Charlie Kirk and the Rubicon of Democracy

Violence kills republics. Fear extinguishes democracy.

I’ve been uneasy since learning Charlie Kirk was assassinated this week. I’ve never particularly followed Kirk’s career, and only knew him as someone who had jumped with enthusiasm into the arena of our democracy. That’s what makes his killing a dark portent.

Kirk’s fans and critics are now engaged in a debate over the nature of his beliefs, whether he represented good or bad. I couldn’t care less. Neither does it matter to me whether Kirk was a good person—although by all accounts, everyone seems to agree he was a good man, husband, and father. The only thing that matters is that Kirk was participating in our democracy, and someone murdered him for it.

I remain bullish on the future of our republic because I know this turbulent era, although difficult to live through, is entirely normal. It’s common throughout American history for tumult to arrive during times of change, as old rules crumble but new ones aren’t yet in place. At the same time, history also teaches that no system lasts forever. Tragedies and errors during difficult moments are sometimes impossible to recover from, and instead of a prelude to reform the nation tumbles deeper into chaos until there’s no way back. Eventually, and I hope a long time hence, even America will blunder its way into collapse. That’s why this assassination feels like a dangerous crossing of a Rubicon.

Violence kills republics. Fear extinguishes democracy.

Despite the popular misconception, you can’t alter a nation’s course by killing public figures. No matter how effective someone is, removing them just leads to the next person waiting in the wings to take their place. Public figures don’t make people believe things, so killing them doesn’t make their ideas go away. Those who represent ideas in public represent the ideas that people already believe, filling their need for someone charismatic to say in public what they already wanted said. You can no more change a nation by killing someone than you can halt a criminal case by killing one prosecutor or police officer.

What changes nations is fear. Although you can’t assassinate your way to change, violence can frighten people away from democratic participation. Once you’ve cleared the public square of all the decent people, the radicals, corrupt, utopians, and would-be tyrants remain free to take it over and enact their wills. Political violence isn’t really meant to remove one troublesome person, but to sow fear that empties the public square of good and honest citizens.

Such political violence comes in many flavors, not just assassinations and murders like Putin’s critics falling out of windows. There are riots that burn people’s homes and businesses. There are intimidating protests with smoke, and shouting, and shoving, and implied threats. There are gangs of masked thugs roaming streets. There are targeted prosecutions in which prominent figures face kangaroo courts, ending up in cold cells. There are also quieter forms of intimidation, like campaigns to remove people from jobs and public positions, rendering them pariahs. This is why cancel culture was so worrisome, since organized campaigns to sow fear through public punishments, humiliation, destroying livelihoods, and tarnishing reputations are part of the same spectrum, a softer version of limiting participation in democracy.

This is exactly how Rome’s republic fell. By Caesar’s era, the old Roman republic of public duty had long since fallen to intimidation, corruption, and fear. Gangs of political muscle now prowled streets, disrupting assemblies, swaying elections, and silencing those whose words they did not like. Speaking in public was dangerous, and even senators were physically attacked. The powerful suspended official rules at whim. Naturally, good Romans withdrew from politics, as politics had become dangerous, leaving Rome in the hands of strongmen and generals who could protect themselves through strength and fear.

There was also Roman lawfare, which is ultimately what caused Caesar to rebel. Roman magistrates had immunity from prosecution while serving, but after their terms were over anyone could bring a case against them for corruption during their term. Convictions, now political and rigged, almost always ended in exile and ruin. When Caesar’s term governing Gaul was ending, he was recalled to Rome. He fully understood if he returned alone without his army, his enemies intended to have him prosecuted, exiled, and potentially even killed. Instead of accepting a rigged game, Caesar marched his army from Gaul to Rome, beginning his dictatorship.

The lesson is, when intimidation, threats, punishment, and fear become part of the political game, the only smart move becomes to withdraw if you are weak, and march on Rome if you are strong.

To maintain the democratic stability on which our prosperity and strength depend, everyone must be free to speak, debate, and participate in public. They must know government’s power will only be used transparently and fairly, subject to our collective will. People must trust the state will zealously root out and expose attempts at intimidation or violence, will punish the powerful for engaging in such methods, will not allow its agents to unjustly use power against enemies, and will always conduct its affairs honestly and in accordance with the truth. Most of all, those who speak their mind, no matter what anybody thinks about what they’ve said, must be safe from punishment or murder. Once this ironclad rule is broken, people naturally flee the square, allowing dark forces to take it over.

People think a lot about political conspiracies these days, but the kind of conspiracy that worries me most isn’t the overt cartoonish kind with evil cabals. It’s the tacit one all radicals and utopian schemers share, the unspoken cooperation crossing the divides of politics to destroy the legitimacy of liberal democratic norms and institutions. The most hated opponent of any revolutionary, utopian, would-be oligarch, or radical, isn’t their stated enemy but the democratic order itself. Since their ideas are neither wise nor popular, the people will never willingly accept them. The only way they can hope to implement their insane plans is to chase the people away from the public square, so they can wage their final battle amongst the other radicals for ultimate control.

That’s the dark truth they too often seek to hide. It’s in the interest of every revolutionary and radical that your life becomes intolerable. It’s in their interest that society becomes dysfunctional, policy becomes irrational, and the government becomes dictatorial. It’s in their interest that you become afraid. As Lenin is famously said to have put it, “the worse, the better.” It’s this unspoken, unacknowledged, conspiracy of interest that worries me the most.

The consolation is these would-be shadow engineers are fools. Another hard lesson of history is that, when events start spinning out of control, the result is never what the instigators thought. Liberal revolutionaries who threw in with the Ayatollah did not think they would end up with a theocracy. The communists who overthrew the Tsar did not foresee getting murdered by Stalin. When Robespierre was chopping off heads in France in the name of egalitarian revolution, he didn’t foresee he was empowering a dictatorial hereditary military emperor. As Danton said, revolutions always eat their own.

The only way a killing can destroy democracy is if we indulge it, or turn away in cowardice. Violence we can get through. America got through armed radicals holding pitched battles in Bleeding Kansas, John Brown raiding a federal armory, John Wilkes Booth assassinating a sainted president, and an outright bloody civil war. We got through the strife and violence of the 1960s and 1970s, with murdered presidents and public figures, urban riots burning cities, and young radicals setting off bombs to make a point. The danger isn’t the violence, but those who celebrate it as a useful tool to eliminate opponents, or those who turn a blind eye to it in fear.

What makes this current bout of violence most troubling is we live at a time without public trust. Too many Americans now feel the system is impotent and unaccountable, and so they quietly like the radicalism. They dream of change, and they like seeing those they view as villains get their due. Many no longer trust institutions to tell the truth, and for good reason. Rules are not followed, institutions fail to fulfill their missions, and justice too often does not prevail. For many Americans, this makes democracy feel false, a show conducted to distract us while others in the shadows do whatever it is they wish. Whatever our institutions say, half of America will never believe them, and it’s entirely their own fault. It’s this attitude that will someday kill our great republic.

That’s why I’m so unsettled. The antidote to this dangerous moment isn’t to once again announce we caught the bad guys and then ask everyone to move on and go back to normal. The only true antidote is to earn back public trust. The real villains aren’t just the random shooters, but the leaders who hollowed out the very system meant to neutralize them and keep their kind at bay.

What do you think about the rise of political violence in America? Join the conversation in the comments.