While speaking to students at Utah Valley University, Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, was assassinated, leaving behind a widow and two young children. His tragic murder exposes something ominous in the current American political culture that must be changed. President Trump can and should help to lead the country away from the brink and from further violence, but the political Left needs to own up to and condemn the violence in its ranks and the vile commentators who justify murder to counter ideas they don’t like.

Charlie Kirk’s story is peculiarly American. He didn’t attend college, but he founded America’s most successful conservative college association, designed to debate and advance the ideas of free markets and limited government on campuses. Entrepreneurial, bright, and energetic, Kirk showed that the American Dream is not dead and that those who work hard and apply themselves can succeed. In working to advance the founding American ideals, Kirk showed that he wanted millions of others to succeed too.

Kirk loved debate and evidently relished going up against people who disagreed with him. His style was punchy, but always respectful and he seemed to love winning arguments with reason, data, and facts. He went up against leftist dogma, defending the United States and its institutions, defending the family, and defending the conservative and Christian ideas by which he lived his life.

Kirk’s murder comes after a spate of political assassinations or attempted assassinations. In 2017 a gunman opened fire on Republican congressmen practicing baseball, almost killing Representative Steve Scalise. The gunman had a history of anti-Republican and anti-Trump views which presumably motivated his actions. In 2022, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s life, and the lives of his family, were endangered after a man with several weapons, pepper spray, and zip ties was arrested outside his Maryland house. This June in Minnesota, a Democratic state representative, Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered in a politically motivated killing. Another state senator and his wife were injured by the same gunman. During the most recent presidential campaign there were two attempted assassinations against President Trump, one of which came within millimeters of ending his life and did end the life of one of Trump’s supporters.

The murder in Manhattan last December of a health insurance executive, Brian Thompson was yet another tragic assassination. Luigi Mangione calmly and deliberately gunned down Thompson, having staked out his hotel. Mangione has not faced trial yet, so more details will emerge about his motivations, but reportedly he had a beef with the health insurance industry and decided murder was the way to resolve it. What is shocking isn’t only to learn that people like Mangione think that way, but that some political leaders do as well. Shortly after the shooting Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, condemned violence but then said, “people feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened, by the vile practices of their insurance companies.” She went on to say, “people can only be pushed so far.” Meanwhile social media is clogged with people expressing their admiration for Mangione, fawning over the good looks and trim physique of a coldblooded, psychopathic, murderer.

Warren and other Democrats are quick to condemn any violence or threats of violence from the Right, but find excuses for it, or even give approval, when it comes from the Left.

On the left-leaning MSNBC moments after news emerged that Kirk had been shot, Matthew Dowd, one of its commentators said, “you can’t stop with these awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and then not expect awful actions to take place.”

One expects the darker reaches of Bluesky and X to be replete with vile justifications and even celebrations of violence, but one might hope that our political leaders and commentators might have better judgment. Sadly not. Those justifying Kirk’s murder and other political killings reveal their own insecurities. Far too many justify violence by claiming that words and ideas inflict “emotional violence.” This nonsense must stop. Words are words, ideas are ideas, and violence against thought can never be justified. There is violence on both sides of the political aisle, as evidenced by the January 6th, 2020, riots on Capitol Hill. But the political Left tends to point the finger exclusively at the Right, when in fact there is plenty of violence, and perhaps rising violence, emanating from their side.

America has millions of guns. The Second Amendment to the Constitution enshrines the right of citizens to bear arms to “secure the free State.” The First Amendment to the Constitution secures the right to free speech, among other rights, by forbidding the Congress from enacting any laws that might abridge those rights. It is not by accident that the freedom of association, religion, and speech come first; they are fundamental to what it means to be an American and the wellspring from which the country’s great prosperity and success has emerged. The Second Amendment was designed, correctly, to protect those freedoms. Charlie Kirk’s murderer used a firearm to try to snuff them out.

It is worth concluding with Kirk’s own words for they are revealing of the man, of what he stood for, and of what must be restored in America and the West more broadly.

At one of his signature encounters where he encourages anyone to debate him, he said:

When people stop talking really bad stuff starts, when marriages stop talking, divorce happens, when civilizations stop talking, civil war ensues. When you stop having a human connection with someone you disagree with, it becomes a lot easier to want to commit violence against that group. What we, as a culture, have to get back to is being able to have reasonable disagreement where violence is not an option.

Amen to that.

Richard Tren is a director of the Washington, DC-based Yorktown Foundation for Freedom