I wanted to share two-and-a-half follow-on thoughts about the murder of Charlie Kirk and everything that is coming in its wake.
We are now seeing an escalating campaign of valorization of Kirk, one that a lot of non-partisan media and certainly everyone in the conservative movement is contributing to. Quite a few of his opponents are getting carried along with this. At the same time, you have the more extreme members of the right calling for violent and/or legal retribution against the “left” based on essentially nothing. As usual, the call is led by none other than the president of the United States. Yesterday we noted that political violence and terrorism is the antithesis of civic or liberal democracy. Because of that, civic democrats have the greatest interest in opposing it. But the gist of the matter is that we oppose civic violence targeting anyone regardless of belief, regardless of the qualities of the person. It applies to everyone. We don’t need to elevate someone or pretend they were something they weren’t to express our opposition to political assassination. And we shouldn’t. Kirk was a hyper-aggressive partisan who advocated a lot of deeply retrograde beliefs. That is just a fact. Let’s not pretend otherwise. His murder is at the same time deeply wrong and a disaster for the country.