"It’s pointless to debate how much violence is coming from which “side,” or who is more savage now." The reason it's pointless is that it's just a matter of obvious fact. And it should be taken into account from a tactical perspective. The left routinely shuts events down by threatening violence. Many orgs and venues have rules that say that the entity holding the event must bear the cost of security. So it is very hard for non-left orgs to have events, they have to pay so much more for them than the left orgs, because they are being threatened. I think that, since everybody knows that the left is doing most of the violence, the key tactic is for non-left to be clear that they are going to show up to left events and that they clearly need security to protect them. Then the left orgs will have to bear the cost or the event be canceled. Levels the playing field for the orgs.
the data show something else entirely. i'm not saying that the mid level violence of the left isn't there. or out right violence. but the right wing violence is... many degrees more common.
and yet right wing violence actually does shoot. actual crimes. kirk himself canceled others and said some weird things about jews who support a policy he didn't like.
i'm tried of glazing the man. the shooter is still worse than kirk.
So, you are suggesting the Right needs to threaten to disrupt Leftist gatherings in order to get the Left to stop threatening Conservative gatherings... I see a bad moon arisin'.
I think that phoning the cops beforehand and informing them that you intend to be at an event where there will be many people who may be inclined to beat you up, and therefore you need police protection, is distinguishable from showing up at an event and shooting the speaker. You will not be disrupting the event, if held, it would rather be the people assaulting you who would be disrupting the event. But, the real purpose of the tactic is to make the left pay the financial cost of their own propensity to violence OR pay the cost of having to cancel. The non-left is forced to pay that cost constantly.
One might hope that higher education would have a role in quelling the violence and normalizing civility. About half our population earn college degrees; graduates provide leadership in many organizations and institutions. What they learn in college provides the foundation for the example they will provide to others.
How are colleges and universities doing? According to FIRE's latest survey of 270 institutions, not so well.
Berea College, recently rated the best school for upward mobility Washington Weekly, earned a failing grade for its support of free speech and academic freedom (as did a majority of the schools surveyed). It was also ranked in the bottom half or the 270 schools that participated. A majority of the Berea student respondents believed that shouting down someone who expressed offensive views was appropriate while nearly a quarter even endorsed the use of violence to prevent the expression of potentially hurtful views. Anytime we justify denying others the freedoms we claim for ourselves we are committing a micro-oppression and slope toward violence is well lubricated by our innate narcissism.
Disheartening...”
Berea College dismissed me from my tenured professor position for cause in 2018 (I had the audacity to develop and distribute a survey asking about community perceptions and judgments about hostile environments and academic freedom). The FIRE survey also revealed that Berea College has nearly a 7 to one liberal to conservative student ratio. Eastern Kentucky University about 10 miles away admits student who are similar in many ways to Berea College students but its liberal to conservative ratio is nearly 1:1. Selection bias? EKU also ranked #10/270 schools on Fire’s survey.
I was raised with an open mind both religiously and politically. When those four assassinations occurred in my youth in the 60s, my parents did not celebrate their deaths despite the fact that some of the men were of a different color of skin and had different politics than my parents. I speak for myself, and for some other parents: we did not raise our kids to hate others or enact violence against others with a different perspective.
Some of the recent shooters in the US did not radicalize from within their homes but rather outside of them - online, in classrooms, and on social media. We must also address the schools, online groups, and social media fueling this way of handling disagreement. A parent can do only so much because our kids have access to ideologies that differ from what we teach and our moral compass. Yet I agree, we must do our best individually as well. At the same time, we parents need a bit of help regarding school curriculum and online/social media regulation to provide safeguards in those areas too.
I think Neil Postman's work "Amusing Ourselves to Death" still explains it all rather well, even though written in the '80s. There's a lot of powerful cultural forces at work.
Thank you, Monica for a very timely piece we all need in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death and the reaction of joy by many liberals, progressives and leftists. Sadly, this is new nothing for us as a nation and we very much have been here before. Political violence is as American as apple pie. In 1835, a mentally ill house painter named Richard Lawrence tried to take a shot at President Andrew Jackson. In 1865, at Ford’s Theatre actor and Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head and killed him. Deranged officer seeker Charles J. Guiteau shot President James Garfield in the back in broad daylight in a train station. He later died from his wounds and the subsequent medical malpractice. President William McKinley was shot by an Anarchist and Polish immigrant named Leon Czolgosz at the Buffalo Pan-Exposition in 1901. McKinley later died also of his wounds and medical malpractice. On November 22, 1963, JFK was shot and killed and Texas Governor John Connolly was wounded while riding in the Presidential limousine with the top down in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.
