The modern progressive left is drunk on its own virtue.
Politics are much like alcohol. Some people can indulge responsibly. Others cannot. Those unable to exercise restraint in consumption often bring a dark cloud upon themselves and those around them. America cannot be governed by a nation of political addicts any more than it can be governed by a nation of drunks.
This brings us to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It comes after a string of murders and attempted murders by criminals who were over-served politics. The near assassination of President Trump, the murder of children at Annunciation Catholic School, the burning of pro-Israel demonstrators in Boulder, the killing of a health insurance executive in Manhattan, and the slaughter of six school children in Nashville were all inspired, or at least connected to, progressive ideology.
Almost all elected Democratic officials swiftly condemned Kirk’s assassination. That should be acknowledged and welcomed, though it is sad that the condemnation of murder is today considered laudable. The voters who elected those officials are a different beast.
If social media tells the tale, political violence is now a cause célèbre in the sewers of TikTok, Reddit, and the progressive microblogging platform Bluesky. A young father of two precious children and a loving wife was slaughtered before hundreds of people and beamed instantly into millions of social media feeds. And the progressive base, nestled in these digital ghettos, has responded with grotesque delight.
Pew, Gallup, and other national pollsters have observed a multi-decade trend amongst this political subset. In increasing numbers, the left has abandoned faith and patriotism. Progressives have become prone to replacing the moral vacuum created by the departure of religion and civic allegiance with politics. They have become drunk on righteousness, high on their own ideological supply. They have assigned moral value to their political ideals, which can best be summarized as “my beliefs make me a good person and all behavior in pursuit of those beliefs is justified.”
Progressives do not have a monopoly on political violence. But they do seem to have cornered the market. And politics, a softer word for the appetite for power, seems to have a stronger grip on their hearts.
Politics, like alcohol, can distort reality and judgment. When United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson was executed in cold blood, it was The New Republic that penned the killer’s manifesto, noting “the sad role that Thompson played in a system that increasingly prioritizes shareholder profits over successful medical outcomes for its clients.”
When two innocent Israeli embassy staffers, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were shot in the streets outside an American Jewish Committee event, the killer exalted in the righteousness of the act, shouting “free Palestine… I did it for Gaza.”
On TikTok, an influencer with a large audience responded to Kirk’s murder with a distasteful, “live by the sword, die by the sword. He did say that gun deaths were an acceptable side effect of gun rights.”
The approvals were registered and tallied in real time, with mouse clicks on pixelated hearts and thumbs up and emojis of clapping hands.
It follows a predictable pattern. The left often starts by claiming a victim was a tyrant. They frame murder as justice. They insist that the violence was regrettable but necessary for good to prevail. And they complete the thought by knighting the killer a hero rather than denouncing a common criminal.
Their glee is not a historical anomaly. The joyful exaltations of Too Online leftists, delighted by the violence and assured in the sanctity of their beliefs, invoke the Jacobins’ cheers that drowned the Place de la Révolution at each thump of the French guillotine. A mortified Englishman observed, “When the knife has done its work, they cry out, ‘Vive la République!’ as if some great victory had been won.”
So too did Russian revolutionaries admire their own sense of justice when they assassinated Tsar Nicholas II. “This is not murder, but the beginning of freedom.” The execution of the Romanov family, including five young children, did not free the Russian people, but rather ushered in one of the most brutal and repressive regimes in human history, the Soviet Empire.
Charlie Kirk’s assassin was one deranged person. But the murderer seems to carry with him the approval of millions, intoxicated in their own righteousness, unified in their commitment to progressive ideals, drunk on their political fancies, emboldened the unshakeable goodness of their beliefs, and perhaps themselves tempted earn the accolades of the mob by slaying a Senator, or a judge, or a columnist guilty of the same Wrong Think espoused by that young father and husband.
“Terror,” lectured Maximilien Robespierre after sending 1,300 people to the guillotine in a month, “is nothing other than prompt, severe, inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue.”
The modern progressive left is drunk on its own virtue. One hopes they sober up soon, lest we all suffer the hangover.