It’s not just ideas that have consequences. Words have consequences, too. Henry II is said to have made the famous remark above in 1170, which prompted four knights to travel to Canterbury and slay Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Many centuries later, Mark Twain remarked, “The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes”—a bit of an allegorical mystery, at which Twain was a master. So we look for a pattern.

It is worth examining a plethora of quotes from today’s politicians that echo Henry the Second’s remark, and hardly allegorically. Today, Charlie Kirk is just as dead as Thomas Becket.

Within a few minutes at a computer, a competent researcher could easily come up with double the number of examples above. The point—does it need to be explained?—is that the Left, politicians, media, “intellectuals,” and the whole sordid gang have for years been saying the most awful things about Trump and, by extension obviously, his supporters.

“Will no one rid us of this racist, fascist, Nazi pig? And the pigs that support him?”

One of Trump’s leading supporters was Charlie Kirk—and he was practically a fourth son of the president. The lefties asked that question for nine years. How can we be surprised that someone answered their call?

And now Charlie Kirk is as dead as Thomas Becket.

Daniel Oliver is Chairman Emeritus of the Board of the Education and Research Institute and a Director of the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in Pasadena, CA. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Reagan, he was Executive Editor and subsequently Chairman of the Board of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review.

Email Daniel Oliver at Daniel.Oliver@TheCandidAmerican.com.