In my experience, the left lies incessantly: sometimes it seems to me that almost every word out of their mouth is some form of deceit or dishonesty. This is apparently even true of much of the "Christian" left.

Today, I received in my mailbox a cash-generating promotion from a prominent left-leaning "Christian" organization, attempting to sell me some materials on "nonviolent living". This is odd: Do most people slug each other frequently? Do a lot of left-leaning Christians have especially violent behavior?

The table of contents is revealing: It seems the issue of our own personal depravity gets a light treatment (we examine "Ways We Often React" and learn alternatives!), whereas the majority of the course seems to be focused on teaching people about "structural violence" and enlisting them into political action against this horrible-sounding phenomenon.

So what is "structural violence?" Hint: If we learn the term was defined by the left, then we can suspect it's probably not violence at all:

Johan Galtung originally framed the term structural violence to refer to any constraint on human potential due to economic and political structures. Unequal access to resources, to political power, to education, to health care, or to legal standing, are forms of structural violence

Bob, who has $10,000, can afford more healthcare, or a better education, than Fred, who has $2,000. Fred is therefore a victim of "structural violence" because his society allows richer people to have better healthcare.

In other words, we have redefined "violence" to mean simply "inequality." The solution is obviously to make sure Bob and Fred are not allowed to have different levels of healthcare. (History seems to show this will mean a decrease in standards for both of them -- the lowest common denominator is always frightfully close to zero.)

Why the redefinition? Well, I suspect if you simply came out and said: "Hey, we're opposed to all inequalities!" people would shun you for the raving nut-job socialist you are. But if you start to preach against "violence" when you mean, simply, inequality, then, well, you get peoples' attention.

Thus these people actually work to desensitize us to actual violence, and make us less concerned when someone warns us about "violence" going on. For if the word "violence" increasingly means two people having a different income, or being born into families of different social status, then who is going to pay attention to actual "violence" anymore?

They are taking people's God-given aversion to violence and channeling it into -- what? Stopping dictators who are actually killing people? Taking measures which will lower the crime rate? Prison ministry? Confronting Jesus's hard teaching that merely hating one's enemies (Republicans, for most of them) flows from the same impulse as murder?

No, instead they enlist followers to support policies which harm our society -- and especially the poor -- by demanding an ungodly and unattainable standard of total similarity among all people. Feeding their followers the same philosophical poison that empowers the aforementioned murderous dictators: the claim of wanting to achieve absolute equality among people, and the need to gain political control to do so.

So when the left says they fight "violence", they really mean they are fighting any system which allows equality (meaning all systems) asking you to help leftists gain more power.

Scary.