Like most conservatives, I was sickened by the way the left rushed to manipulate the nation’s grief and anger in an attempt to strip us of our right to defend life and liberty, a right also known as the right to bear arms. Then Mollie Hemingway said something on the Special Report panel that was so compassionate and illuminating, it cooled my outrage. “We’re pretending we’re having a debate about gun control,” Mollie said, “but we’re really having a debate about the nature of evil and whether a big enough government can contain it.” It was an observation so womanly wise that a mere news discussion couldn’t address it. The rest of the panel ignored her and the talk immediately turned to the utterly meaningless effort to ban bump stocks.

But of course, she was right: that’s exactly what we’re really talking about. The left sneers at conservatives for “doing nothing,” but conservatism understands the tragedy of the fallen world: we can only choose between freedom with evil and slavery with evil, because no government is large enough to make evil go away.