It was only one day before he was assassinated that Charlie Kirk said in a podcast interview that politicizing murder is often an imperative: “I don’t like politicizing situations like [the murder of  Iryna Zarutska], but it just necessitates it because there are so many dynamics at play here.”

So let’s not pretend for a second that there’s something untoward in talking about Kirk’s death in terms of politics. By definition, the assassination is political. Democrats got us here, and they are to be held to account for it.

Just two weeks ago, I noted Democrat leaders are increasingly using language in public indicating raw bloodlust, as when Democrat National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said he was “sick and tired of this Democratic Party bringing a pencil to a knife fight,” and that Democrats “cannot be the only party that plays by the rules anymore.”

I said it was time to take their knife metaphor literally. See? They’re not playing a game, and it’s not a matter of “turning down the rhetoric.” They mean what they say and they prove it time and time again.

Right-wingers have been naive for too long, trying for years to win “the debate” and succeed on “the facts.” Neither of those things matter for a second when the opposition chooses lawfare and bullets to zero out dissent. The only way forward is to leave everyone with no question that deterrence via mutually assured political destruction is the new normal.

Without that, without complete confidence of total political reciprocation using legal government force, this is a one-party government and the “democracy” is a charade. We should have gotten a clue on July 13, 2024.

Violence doesn’t justify more violence, but pain comes in more ways than one. Right-wingers need to figure that out and deliver it in the most direct way possible, whether it be by aggressive, unsparing prosecutions, regardless of judicial outcomes, or targeted, expansive investigations into who and what is driving the left to act out the way they do.

Democrat leaders can’t be trusted to calm down their own supporters. The violence will have to be deterred for them.

Democrats talk openly about abandoning “the rules.” This is what they mean— violence. As troubling as it is, fear is not an option; not if we want to survive and not if we want this country to endure.

“Excuse me when all of a sudden I try to make the left live by their own moral standard,” Kirk said on that podcast this week, hours before he would be dead. “And that’s what I’m doing.” It’s the mentality everyone needs.