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January 7, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – “Political violence begets political violence,” Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson warned in his Wednesday evening monologue on the storming of the U.S. Capitol this week, calling on the nation to understand and address the factors that led to the event.

Dozens of protesters broke into the U.S. Capitol Building on Wednesday after the “March to Save America” rally where the president said supporters would march “over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” where “we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen-and-women” who were meeting to formally object to the certification of electoral votes from a handful of states.

As covered live by LifeSiteNews, viral videos showed groups of protesters engaging in physical altercations with police, pushing against security barricades, breaking through a window, trespassing in congressional offices, and climbing on walls, causing the vote certification to be suspended and lawmakers to be evacuated from the chambers. LifeSite’s on-the-ground reporting indicates many were allowed to enter and simply walked through the building (which is normally open to the public) after the initial breach.

Amid the fray, California woman and Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed by Capitol Police while attempting to climb through a window in a barricaded hallway. “The scene around her is chaotic,” Carlson said of the video depicting the shooting. “People are bumping into each other, yelling, trying to get through the door into the chamber. Suddenly, with no warning, there is gunfire. You hear a shot and Babbitt falls. People in the hallway scream. The camera closes in on her face. Babbitt looks stunned. She's staring straight ahead. You can see that she knows she's about to die, which she did.”

“Political violence begets political violence. That is an iron law,” he said. “We have to be against that, no matter who commits the violence or under what pretext, no matter how many self-interested demagogues assure us the violence is justified or necessary. We have a duty to oppose all of this, not simply because political violence kills other people's children, but because in the end it doesn't work.”

“You may have nothing in common with the people on the other side of the country (increasingly, you probably don't), but you're stuck with them,” Carlson continued. “The idea that groups of Americans will somehow break off into separate peaceful nations of like-minded citizens is a fantasy. The two hemispheres of this country are inseparably intertwined, like conjoined twins. Neither can leave without killing the other. As horrifying as this moment is, we have no option but to make it better, to gut it out.”

“The second thing to consider, and it's related to the first, is why Ashli Babbitt went to the rally in the first place,” he went on. “We ought to think about that. If you want to fix it, you have to think about that.”

“Democracy is a pressure relief valve,” he explained. “As long as people sincerely believe they can change things by voting, they stay calm. They don't burst into the House chamber. They talk and they organize and they vote. But the opposite is also true if people begin to believe that their democracy is fraudulent, that voting is a charade, that the system is rigged and it's run in secret by a small group of powerful, dishonest people who are acting in their own interests.”

What happened Wednesday was a result of that pressure valve bursting, Carlson argued. “Rather than trying to change their minds, to convince them and reassure them that the system is real and that democracy works — which you would do if you cared about the country or the people who live here — our new leaders will try to silence them.”

“If you don't bother to pause and learn a single thing from your citizens storming your Capitol building, then you're a fool, you lack wisdom and self-awareness, and you have no place running a country,” Carlson concluded. “We got to this sad, chaotic day for a reason.”

Trump told the breachers to “go home in peace” via tweets and video message (which Twitter flagged as potentially dangerous), yet a coalition of Democrats and establishment Republicans quickly decided that Trump “incited” the violence, some by blaming his support of marching to the building (which was a pre-planned part of the event, advertised before Trump’s remarks), others by blaming Trump’s refusal to concede in the first place.