On February 22, 1974, Samuel Byck attempted to hijack a plane and fly it into the White House in an attempt to kill President Richard Nixon. He was stopped by police before committing suicide. On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot and badly wounded by a deranged young man named John Hinkley, Jr. who was seeking to impress Actress Jodie Foster whom he had an obsession with. There were two separate attempts on the life of President Trump just last year. This is just to name a FEW. There are many more I could name. We all regardless of whether we are left, right or center need to contain the savage impulses inside all of us. Here are some great reads I’d recommend to everyone to learn more about the history of political violence in America and how we can heal the wounds this nation has suffered:
• Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James Swanson
• Destiny of a Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard
• The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and the Dawn of the American Century by Scott Miller
• The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War by Joanne B. Freeman
• JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass
• American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing Our Nation by Seth Radwell
• Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future by James Shapiro
• Our Common Bonds: Using What Americans Share to Help Bridge the Partisan Divide by Matthew Levendusky
• American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation and Could Again by Yuval Levin
• The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization by Peter T. Coleman
Monica, your essay is spot on. I might also add we lovers of freedom of thought and expression must not be chilled or intimidated by murderers. We must continue to write and speak so that the young will take heart from our example. Those of courageous heart will be remembered in the hearts and souls of future leaders.
Completely off topic but I had to go get a new ID this morning at Eglin AFB. I followed the beautiful, young airman to her desk and when she sat down, I couldn't help staring at her name patch, Twyman. She's from small-town Alabama and I let her know she has some distant cousins in Virginia.
Excellent piece. I agree with all you say. If we tear down civilization, we live in a wilderness of fear and chaos with few limits and constraints on violence. If we tear down democracy, we live with oppression of speech and an inability to think clearly. If we dehumanize others for their opinions and politics, we lose the power of being human: to change our minds and use our words instead of fight/flight reactivity. As human, we have choices and responsibilities that animals do not have. To embrace our humanity takes discipline, humility, sacrifice and curiosity about how and why we might be wrong about what we believe. You say it well here. Thank you, Monica!
Sixty years ago, no one organized events, riots, looting or built statues unless it was after being attacked themselves. Context matters then, and now.
Your calm, reasoned response here is laudable, but I think we just hit a tipping point.
We will have to wait a few years to see what that really means, but we have one clue: the formerly civil are using the tools of their enemy already to get people fired for speech. Pray it stops there.
College kids surely just noticed that the “approved” speech involving destruction, hate and intimidation contrasts sharply with thoughtcrime for which one could assassinated. How will those future leaders react, over time?
I can tell you exactly where I was when I learned of each killing , starting with JFK , as I was in the hall on my way to an algebra 2 exam .She later offered a make up if desired. This is indeed who we are, we've just forgotten how thin that line is.
The time period you use to compare historical politically-motivated violence done by the Right to the present and ongoing assault by the American Left and its radicals on those called (never proven to be) "right-wing racists, misogynists, fill-in-the-blank-phobes, fascists, etc., etc., etc." is inapt, to say the least. The most damning aspect of your error is the fact that those events occurred almost 60 years ago. Let me repeat that: you're going back 60 years to dredge up events that (poorly, if at all) "fit" your predetermined template attempting to show a tit-for-tat Right/Left political violence that simply doesn't, never did, and never will exist.
The remainder of your pieties, nostrums, hopes, prayers, and other such nonsense deserves no further comment.
I think you missed the author's point. I agree with you in despising the argument that goes like this: "1. A thing happened in the past and I assert that it can be categorized thus. 2. A thing is happening in the present and I assert that it can be categorized in a similar way. 3. Therefore <choose your conclusion>." But I don't think the author is making that argument or any similar. She could just as well have talked about the assassination of the Grachii in late republican Rome to make her point (but probably assumed that fewer of her readers know about this). I think that the general point is that this kind of behavior is simply not new and the only thing that is new is that it may still be possible to avoid the late republican Rome trajectory of more and more murders and proscriptions, followed by Imperial rule. (I don't entirely agree with the author, I think some things are new.) But I do think you're not giving her enough credit.
Though outside of the USA there are 2 other names I believe are worth mentioning: Yitzhak Rabin (assassinated 1995) and Anwar Sadat (assassinated 1981). Both were working towards peace, but those with bloodlust could not let peace happen. History is back.
"It’s pointless to debate how much violence is coming from which “side,” or who is more savage now." The reason it's pointless is that it's just a matter of obvious fact. And it should be taken into account from a tactical perspective. The left routinely shuts events down by threatening violence. Many orgs and venues have rules that say that the entity holding the event must bear the cost of security. So it is very hard for non-left orgs to have events, they have to pay so much more for them than the left orgs, because they are being threatened. I think that, since everybody knows that the left is doing most of the violence, the key tactic is for non-left to be clear that they are going to show up to left events and that they clearly need security to protect them. Then the left orgs will have to bear the cost or the event be canceled. Levels the playing field for the orgs.
the data show something else entirely. i'm not saying that the mid level violence of the left isn't there. or out right violence. but the right wing violence is... many degrees more common.
