Mr. Duncan uses the label "conservative" promiscuously to mean anyone to his right who disagrees with him about anything. I have no idea what "conservatives" do or don't understand, because the idea that Steve Schmidt and Steve Bannon share any common thoughts offends me.

Most people are sympathetic to the protests, but not the riots. The idea that the rioting was "sparked" by something some cops did somewhere is both false and irrelevant. You might as well say the Holocaust was "sparked" by the way Germany was treated after WWI. Nothing about the "spark" justified the reaction. (But that's allowing as how people interested primarily in doing mischief were not using the protests as cover for simple criminality. Does that suspicion make one a "conservative"?)

And, no, it's not "just property." Riots don't scare us because they threaten property. They scare us because they threaten society. People were KILLED in the riots. Cops were shot. Was that "just property"? Or is it justified because it was "sparked"?

The thing that's so frustrating is that there is a good and powerful case to be made against the deep-seated racism of our society, but writers like Mr. Duncan fail to make it, opting instead for cheap shots and rhetorical evasions. It really isn't necessary to defend rioters to defend protesters. On the contrary, protesters need to understand that if they got off the streets by sundown, their movement would not be hijacked by criminals. That they do provide cover for rioters raises the question of exactly who is complicit in what. But we won't go there today...