Politics is a dirty business. It always has been. But today, politics is sometimes too often synonymous with violence.
While there were many catalysts that resulted in violence
being seen as a “legitimate” form of political discourse, one stands out: Columbia University, 1968. That year, a combination of
black and anti-war activists took over a building on the campus of New York’s
premier university. They demanded that Columbia cancel a proposed nearby
gymnasium that was claimed to be racist and end its relationship with a Department
of Defense-affiliated think tank.
The NYPD eventually ejected the activists after a series of violent clashes. In a sane world, every
one of those students would have been expelled, barred from campus, and sued
for damages. But that’s not what happened.
No, the administration acquiesced to virtually every demand,
and there were very few consequences. Suddenly, on TVs across America,
activists were learning the lesson that violent takeovers can yield good
results with minimal consequences, if any, even at one of the nation’s leading
universities. The message having been received, it was suddenly gloves off for
activists across the country. Yale, Howard, Brown, and others followed. The next year saw more of the
same at Harvard and U Penn, too.
These students, these radicals, including terrorists, did
not reflect most American people’s opinion. In that year’s election, the
Democrat candidate, who was far more acceptable to the American people than the
left’s activist wing, could still secure only 13 states and 42% of the popular
vote. Four years later, Nixon would be reelected by a 49 to 1 Electoral College
landslide. Not only that, but between 1968 and 1988, Democrats would win only
one out of 6 elections and would lose 49 states twice.
In 1968 and many years after, the radicals in the Democrat
party wouldn’t reflect majority opinion, but the die was cast. The lesson was
learned: Violence wins. And so it grew.
The radical SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) launched violent
protests against their closest mainstream ally, the Democrats, during the 1968 DNC convention in Chicago. The next year, terrorists
Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn would launch the Weather
Underground, which would bomb the US Capitol two years later. The
pace accelerated: “During an eighteen-month period in 1971 and 1972, the
FBI reported more than 2,500 bombings on U.S. soil, nearly 5 a day.” That
violence wasn’t coming from conservatives.
Over time, those Baby Boomers, the spoiled spawn of the
Greatest Generation, would basically turn against and undermine everything
their parents fought for. They would go on to become teachers and professors
and writers and journalists, taking the lessons and the perspectives from 1968
with them. Nothing exemplifies this more than the fact that Communist Howard
Zinn’s treacherous A People’s History of the United States became
the textbook of choice for tens of thousands of teachers
across the country.
It would take a while, but by the early 1990s, the radicals
from ’68 were firmly in control of almost every educational and cultural
institution in America. From schools and universities to NGOs and newsrooms, the
radicals were in a position to brainwash America’s youth with their leftist
poison. And they did.
America began to see the full fruit of the radicals’ poison
during the Bush years, when he was regularly called a Nazi and compared to
Hitler. In 2008, the radicals finally came into their own with the election of
their fellow traveler, Barack Obama. Indeed, Obama launched his political
career in the home of terrorists Ayers and Dohrn.
Under Obama, the racial
divide would grow, the gay lobby would begin its evolution into the trans
nightmare we have today, and the violent rhetoric against anyone who opposed
the left would intensify. Obama would use the government apparatus, which was
now fully stocked by acolytes of those 1960s radicals, to target conservatives.
Simultaneously, the justice apparatus across the country—by design, typically
one of the least radical elements of the government structure—from District
Attorneys to parole boards to judges and justices, embraced the
leftist victimization mentality where virtually no transgression,
including violence, should be punished, unless the perpetrator is from an
unapproved group.
What’s more, the universities had become indoctrination centers producing millions of illiberal
and sometimes violent graduates taking to the streets in support of every
leftist cause. They were found in Antifa, in BLM, in trans groups, in
pro-illegal immigrant groups, and antisemitic groups from both the Islamic and
progressive perspectives.
All of this culminated during the era of Donald Trump. His
first term was bookended by violence. In January 2017, Washington went up in flames upon his inauguration,
and in the summer of 2020, cities and towns around the country were engulfed in
flames and violence as the death of George Floyd sparked the left’s
decades-long propaganda kindling of white supremacy and institutional racism.
Then, during the Biden administration, violent antisemitic protests were
allowed to blossom on campuses across the country.
Which brings us to today. Charlie Kirk’s assassination has
sparked discussions about the absurd notion of murder being a legitimate form
of political interaction. Where America once was a place where ideas were
debated and using violence to achieve political ends was fringe at best, today
we have something different.
In a recent survey questioning the legitimacy of
assassinating Donald Trump for political reasons, fully 55% of left-leaning respondents suggested that it was “somewhat
justified.” The same survey showed similar support for killing Elon Musk,
burning down Tesla dealerships, and worshipping Luigi Mangione.
These are the people who proffer the age-old hypothetical
“Would you go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby to save 20 million lives”
before calling Trump or his supporters Nazis and nodding at you knowingly. They
are the same people who claim that saying men can’t have babies is violence.
That is insane. That fully a quarter of the American
population thinks that killing a political rival might be a legitimate tactic,
actual violence, is unbelievable...but sadly believable at the same time.
Now mix that mentality with a deluge of Democrat politicians
and leftist podcasters saying that people who refuse to address a dude as Ma’am
are Nazis, that those who support Christian values are bigots, and that those
who want to treat everyone equally are racists, and you see what America has
become.
Six decades on, we’re living the consequences of the
cowardice and incompetence of the Columbia administration. Sadly, we cannot go
back in time and give them either spines or brains, but we can do the next best
thing.
The government—at both the federal and state level—can begin
to force consequences on those who think that violence, political or otherwise,
is an acceptable form of civic interaction. From the street crime in DC to the
Antifa / Trantifa / antisemitic threats and riots across the country to the
leftists who fund both, violence should be met with overwhelming force, and
those responsible should be held accountable and jailed for significant
periods.
Yes, the prison population will grow in the short term, but
over the long term, the Republic will be far healthier for everyone. Charlie
Kirk was exactly the kind of man our Founding Fathers had in mind when they
wrote the Constitution. If America doesn’t get back to where respectful
dialogue is the accepted currency of exchange, things could go very badly, very
quickly.
Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA
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