture – if encouraged by many those same elites who profit enormously off it.  But it is not just the Kathy Griffins of the world who go to visual and rhetorical extremes.  Such excesses are found daily in major newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times, as well as across the major television networks.

But perhaps the worst rhetorical manifestation of this toying with violence by the alliance of mainstream media and Democrat politicians is the idea of the "resistance."  This is a direct undeniable call to arms, referencing clearly the violent opposition to Nazi Germany, a regime so odious that almost any action was morally justifiable in that context.

At sixty-six, a man of late middle age, the shooter grew up in the shadow of World War II, when extremely violent acts of resistance were deemed heroic.  A French maquis who shot up a soccer game among Nazi Gauleiters and their aides would be celebrated.  The transformation of the left's rhetorical resistance to Trump to a firefight on a ballfield was not just foreseeable; it was inevitable.

The "Sacred and the Profane" is the title of a classic work of religious history and philosophy by the Romanian author Mircea Eliade in which the author juxtaposes the sacred spaces that most humans have regarded as vital centers of order and understanding with those of the profane or non-believing world.

The profane needs order and understanding, too, and in modern times, this has appeared in the form of utopian ideologies; the veneration of science whether real or fictional; and the cult of celebrity.  However, for the left, all these things have proved to be downright disastrous, demonstrably false, or small beer.  So, increasingly and disturbingly, we see the profane manifest itself as pure oppositional nihilism.

The left's relentless attacks on the sacred, religious, social, and political have produced an ideological wasteland in their wake.  Religion and its practitioners are mocked.  The most fundamental biological and social realities of sex are rejected, reality now to be described by psychological neuroses.  The United States and its sacred ideals are devalued as nothing special or downright oppressive.

But the left has nothing substantial with which to replace these things.  The religious fervor with which so many liberals believe in climate change demonstrates people's hunger for meaning that the left simply cannot provide.  Almost everything the left believes in today is oppositional: against global warming, against the 2nd Amendment, against the unborn, against the military, against American exceptionalism, against immigration reform and tax reform, and most of all against Republicans and Trump.

It is nihilism in the rhetoric of resistance, the profane as idealism, and now political protest in the form of bullets and blood.