Opinion: Jan. 6 was an attack on our democracy. So was a man's plan to kill Justice Kavanaugh.

I don't mean to sound like a radical in our age of staunch political side-taking, but I think an assassination plot against a U.S. Supreme Court justice is a mighty horrific thing that should outrage everyone.

It's the same way I think we should react universally to attack on the U.S. Capitol by a violent mob. Both are attacks on our democracy, and neither should be downplayed, glossed over or politicked away.

Let’s not mince words in describing the early Wednesday arrest of the man, identified in court records as Nicholas John Roske of California, near the Maryland home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The United States Attorney for the District of Maryland said Roske faces charges of attempted murder of a Supreme Court justice. This was an assassination plot, targeting a member of one of the three branches of our federal government, reportedly over the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned.

It struck me as a significant and horrifying development in a country that continues to see examples of boiling-hot political rhetoric becoming acts, or potential acts, of political violence.

But the reaction to the arrest outside Kavanaugh’s home felt muted, particularly among my fellow liberals.

Bipartisan outrage at political violence

If we’re outraged about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump – and we should be apoplectically outraged, and paying close attention to the House select committee hearings that started Thursday night – then the targeting of a Supreme Court justice should draw widespread shock as well.

It should be the kind of thing where we all stand up and say: “This is horrible. This should never happen. Not to anyone.” Whether it’s a planned attack on the judiciary or a full-on domestic terrorist attack on the seat of our democracy, we have to have lines that, when crossed, generate a sense of unified disgust.

Instead, it seems we just have lines we stand behind.

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As U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell called for the House to pass a Senate-approved Supreme Court security bill, I saw people on social media express outrage that Republicans were pushing swift legislative action after the arrest of an armed man outside Kavanaugh’s home when they showed no such urgency following the horrific Uvalde elementary school shooting.

Some tried to downplay the arrest because the man – the one carrying the gun and the zip ties and the knife, the one who traveled all the way from California – called 911 and reported himself rather than acting on what he claimed was his plan.

Anger can't lead us to excuse this

I’m angry, beyond measure, at the way Republicans fight even the slightest gun-control initiative. But that doesn’t mean their desire to protect Supreme Court justices is wrong. We can be mad at one thing without equating it to something else.

Too many guns = Too much gun violence. Why can't we draw a line between these two points?

If your response to that is, “Well, that’s what Republicans always do,” I’m sorry, but that reasoning takes us nowhere. I don’t want liberals to mirror bad behavior. I want them to aggressively highlight bad behavior so the public can see it, then I want them to rise above it and knock it down with facts and reason and compassion.

In what universe is it right for any of us to downplay how terrifying it is that an armed man claiming he wanted to kill Kavanaugh got that close to the home of the justice and his family? Nothing happened, and that’s very fortunate, but the absence of a violent act doesn’t make the incident less serious.

Of course Republicans used news of the arrest to harangue Democrats and the media, saying a similar incident outside the home of one of the more liberal justices would have promoted ceaseless outrage from the left. But there was a similar incident, revealed last year, in which a federal judge’s son was killed by an assailant who had been planning to also go after Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

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This begs the question: Why should we care which justice it is?

The leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade has rightfully inflamed passions among those of us who support abortion rights. And many, myself included, don't think Kavanaugh, who is shown voting with Alito in the draft opinion on abortion, should ever have been confirmed in the first place.

Nobody should be made to feel unsafe

But none of that makes me think, even for a moment, that the arrest of Roske near the justice’s home is anything less than despicable. Again, based on the charges Roske is facing and the information police have provided, this was an assassination attempt on a U.S. Supreme Court justice. For the sake of our democracy, that had better feel like a big deal.

We can't let ourselves get to the point where certain acts of political violence or intimidation are OK, as long as they aren’t happening to people on our side of the fence. We’re seeing that happen right now as Republicans try to downplay the Jan. 6 committee hearings and Fox News declines to even broadcast them. It’s dangerous.

The truth might hurt. I guess that's why Fox News won't show the Jan. 6 hearing.

Politicians, jurists, abortion providers, activists, journalists, protesters, police – nobody should be made to feel unsafe, and the very fact that some will get mad at me for suggesting such a thing proves we're in a dark space.

I don’t care if people on my side of the fence get angry about what I’m writing here. Believe me, I’m fiery mad about the same things they’re mad about, I understand the issues at stake and I care about them deeply.

But wrong is wrong. Adjusting our morals to maintain some perceived advantage in a political divide blurs lines that should simply never be crossed.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook: facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Opinion: Take Brett Kavanaugh assassination plot seriously