'This Is Why ‘All Lives Matter’ Is Wrong'

Politics and physics shouldn't have a lot in common. Politics is the business of compromise and negotiation, deal-making and deliberation. Physics isn't so flexible—a set of hard, immutable rules that don't give a fig for making exceptions or appealing to reason.

Increasingly, however, politicians have begun to play physicist, adhering to the Newtonian dictum that every action—no matter how decent or measured or sensible—requires an equal and opposite reaction.