A dark day: Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old conservative activist (and father of two), was murdered yesterday at a campus speaking event in Utah. We seem to be entering an era of heightened political violence. It is profoundly, disturbingly sad. And it may have consequences we cannot yet know.
Kirk was fiery, passionate, and provocative. He valued the art of persuasion, of discourse, of changing a mind or letting your own be molded, as it so often is, by fierce exchange. He was a great evangelist for the conservative cause, launching Turning Point USA back in 2012, just a year or two before that wave of wokeness really infiltrated, with backing from former Tea Party types. His sense of timing was impeccable.
He took young people seriously and saw college campuses as the ideological incubators that they are—for good ideas, and for toxic ones. As he grew up, he modeled the values he professed: He was a married father of two young children, and a devout Christian. He returned to college campuses—like Utah Valley University, where he was yesterday—even as he amassed more and more fame, featuring a “Prove Me Wrong” table at these events, where he’d invite some students to debate him.
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“The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,” wrote President Donald Trump on social media. “He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us.”
In an address following the assassination, Trump called Kirk a “martyr for truth and freedom.”
“My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country,” Trump said. But lots of people on the left just couldn’t resist the urge to blame Kirk for his own demise, or suppress their hatred of the president even for a few moments. “[He is] constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech, aimed at certain groups,” said Matthew Dowd on MSNBC. “I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which often then to hateful actions.” MSNBC anchor Katy Tur speculated that the president might “use the Charlie Kirk shooting as a justification for something bad.” (Prosecuting the killer, once found, to the full extent that the law allows does not strike me as “something bad” but maybe Tur disagrees.)
Predictions: Will the new deplatforming consist of colleges claiming that security for conservative speakers is just too darn expensive? Look for ways this might get twisted into a means of controlling right-leaning speech. Will the many MSNBC pundits who said nasty things face any professional consequences for their seemingly sincere beliefs (that conservatives have it coming, or that they’re reaping what they’ve sown, or that political violence is in some way justified)? (So far, one actually has.) Masks just keep slipping every time this kind of thing happens.
Bluesky is reacting exactly like you would have expected pic.twitter.com/oQAPtyjgrL
— Robert Sterling (@RobertMSterling) September 10, 2025
Last year, an extremist tried to assassinate Trump, then campaigning in Butler, Pennsylvania. A few months ago, a Free-Palestiner named Elias Rodriguez murdered two young Israeli embassy staffers—on the eve of their engagement—outside an event for young Jewish professionals. There was the murder of health care executive Brian Thompson, for which Luigi Mangione will be prosecuted by New York, Pennsylvania, and the federal government. And prominent Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) seem to think stricter gun control—something Kirk would have vociferously opposed—will stop it all.
No, the rot is deeper, and it’s not just left-on-right. There was that right-wing crazy who shot and killed several Minnesota state lawmakers in June, for example.
But there is also a disturbing strain emerging specifically on the left that makes light of political violence and seems to revel in bad things happening to the ideological enemies, like we’re all playacting life, like deadly violence isn’t real and concrete and something that permanently deprives children of their fathers, something that can’t be taken back.
Just two days before the shooting, the women’s magazine Jezebel posted an article about paying “Etsy witches to curse Charlie Kirk.” When Mangione killed Thompson, the famous and highly-paid journalist Taylor Lorenz—formerly an employee of The Washington Post and The New York Times—said on Piers Morgan’s TV show that she felt “joy.” (“Joy at a man’s execution?!” balked Morgan.)
Whether Thompson or Trump or the Israeli embassy staffers or Kirk, whether “joy” or justification, this way madness lies. We don’t want to relive the ’60s, that decade that saw the killings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, Medgar Evers and John F. Kennedy, Fred Hampton and Malcolm X (some of whom were justifiers of political violence to achieve their objectives). We don’t want to relive the ’70s, which saw just staggering amounts of political violence emanating from the left wing.
It’s not just that Charlie Kirk’s kids will grow up without a father, though that’s a tragedy. It’s also that the thousands of young people in the audience at Utah Valley University will live with this horrible image: watching a man just a few years older than them get shot for professing his conservative beliefs, blood gushing out of his neck. And who, exactly, will want to speak freely in the aftermath, knowing that sort of violence is now on the menu?
31 years old, 2 kids https://t.co/pSRLWMZ32C pic.twitter.com/L1PYSvJo0l
— Mason (@webdevMason) September 10, 2025
Scenes from New York: Today’s the 24th anniversary of 9/11, that horrible day in which terrorists hijacked planes and flew them into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a third location that shall forever remain unknown as passengers summoned the courage to take over and crash the plane into a field in Pennsylvania instead, sparing the targets but sacrificing themselves in the process. I’m going to Mass at my church in Lower Manhattan today, where we honor the firefighters who died, and pray for their families (many of whom are in attendance). My son and I go every year and it’s always very beautiful; Irish and Italian and a lot louder than usual, and I always look around at the men and women who are my age, many of whom lost their dads when they were young, and am just struck with appreciation for these firefighters’ sacrifice. Bless them all.
QUICK HITS
- “Selecting for liars is bad,” argues Kelsey Piper over at The Argument. But the way our welfare system is designed incentivizes lying vs. telling the truth. So does the way our federal-government hiring works, and the way many cities’ zoning codes work.
- “Poland sought a consultation of NATO powers after shooting down drones that crossed into its territory during Russia’s latest massive air strike on Ukraine, calling the incursion an ‘act of aggression,'” reports Bloomberg. “North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Mark Rutte denounced ‘Russia’s reckless behavior’ and confirmed that the alliance discussed the incident after Poland invoked Article 4 of the alliance treaty, which triggers consultations and can open a path to coordinated action among allies.” (“Polish authorities registered 19 airspace violations, with a ‘significant’ number of drones originating from Belarusian territory.”)
- Tablet Editor in Chief Alana Newhouse takes to the pages of The Free Press to reconcile her belief in gene editing with her belief in God.
- Yup:
this is the single most psychotic use of passive framing in a headline I’ve ever seen.
they weren’t star-crossed lovers. he slit her throat on a fucking train, Jeff. https://t.co/fzwXjIT3K2 pic.twitter.com/KTOLGj7isP
— pagliacci the hated ???? (@Slatzism) September 9, 2025
