Issue #240
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it. ~ Henry David Thoreau
We will turn our hearts into steel….We will make our hearts cruel, hard, and immovable, so that no mercy will enter them, and so that they will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood. We will let loose the floodgates of that sea. Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be thousands; let them drown themselves in their own blood….let there be floods of the blood of the bourgeois–more blood, as much as possible. ~ Vladimir Lenin
The widespread revulsion to the assassination of Charlie Kirk was one of the most remarkable socio-political phenomenon of my lifetime. Suddenly, everything changed, dramatically so. Many people who don’t follow politics closely took notice and were horrified.
Many realized that the murder of a man who had spent years bravely engaging with young people in person—listening to them, answering their questions, asking questions of his own, debating them, perhaps persuading some—was an attack on free speech and civilization itself.
Thousands came together and prayed at spontaneous vigils. (Notably, there was no rioting, arson, looting or violence.) Many have since turned to Christianity and have started reading the Bible or attending church services.
Charlie’s organization Turning Point USA, which had 9,000 college and 1,100 high school chapters before his assassination, has since received over 54,000 requests to start a new chapter. Ironically, Charlie’s death was the turning point. This (improbable) Great Awakening was foretold by both the Fourth Turning books and Alex Jones.
Although I’m quite familiar with conservative figures and ideas, Charlie was barely on my radar until last year. I have one of his books, but didn’t start reading it until after his death. I had seen only a handful of his videos and wasn’t even aware that he had a daily podcast.
So why the almost universal outpouring of shock and sadness about his murder? I think the gleeful reaction of thousands of deranged Leftists on social media compounded the horror. Some of them posted “hit lists” of potential additional targets, including President Trump (which back in the old days would have landed you a visit from the Secret Service) and Charlie’s widow. Even more stunning, many of those drunk on bloodlust were in the helping or nurturing professions, such as nurses and teachers.
Suddenly, Americans became aware that there was a Death Cult in their midst, and were shocked that not only (1) a young father who had always advocated non-violence, who repeatedly told his debating partners that he loved them even as they hurled insults at him, and who lived a life about as close to Christ as you can get would be murdered because some people disagreed with his opinions, but (2) there were thousands of intelligent, “educated” (perhaps that’s the problem), seemingly civilized Americans who rejoiced about his death and bayed for more killing.
They shouldn’t be surprised. Leftist rhetoric has been hyperbolic since at least 1995, but it became absurd after Trump’s election in 2016. Many senior Democratic politicians and Legacy Media outlets compared Trump to Hitler and his supporters to Nazis and fascists. (Bill Maher, a liberal who can still see clearly, rightly called bullshit on that nonsense.) As one poster on X wrote, “They don’t kill you because you’re a Nazi, they call you a Nazi so they can kill you.”
If you keep telling people that Trump is Hitler, you shouldn’t be surprised when a few people, perhaps well-meaning (possibly to the point of toxic empathy), probably hyped up on SSRIs or psychiatric drugs, and certainly drenched in the humanity void of face masks and online classrooms, first-person shooter games and radicalizing content and computer algorithms on social media, wind up killing someone in the belief that they’re the modern day White Rose.
Americans should have paid more attention to the Left’s reaction to Luigi Mangione’s murder of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO back in December. Prosecutors also charged him with terrorism, prophetically arguing that he posed a continuing danger because he sought to influence others: “Simply put, the defendant hoped to normalize the use of violence to achieve ideological or political objectives. Since the murder, certain quarters of the public–who openly identify as acolytes of the defendant–have increasingly begun to view violence as an acceptable, or even necessary, substitute for reasoned political disagreement.” A few days ago his supporters celebrated when the judge dismissed the terrorism charge.
You see, for the Left, the ends always justify the means (for libertarians, the means are everything). Can’t use facts, logic and reason to win a debate? Can’t persuade enough voters to support your party’s platform and candidates? Just kill those who disagree with you, like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot–and ironically–Hitler did. Problem solved! By way of contrast, Charlie’s campus tour was called “Prove me wrong.” He challenged his critics to make a reasoned argument.
The day before Charlie’s assassination, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy said, “We’re in a war right now to save this country and so you have to be willing to do whatever is necessary to save the country.” Tyler Robinson did what he thought was necessary. Chuck Todd–Murphy’s interviewer—replied, “When I hear that, I wonder if there’s enough people who believe that same thing.” Yes Chuck, the American people now know that there are lots of people who believe that, and are appalled by it. Just listen to the boy at the beginning of this video and then to the (now former) Democrats starting at 11:20 into it.
I’ve been thinking about how the Left is so obsessed with killing and death, and I had an epiphany: For decades, defenders of the unborn have referred to themselves as Pro-Life. But I realized that term could be used to describe conservatives and libertarians on many other issues: war, gain of function virus research, the catastrophic response to COVID-19 including mandatory experimental gene therapy vaccines (which is now being linked to turbo cancer), iatrocracy and the influence of Big Pharma, indifference to the opioid/fentanyl epidemic (a large part of which is enabled by the CCP), the government food pyramid and the subsidization of junk food, MAHA, “climate change” policies including depopulation and deindustrialization, socialized medicine (which results in rationing and euthanasia), assisted suicide, infanticide, violent crime, riots, mass illegal immigration (especially from countries where there is little respect for life), “gender affirming care,” sterilization, etc.
For all of these issues, the result of what the Left advocates is death (or sickness that leads to premature death, or people who will never be “breeders”). The Founders championed the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The Left promises death, tyranny and “You will own nothing.”
I’ve seen some Leftists complain that they shouldn’t be required to mourn the death of Charlie Kirk. But that’s a straw man argument because no one is asking or expecting them to do that; besides, only a country like North Korea could enforce something like that.
I want to be clear about something: As a staunch advocate of free speech, I believe that everyone has the right to say whatever they want, no matter how repulsive, disrespectful or untruthful it may be. However, as libertarians say, with rights come responsibilities. If what you say or do is so outside the norms of civilized society that being associated with you is an embarrassment to your employer, then they absolutely have the right to fire you, as many of the bloodthirsty have discovered. Welcome to Consequence Culture. Remember that word? We seldom heard it during the last five years. In Cancel Culture, people get canceled for telling the truth. In Consequence Culture, people get fired for telling lies.
The way that society should respond to such assclownery is not with restrictions on speech, but the way it always has: the ancient practice of shunning. These people clearly believe in the Law of the Jungle, that might makes right. So civil society should shun them until they wind up on the edge or outside of civilization, back in the jungle where they can practice their beliefs. Since few people can survive on their own, for millennia this generally resulted in a life that was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. However, because most of the rest of the world is so screwed up, the shunned would probably be able to find a brigadista that would take them.
Hopefully this tragedy will give Americans “clear eyes and full hearts,” and they will reject the death, destruction and nihilism of the Left and embrace liberty, individual rights and the sanctity of life. Our society and civilization depend on it.
Read the full article here