There’s a movie I grew up watching about an Irish man who immigrated to the US as a child with his mother—and when she died, he returned home to find and buy the house he born in.

Sean Thorten (the “Yank,” as he’s called by the locals) clashes with Squire Will Danaher, who wants the same land.

Danaher’s known as a bully, and makes his assistant publicly record the names of people who tick him off in his “book.” The “book” is often used as a threat.

(It’s “The Quiet Man,” if you’re curious.)

I couldn’t get Will Danaher and his ridiculous black book out of my head this week.

Dominic Laurenzo is co-owner at a Houston restaurant called El Tiempo Cantina, and last weekend he had the shock of a lifetime when he saw Attorney General Jeff Sessions walk in for dinner.

Laurenzo got a photo with Sessions, and proudly posted it to social media:

And American Progressives all got their books out.

Since Jeff Sessions is part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, the so-called “Progressive Left” went apoplectic.

“Jeff Sessions continues to target immigrants and enable Trump’s discriminatory policies yet @ElTiempoCantina is ‘Honored to serve him,’” read one tweet.

“When you’re [sic] job is to serve, keeping it professional at all times is perfectly fine @ElTiempoCantina. But boasting & saying it was an honor to serve someone who has a hand in the horror that is hurting ppl & our nation is just plain irresponsible & disheartening,” read another.

The reactions kept coming. They were so vitriolic and hateful that Laurenzo eventually apologized for the picture, and deactivated all social media accounts.

“At least temporarily I had it taken down because I don’t want to be insulted, my children to be insulted, my family to be insulted,” Laurenzo said.

I don’t remember anyone on the left raising literal hell over Sean Penn’s friendship with the late Hugo Chavez (an actual murderous dictator) or Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s trip to Communist Cuba, or Dennis Rodman’s friendship with Kim Jong-un (another actual murderous dictator) or Bernie Sanders’ honeymoon in the totalitarian Soviet Union or the time CNN’s Chris Cuomo wore a shirt given to his father by Fidel Castro (yet another actual murderous dictator), or the time the Obamas hung a Christmas ornament of Mao Zedong (dang, another actual murderous dictator), or the time Barack Obama told Dmitry Medvedev to tell Vladimir Putin that he’d have “more flexibility” with the Russians after his election, or the approximately 7.8 billion times in the last few years left wing college students have sported some kind of apparel with Che Guevara (we’re really going with this murderous oppression theme here) emblazed on it …

(queue deep intake of breath after that epic run-on setence)

Yet a Texas entrepreneur has the unmitigated gall to get excited about taking a selfie with a guy whose horrific sin is insisting that people follow the law.

How dare he.

You would have thought that Dominic Laurenzo had taken a selfie with Satan incarnate.

So let me ammend my title. You’re not only not progressive (we’ll get to that in a second), you’re unabashed hypocrites, too.

But I’ve digressed.

This isn’t the first time you’ve done this to someone who dares express support for this administration—or for conservatism or traditional values or anything else you passionately hate.

You’re blacklisting businesses if they take part in building Trump’s wall. You’re intentionally targeting small business owners that don’t agree with your lifestyles. You’re running Trump officials out of restaurants; your own elected officials are calling for crowds to harass Trump administration members.  You’re threatening DHS officials in their personal homes with burned and decapitated animal carcasses.

The list goes on, and on, and one.

There’s nothing wrong with disliking a politician. There’s nothing wrong with making a personal decision not to patronize certain establishments anymore. But you cross the line into insanity when you use hate and spite and violence to force people into silence and submission … or else.

You’re not progressive. You’re regressive.

Yeah, I know, I get it—your “ideas” are supposed to be modern, fresh, transformative… in motion. I get it. Doesn’t make them right, but I get it.

Here’s the thing though: you’re anything but. Your so-called ideas might technically garner you the name, but you’re NOT the definition of progressives.

You’ve regressed back to the days of old when disputes were settled with screaming and violence, like the wild west or medieval times (you know, “off with their heads,” and all that good rot, etc.). You’ve regressed to childhood, where the go-to move (just ask my three-year old) is a temper tantrum; except your temper tantrums are far more vitriolic, furious, hateful and spiteful.

For a party that talks about love and tolerance, you sure show a lot of hate.

Do you realize what you did here? Here’s this restaurant owner minding his own business, sharing something that made him happy—and you go and crucify him for it.

This has kind of been a theme here for the last few weeks, but let me repeat it again: What good comes of this?

Sure, you might force people into submission (like you did with this restaurant owner who finally apologized for something that didn’t even remotely need an apology) and you might even get the lot of us to shut up—but someday it’ll be your turn.

Someday down the road some kid you’ve raised in this cesspool of intolerance and regressive behavior will decide he or she doesn’t like what YOU think… and it’ll be your turn to shut up or be shut up.

Silencing our fellow countrymen and women through hate and violence will get you nowhere. It will only set a dangerous precedence for the future, and divide us even more.

Mary Ramirez is a full-time writer, creator of www.afuturefree.com (a political commentary blog), and contributor to The Chris Salcedo Show on KSEV 700. She can be reached at: afuturefree@aol.com; or on Twitter: @AFutureFree