Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
— William Butler Yeats

The political assassination — the murder — of Charlie Kirk was vile and evil. We are, as I wrote yesterday, standing at the edge of the abyss. American democracy cannot function if citizens exercising their free-speech rights to debate and engage in politics are gunned down or cowed into silence by a cloud of fear. In truth, a people that submits to the assassin’s veto is no longer free — a grim fact that we ought to remember. That bullet aimed at Kirk was a bullet aimed at all Americans who would exercise their God-given rights to participate as citizens in a self-governing country.

I understand the anguish, grief, and anger in the hearts of those who knew or admired Charlie Kirk. I did not know the man personally, but I’m angry too. All of us should be — because it’s come to this, and we are teetering on the edge of a terrible new normal. Things fall apart. The centre struggles to hold.

But to whom should we direct our anger? And what should be its purpose and its result? There are those who are ready with an answer. I need not share the links. It’s all out there for anyone to find in that cesspool of our age: social media. And besides, most of us have probably seen the very sentiment in black and white in group texts and in quiet conversations with friends and family:

The Democratic Party is a “domestic terrorist organization,” the White House correspondent for a prominent right-wing publication declares. The whole Democratic Party? To include all 75 million Americans who voted for Kamala Harris last November?

What’s required now is bringing “ruthless vengeance down on these savages,” a famous conservative influencer says. Vengeance? Not justice?

“They” murdered Kirk, so a member of my family tells me. “They”? Who is “they”?

Think about that “they” for a minute. Think about what it implies. Think about how broad a swath of our countrymen that “they” are accusing in this murderous act. As of this moment, we do not know that there even was a “they”; as of this writing, we don’t know that the responsible party for Kirk’s assassination included any more than a singular lunatic. It looks as if one evil, disordered man killed Charlie Kirk. Until shown otherwise by legitimate authorities, that’s the only reasonable thing to say. That’s not the same thing, of course, as declaring that the left hasn’t excused and ignored political violence emanating from its side, as my colleague Noah Rothman has ably reported. It’s not the same thing as saying that the illiberal claim that “speech is violence” hasn’t gotten out of control and isn’t having consequences. It’s not the same thing as saying that the left doesn’t have a problem with activists who have far too often turned to violence, as the empirical evidence shows.

But the truth is that — despite the worst online rhetoric, despite the illiberalism we see on campuses, despite the growing number of genuine radicals on the left, despite the social-media ghouls who have lost their souls to cheer what happened in Utah — most Democrats are appalled by what happened to Charlie Kirk. It’s just not true, as so many right-wing hotheads are ready to tell us, that most people on the left side of the aisle want to destroy America and murder conservatives. That would be news to my great aunt, a lifelong Democrat. That would be news to the Gold Star father, who also happens to be a Democratic state legislator in Massachusetts, with whom I shook hands last week. That would be news to the millions of Americans who pull the lever for candidates that I wouldn’t consider my first or fifteenth choice.

“Americans are not at war against each other,” Benji Backer, a conservative activist and conservationist, wrote yesterday. “What we’re up against is a scary + rising minority of violent lunatics fueled by hate and division. But they do not speak for anywhere near the majority of our population. We cannot act like they do.”

Yes, indeed — we cannot.

The single most hopeful thing that happened in this terrible week was the joint statement issued by the Young Democrats of Connecticut and the Connecticut College Republicans. “We reject all forms of political violence,” the kids wrote. “There is no place in our country for such acts regardless of political disagreements. We are praying for Charlie Kirk, his family, and all those at Utah Valley University.”

Today, that statement was followed up by a similar one issued by the College Democrats and Young Republicans in Ohio.

This is the way. If we give them a chance, these kids are going to be alright.

The murderer — or the murderers, and any accomplices — of Charlie Kirk should be hunted down and then prosecuted to the fullest extent possible under American law. The network or networks, where they exist, that support or promote political violence should be dismantled under appropriate law. I won’t hesitate to tell you that, in my view, this crime — a crime aimed squarely at shutting down a free citizen’s right to speak in public and voice his views on matters in the public interest — deserves the death penalty. The person who committed this is hostis humani generis, an enemy of all mankind.

Anger, however — if it is to be righteous — should not morph into hate. There’s too much hate out there right now. In some ways, that’s understandable. I’d be lying if I said that I did not feel it at times.

But we must approach our countrymen in good faith. And we should expect them to treat us the same. We don’t have political “enemies,” Ronald Reagan — a man who took a bullet in his own assassination attempt — liked to say. We only have political “opponents.” Well, that’s the only way out of this terrible cycle of violence and suffering: seeing those countrymen with whom we disagree on politics as misguided opponents, but not as enemies. 

There are some who say that this is a recipe for unilateral disarmament. There are some who say it’s political suicide. I disagree. It’s the Sermon on the Mount. It’s Lincoln at the First Inaugural.

“I am loath to close,” Lincoln told his countrymen at his inauguration as the nation lurched towards civil war. “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Tell me a more efficacious path, and I’m ready to listen. But I doubt you’ll find one. Justice won’t satisfy our baser instincts and desires, of that we can be certain. But it’s more fruitful in the end — and end guided by our better angels. Revenge and retribution will only bring more suffering.