Praying for your persecutors is not weak or "pietistic."
It's hard.
It's unnatural.
Praying for persecutors takes a miracle--you must be born again to do it.
Such prayers show spiritual strength, not weakness.
When you pray for your enemies, you know freedom in Christ.
If most political violence in the USA comes from conservatives, why is not Salt Lake City burning down? Or, more to the point, why did nobody, conservative or liberal or anything else, expect or even worry a little bit that Salt Lake City or any other place in the USA would be put to the torch?
Why are there no protests on college campuses across the country? Or, more to the point, why is nobody expecting or even worrying a little bit about such protests?
I will say right out that I believe mobs are evil by nature, making everyone in them worse than they usually are. I extend the point even to mobs that do not burn anything down or beat anybody up: to groups that march and shout in anger, designed to bully and intimidate.
I've now listened to two of Charlie Kirk's discussions with college students; one was on abortion, the other on democracy. He is calm, rational, respectful; he never uses a nasty word, never makes accusations; if his supporters begin to cheer, he shuts them up. He lets his interlocutors have their say, and he tries to get them to clarify exactly what they mean when they may not themselves know it. Anyone who gloats over the death of such a person, engaged in that action and on a college campus, is gloating over the death of rational discourse. The alternative to that is chaos.