From 9/11 to Luigi and Lindsay, we have lost our moral clarity

Once upon a time, the job of New York’s police commissioner was hard enough: catch the bad guys, curb crime, keep the streets safe.These days, things are a lot more complicated.It fell to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch this week to render the most difficult and most desperately needed service of all — giving us a dose of moral clarity.“The men who attacked this city were terrorists,” Tisch said in a press conference marking a quarter of a century since the attacks of September 11, 2001.“The men and women who ran into the towers to save innocent lives were heroes.Twenty-five years cannot be allowed to blur that distinction, and shame on those who do.”Tisch wasn’t wagging her finger at anyone in particular, but it wasn’t too hard to understand that she was addressing not only the media but the man sitting right behind her, Mayor Mamdani.The same Mamdani who repeatedly refused to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” — as if 9/11 was anything but the most prominent example on record of the intifada, or relentless Islamic violence, being successfully globalized.The same Mamdani who once rapped enthusiastically about the Holy Land Five — convicted terrorists who subscribed to the very same murderous ideology as Mohamed Atta and his 9/11 band of killer jihadis.The same Mamdani who called the NYPD a “rogue agency” while waxing poetic about Palestinian terrorism.The mayor, then, clearly needed the commissioner’s reminder, having failed repeatedly at telling the good guys apart from the bad.But when it comes to moral clarity, the rest of us could use a refresher as well.Because lately, we too often swoon over the monsters while scoffing at their victims.Luigi Mangione, for example, the Ivy League-educated brat who assassinated UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, now has 42,000 superfans who have collectively raised more than $1.5 million for his defense and who show up with homemade T-shirts and signs to cheer on their homicidal heartth...