The cato institute. for starters
"the data"? Whose data?
the cato institute. for starters
Love your citation...
and yet right wing violence actually does shoot. actual crimes. kirk himself canceled others and said some weird things about jews who support a policy he didn't like.
i'm tried of glazing the man. the shooter is still worse than kirk.
So, you are suggesting the Right needs to threaten to disrupt Leftist gatherings in order to get the Left to stop threatening Conservative gatherings... I see a bad moon arisin'.
I think that phoning the cops beforehand and informing them that you intend to be at an event where there will be many people who may be inclined to beat you up, and therefore you need police protection, is distinguishable from showing up at an event and shooting the speaker. You will not be disrupting the event, if held, it would rather be the people assaulting you who would be disrupting the event. But, the real purpose of the tactic is to make the left pay the financial cost of their own propensity to violence OR pay the cost of having to cancel. The non-left is forced to pay that cost constantly.
“Excellent argument, Monica.
One might hope that higher education would have a role in quelling the violence and normalizing civility. About half our population earn college degrees; graduates provide leadership in many organizations and institutions. What they learn in college provides the foundation for the example they will provide to others.
How are colleges and universities doing? According to FIRE's latest survey of 270 institutions, not so well.
https://rankings.thefire.org/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Berea College, recently rated the best school for upward mobility Washington Weekly, earned a failing grade for its support of free speech and academic freedom (as did a majority of the schools surveyed). It was also ranked in the bottom half or the 270 schools that participated. A majority of the Berea student respondents believed that shouting down someone who expressed offensive views was appropriate while nearly a quarter even endorsed the use of violence to prevent the expression of potentially hurtful views. Anytime we justify denying others the freedoms we claim for ourselves we are committing a micro-oppression and slope toward violence is well lubricated by our innate narcissism.
Disheartening...”
Berea College dismissed me from my tenured professor position for cause in 2018 (I had the audacity to develop and distribute a survey asking about community perceptions and judgments about hostile environments and academic freedom). The FIRE survey also revealed that Berea College has nearly a 7 to one liberal to conservative student ratio. Eastern Kentucky University about 10 miles away admits student who are similar in many ways to Berea College students but its liberal to conservative ratio is nearly 1:1. Selection bias? EKU also ranked #10/270 schools on Fire’s survey.
I was raised with an open mind both religiously and politically. When those four assassinations occurred in my youth in the 60s, my parents did not celebrate their deaths despite the fact that some of the men were of a different color of skin and had different politics than my parents. I speak for myself, and for some other parents: we did not raise our kids to hate others or enact violence against others with a different perspective.
Some of the recent shooters in the US did not radicalize from within their homes but rather outside of them - online, in classrooms, and on social media. We must also address the schools, online groups, and social media fueling this way of handling disagreement. A parent can do only so much because our kids have access to ideologies that differ from what we teach and our moral compass. Yet I agree, we must do our best individually as well. At the same time, we parents need a bit of help regarding school curriculum and online/social media regulation to provide safeguards in those areas too.
Thank you for your post Monica.
I think Neil Postman's work "Amusing Ourselves to Death" still explains it all rather well, even though written in the '80s. There's a lot of powerful cultural forces at work.
Thank you, Monica for a very timely piece we all need in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death and the reaction of joy by many liberals, progressives and leftists. Sadly, this is new nothing for us as a nation and we very much have been here before. Political violence is as American as apple pie. In 1835, a mentally ill house painter named Richard Lawrence tried to take a shot at President Andrew Jackson. In 1865, at Ford’s Theatre actor and Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head and killed him. Deranged officer seeker Charles J. Guiteau shot President James Garfield in the back in broad daylight in a train station. He later died from his wounds and the subsequent medical malpractice. President William McKinley was shot by an Anarchist and Polish immigrant named Leon Czolgosz at the Buffalo Pan-Exposition in 1901. McKinley later died also of his wounds and medical malpractice. On November 22, 1963, JFK was shot and killed and Texas Governor John Connolly was wounded while riding in the Presidential limousine with the top down in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.
On February 22, 1974, Samuel Byck attempted to hijack a plane and fly it into the White House in an attempt to kill President Richard Nixon. He was stopped by police before committing suicide. On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot and badly wounded by a deranged young man named John Hinkley, Jr. who was seeking to impress Actress Jodie Foster whom he had an obsession with. There were two separate attempts on the life of President Trump just last year. This is just to name a FEW. There are many more I could name. We all regardless of whether we are left, right or center need to contain the savage impulses inside all of us. Here are some great reads I’d recommend to everyone to learn more about the history of political violence in America and how we can heal the wounds this nation has suffered:
• Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James Swanson
• Destiny of a Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard
• The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and the Dawn of the American Century by Scott Miller
• The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War by Joanne B. Freeman
• JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass
• American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing Our Nation by Seth Radwell
• Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future by James Shapiro
• Our Common Bonds: Using What Americans Share to Help Bridge the Partisan Divide by Matthew Levendusky
• American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation and Could Again by Yuval Levin
• The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization by Peter T. Coleman
Very well said, Monica.
