In Ahmaud Arbery case, unexpected advocates for racial justice
Ben Davis is a self-described Christian conservative and a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights. He also believes citizen arrest laws have solid roots in common law.
The one-time campaign chief for former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is also a former long-distance runner.
And what Mr. Davis saw in the video showing the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a black runner in Brunswick, Georgia, was jarring.
To him, the video offers moral clarity, and he says that standing up publicly for a fellow runner’s constitutional rights doesn’t negate his conservatism.
“It seems like conservatives are always kind of Johnny-come-latelies with some of these really important issues, instead of speaking imaginatively about how being conservative applies to the whole sphere of public and collective life together,” says Mr. Davis, who wrote an Op-Ed about the shooting for The Wichita Eagle newspaper in Kansas. “Many say, ‘Oh, this is just
A consensus across party linesIs this really a new narrative?A different kind of moment
