Yesterday in Utah, Charlie Kirk began to answer a question on gun violence when he was silenced by it. A single round cut short a public debate and turned it into a political assassination.
As a scholar of George Washington, I often turn to him in moments like this, not in hopes of finding a prediction or some “if he were alive today” claim, but because his actions model his lessons.
Avoiding political violence was one of Washington’s highest priorities from the very beginning of the American Revolution. In July 1775, he assured Congress he would “strictly observe the Rules and Discipline of War,” even as the British refused. He forbade plundering and insisted on discipline while British troops and the Hessians, their mercenaries, burned homes and seized food, among other atrocities. He wanted civilians to feel protected and foreign powers to see America as a stable, lawful nation.
That was no inevitability. It was a decision — and counterexamples were soon visible elsewhere. Other revolutions chose vengeance. The French revolutionaries also promised liberty, but theirs came with guillotines.
In December 1783, when the war ended, Washington taught another lesson. He had the army, he had fame, and he could have held on to power. Instead, dressed in a plain brown suit, he submitted his authority to that of Congress. His hands shook, his voice broke, and when he finished reading his statement, he gave it all away.
In 1796, at the end of his second term, Washington extended this lesson. Political violence, he warned, does not start with mobs or bayonets. It begins with citizens who come to see those with different views as enemies — encouraged by parties who mistake retribution as rule. In his “Farewell Address,” Washington warned, “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, is itself a frightful despotism.”
Charlie Kirk’s assassination, like the murder of Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark earlier this year, shows how fragile that inheritance is. Kirk was a 31-year-old father and conservative media star, killed not for a crime but presumably for his politics. His death reveals a nation where two visions are locked in struggle, each convinced only one can survive. Already, Americans speak casually of “civil war,” march in armed rallies, and wink at political violence as if it were just another tactic. Washington obsessed over guarding against that very temptation.
Political violence is not a tactic; it is a toxin. Troops in the streets don’t protect us from it, either; they suggest — falsely — that our cities have already fallen and only extreme measures can restore order. The true danger is complacency: assassinations and the partisan attacks that encourage them make violence seem like an acceptable part of civic life. And that’s what will kill the republic.
Alexis Coe, a presidential historian, writes the Substack Study Marry Kill. She is a history columnist for The New York Times Book Review, a senior fellow at New America, and the bestselling author, most recently, of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington.
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While I firmly believe that no one should be killed for their views, no matter how abhorrent, this is a clear "reap what you sow" situation. Charlie Kirk advocated for public executions, thought empathy was a mistake and thought children's bodies obliterated by bullets was the price you pay for "freedom". I guess I'm supposed to be better than that, take the high road, feel sorry, but I don't. My sadness is for what this country has become, and people like Charlie Kirk helped make it that way.
That’s very interesting about GW. A real contradiction, a good man who owned slaves.
I don’t know how many columns I’ve read over the last 24 hours lamenting political violence in this country on both sides and how “we” need to bring down the temperature. What I haven’t seen, except for a brief clip from Elizabeth Warren on CNN, is any mention of Donald Trump, the leader of the free world, and his ugly, violent rhetoric. Trump, the Violence-Monger-in-Chief, who before Kirk’s body was even cold, jumped into the media to blame liberals for everything and threatening punitive actions against not only the perpetrator(s) but any and all groups, organizations, judges, etc., that he thinks aided liberals.
Then he actually had the gall to say:” It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.” This from the man who repeatedly made jokes about Nancy Pelosi’s husband nearly being beaten to death by one of his supporters. He should look in the mirror and read a transcript of all of the horrible, hateful, demonizing things he’s said throughout his entire life. And his party is made in his exact image. MAGA is the party of glorifying guns and bombs, turning their backs on innocent Palestinians dying every day and innocent Ukrainians dying every day, withdrawing food and medical aid from children and families abroad that has already resulted in thousands of deaths, taking food benefits and healthcare from poor people in the U.S., cutting funds for mental health, addiction and policing programs proven to reduce crime and sending armed to-the-teeth soldiers into American cities as a show of force and intimidation, carrying out extra-judicial executions of people on boats in international waters and celebrating the video of their deaths and instituting a truly stupid and insanely expensive name change of the Dept of Defense to the Dept of War, in some sort of performative, pseudo-warrior, macho display. And last but not least, let’s not forget the lovely MAGA Christmas cards where each man, woman and child in the family lovingly holds his or her AK-47. MAGA gained power and has thus far kept it by encouraging a climate of fear and glorifying and celebrating guns and violence. It is despicable and it trickles down from the very top.