Monica, your essay is spot on. I might also add we lovers of freedom of thought and expression must not be chilled or intimidated by murderers. We must continue to write and speak so that the young will take heart from our example. Those of courageous heart will be remembered in the hearts and souls of future leaders.
Completely off topic but I had to go get a new ID this morning at Eglin AFB. I followed the beautiful, young airman to her desk and when she sat down, I couldn't help staring at her name patch, Twyman. She's from small-town Alabama and I let her know she has some distant cousins in Virginia.
Thanks. There are less than 4,000 Twymans in the US. I'm sure the young airman and I was distant cousins way way back. Best,
Excellent piece. I agree with all you say. If we tear down civilization, we live in a wilderness of fear and chaos with few limits and constraints on violence. If we tear down democracy, we live with oppression of speech and an inability to think clearly. If we dehumanize others for their opinions and politics, we lose the power of being human: to change our minds and use our words instead of fight/flight reactivity. As human, we have choices and responsibilities that animals do not have. To embrace our humanity takes discipline, humility, sacrifice and curiosity about how and why we might be wrong about what we believe. You say it well here. Thank you, Monica!
Excellent. The issues explored well, and with economy…what writing should always be.
Great piece, Monica, thanks.
Educate and speak up must be the way forward.
Have cross posted
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/the-turning-point-i-am-spartacus
Dusty
Sixty years ago, no one organized events, riots, looting or built statues unless it was after being attacked themselves. Context matters then, and now.
Your calm, reasoned response here is laudable, but I think we just hit a tipping point.
We will have to wait a few years to see what that really means, but we have one clue: the formerly civil are using the tools of their enemy already to get people fired for speech. Pray it stops there.
College kids surely just noticed that the “approved” speech involving destruction, hate and intimidation contrasts sharply with thoughtcrime for which one could assassinated. How will those future leaders react, over time?
I can tell you exactly where I was when I learned of each killing , starting with JFK , as I was in the hall on my way to an algebra 2 exam .She later offered a make up if desired. This is indeed who we are, we've just forgotten how thin that line is.
The time period you use to compare historical politically-motivated violence done by the Right to the present and ongoing assault by the American Left and its radicals on those called (never proven to be) "right-wing racists, misogynists, fill-in-the-blank-phobes, fascists, etc., etc., etc." is inapt, to say the least. The most damning aspect of your error is the fact that those events occurred almost 60 years ago. Let me repeat that: you're going back 60 years to dredge up events that (poorly, if at all) "fit" your predetermined template attempting to show a tit-for-tat Right/Left political violence that simply doesn't, never did, and never will exist.
The remainder of your pieties, nostrums, hopes, prayers, and other such nonsense deserves no further comment.
I think you missed the author's point. I agree with you in despising the argument that goes like this: "1. A thing happened in the past and I assert that it can be categorized thus. 2. A thing is happening in the present and I assert that it can be categorized in a similar way. 3. Therefore <choose your conclusion>." But I don't think the author is making that argument or any similar. She could just as well have talked about the assassination of the Grachii in late republican Rome to make her point (but probably assumed that fewer of her readers know about this). I think that the general point is that this kind of behavior is simply not new and the only thing that is new is that it may still be possible to avoid the late republican Rome trajectory of more and more murders and proscriptions, followed by Imperial rule. (I don't entirely agree with the author, I think some things are new.) But I do think you're not giving her enough credit.
Something along these lines?
https://open.substack.com/pub/banished/p/what-is-the-point-of-studying-the?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Not sure...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15095215/death-threats-reaction-Charlie-Kirk-murder-AYAAN-HIRSI-ALI.html
Apparently even that rag, "The Atlantic", is admitting to left-wing violence being a problem. https://x.com/BasedMikeLee/status/1970537748349231318
Another shooting, by addled leftist Hunter Nadeau: https://notthebee.com/article/gunman-yelling-free-palestine-opens-fire-at-new-hampshire-country-club-his-massacre-was-cut-short-by-a-chair, https://nypost.com/2025/09/21/us-news/alleged-new-hampshire-country-club-gunman-hunter-nadeau-charged-after-shooting-leaves-1-dead-multiple-injured/.
Though outside of the USA there are 2 other names I believe are worth mentioning: Yitzhak Rabin (assassinated 1995) and Anwar Sadat (assassinated 1981). Both were working towards peace, but those with bloodlust could not let peace happen. History is back.