British MP Jo Cox Assassinated

Jo Cox was a newly-elected (2015) Member of Parliament for Labour. Sadly, she will not see the end of her first term. She was shot to death in her constituency. Here’s Fraser Nelson – hardly a friend of the Labour Party – in the Telegraph.

She embodied everything that voters would like to see in an MP. She was fiercely intelligent, free of pomposity, interested in the world, open to discussion, always willing to listen to other points of view. She was someone who set out to learn, rather than lecture. She did not just aspire to help the world, but actively went out to do so – spending years as an Oxfam aid worker in some of the most dangerous countries on earth. She had been in Parliament for little over a year, yet was already set to become one of its stars.

Some of us at BD, including me, have been on a ballot before; one of us (not me) actually won. Dealing with voters was part and parcel of the role. I can’t speak for the others here, but it never occurred to me I’d be risking my life for a vote. Then again, I guess I really was.

We’re not conditioned to feel for the political class in the Anglosphere – and for good reason. Our elected officials (and those who would be elected officials) are no better than anyone else. That’s the point of democracy in the modern age.

However, there are exceptions to that, and this certainly counts. The “electeds” lost one of their own, in a horrifying and brutal fashion. All she was doing was her job. At the very least, the rest of us, even as we vent forth our disagreements with them, should keep in mind the dangers – real dangers, not political ones – that come with the positions.