Politics is a dirty business. It always has been. But today, politics is sometimes too often synonymous with violence.
While there were many catalysts that resulted in violence being seen as a “legitimate” form of political discourse, one stands out: Columbia University, 1968. That year, a combination of black and anti-war activists took over a building on the campus of New York’s premier university. They demanded that Columbia cancel a proposed nearby gymnasium that was claimed to be racist and end its relationship with a Department of Defense-affiliated think tank.
The NYPD eventually ejected the activists after a series of violent clashes. In a sane world, every one of those students would have been expelled, barred from campus, and sued for damages. But that’s not what happened.
Image created using AI.
No, the administration acquiesced to virtually every demand, and there were very few consequences. Suddenly, on TVs across America, activists were learning the lesson that violent takeovers can yield good results with minimal consequences, if any, even at one of the nation’s leading universities. The message having been received, it was suddenly gloves off for activists across the country. Yale, Howard, Brown, and others followed. The next year saw more of the same at Harvard and U Penn, too.
These students, these radicals, including terrorists, did not reflect most American people’s opinion. In that year’s election, the Democrat candidate, who was far more acceptable to the American people than the left’s activist wing, could still secure only 13 states and 42% of the popular vote. Four years later, Nixon would be reelected by a 49 to 1 Electoral College landslide. Not only that, but between 1968 and 1988, Democrats would win only one out of 6 elections and would lose 49 states twice.
In 1968 and many years after, the radicals in the Democrat party wouldn’t reflect majority opinion, but the die was cast. The lesson was learned: Violence wins. And so it grew.
The radical SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) launched violent protests against their closest mainstream ally, the Democrats, during the 1968 DNC convention in Chicago. The next year, terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn would launch the Weather Underground, which would bomb the US Capitol two years later. The pace accelerated: “During an eighteen-month period in 1971 and 1972, the FBI reported more than 2,500 bombings on U.S. soil, nearly 5 a day.” That violence wasn’t coming from conservatives.
Over time, those Baby Boomers, the spoiled spawn of the Greatest Generation, would basically turn against and undermine everything their parents fought for. They would go on to become teachers and professors and writers and journalists, taking the lessons and the perspectives from 1968 with them. Nothing exemplifies this more than the fact that Communist Howard Zinn’s treacherous A People’s History of the United States became the textbook of choice for tens of thousands of teachers across the country.
It would take a while, but by the early 1990s, the radicals from ’68 were firmly in control of almost every educational and cultural institution in America. From schools and universities to NGOs and newsrooms, the radicals were in a position to brainwash America’s youth with their leftist poison. And they did.
America began to see the full fruit of the radicals’ poison during the Bush years, when he was regularly called a Nazi and compared to Hitler. In 2008, the radicals finally came into their own with the election of their fellow traveler, Barack Obama. Indeed, Obama launched his political career in the home of terrorists Ayers and Dohrn.
Under Obama, the racial divide would grow, the gay lobby would begin its evolution into the trans nightmare we have today, and the violent rhetoric against anyone who opposed the left would intensify. Obama would use the government apparatus, which was now fully stocked by acolytes of those 1960s radicals, to target conservatives. Simultaneously, the justice apparatus across the country—by design, typically one of the least radical elements of the government structure—from District Attorneys to parole boards to judges and justices, embraced the leftist victimization mentality where virtually no transgression, including violence, should be punished, unless the perpetrator is from an unapproved group.
What’s more, the universities had become indoctrination centers producing millions of illiberal and sometimes violent graduates taking to the streets in support of every leftist cause. They were found in Antifa, in BLM, in trans groups, in pro-illegal immigrant groups, and antisemitic groups from both the Islamic and progressive perspectives.
All of this culminated during the era of Donald Trump. His first term was bookended by violence. In January 2017, Washington went up in flames upon his inauguration, and in the summer of 2020, cities and towns around the country were engulfed in flames and violence as the death of George Floyd sparked the left’s decades-long propaganda kindling of white supremacy and institutional racism. Then, during the Biden administration, violent antisemitic protests were allowed to blossom on campuses across the country.
Which brings us to today. Charlie Kirk’s assassination has sparked discussions about the absurd notion of murder being a legitimate form of political interaction. Where America once was a place where ideas were debated and using violence to achieve political ends was fringe at best, today we have something different.
In a recent survey questioning the legitimacy of assassinating Donald Trump for political reasons, fully 55% of left-leaning respondents suggested that it was “somewhat justified.” The same survey showed similar support for killing Elon Musk, burning down Tesla dealerships, and worshipping Luigi Mangione.
These are the people who proffer the age-old hypothetical “Would you go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby to save 20 million lives” before calling Trump or his supporters Nazis and nodding at you knowingly. They are the same people who claim that saying men can’t have babies is violence.
That is insane. That fully a quarter of the American population thinks that killing a political rival might be a legitimate tactic, actual violence, is unbelievable...but sadly believable at the same time.
Now mix that mentality with a deluge of Democrat politicians and leftist podcasters saying that people who refuse to address a dude as Ma’am are Nazis, that those who support Christian values are bigots, and that those who want to treat everyone equally are racists, and you see what America has become.
Six decades on, we’re living the consequences of the cowardice and incompetence of the Columbia administration. Sadly, we cannot go back in time and give them either spines or brains, but we can do the next best thing.
The government—at both the federal and state level—can begin to force consequences on those who think that violence, political or otherwise, is an acceptable form of civic interaction. From the street crime in DC to the Antifa / Trantifa / antisemitic threats and riots across the country to the leftists who fund both, violence should be met with overwhelming force, and those responsible should be held accountable and jailed for significant periods.
Yes, the prison population will grow in the short term, but over the long term, the Republic will be far healthier for everyone. Charlie Kirk was exactly the kind of man our Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Constitution. If America doesn’t get back to where respectful dialogue is the accepted currency of exchange, things could go very badly, very quickly.
Follow Vince on X at @ImperfectUSA