Teetering on the Edge of the Abyss

It has been a week since young conservative activist Charlie Kirk was gunned down at a rally on the campus of Utah Valley University in front of his wife and hundreds of attendees.

In the days since, a suspect -- 22-year-old Tyler Robinson -- allegedly confessed to his father that he committed the crime. Robinson's father turned him in to the police, who arrested him. From the information available, it appears at this point that Robinson has been in a gay relationship with his roommate Lance Twiggs, who is undergoing a gender "transition" from male to female. If text messages from Robinson to Twiggs are authentic, Robinson told his lover that he killed Kirk because he couldn't stand Kirk's "hatred."

Kirk's death has left America reeling. Across the country -- and throughout the world -- there have been outpourings of grief, prayer vigils, memorials and fundraisers to celebrate his life, mourn his death and support his widow and two small children.

But if Kirk's assassination cast a pall of grief over millions of Americans, reactions from the Left have shocked and outraged them. Immediately following the shooting and announcement of Kirk's death, social media sites like X, Bluesky and TikTok were filled with posts and videos from thousands of people cheering Kirk's death, calling him vicious names ("Nazi b*tch," "fascist," "racist," "transphobe," "misogynist"), stating that he deserved to die, dissing his wife and children, and even calling for similar violence against other conservatives.

Those who proudly posted their indifference or outright joy at Kirk's murder were expecting the usual cheers and praise for their left-wing virtue signaling, but the reaction has been quite different. Incensed by this appalling callousness, Americans began calling employers and demanding that action be taken. It's difficult to know the numbers, but hundreds of employers have been contacted and dozens of people, including well-known personalities like MSNBC commentator Matthew Dowd and perennially unfunny comedian Jimmy Kimmel, have been fired for their hateful comments or for spreading lies. (Kimmel just got his show pulled by Disney after asserting that Kirk's killer was a MAGA conservative. He was not.)

Americans are just as shocked by the sources of these inflammatory and inhumane statements as they are by the content; a disproportionate number of the posters are teachers, professors, administrators and medical professionals; those people educate children and provide medical care, and they state publicly that someone with different political views was a terrible person who deserved to die?

Anyone thinking that a spate of firings or nationwide prayer vigils are going to deter the American Left had better open their eyes and gird their loins. It is far more likely that the Left will double down on their efforts, because they think no one on the Right has the intestinal fortitude to stop them.

Why wouldn't they think so? The summer of 2020 saw widespread chaos: riots, arson, looting, violence and murder in our cities after George Floyd's death, with few consequences for the perpetrators. (It's notable that there have been no similar uprisings following Kirk's murder.)

Luigi Mangione shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a public street last year. He's been hailed as a hero by many on the Left; a new ballot initiative in California is called the "Luigi Mangione Access to Healthcare Act." Just this week, a judge dismissed the terrorism charges against Mangione, saying that even if Mangione killed the insurance company CEO as a form of protest against the insurance industry, the act was not intended to "intimidate and coerce a civilian population."

Tell that to the other insurance company executives across the country.

When serial criminal Decarlos Brown stabbed Iryna Zarutska to death on a public train in Charlotte, North Carolina, the city's mayor, Vi Lyles, defended the policies that released Brown 14 times after commission of multiple felonies, saying, "We will never arrest our way out of issues such as homelessness and mental health." No one stepped in to stop Brown from killing Zarutska. Perhaps they saw what happened to Daniel Penny, who stopped a crazed attacker from going after other riders on a New York subway. Penny was prosecuted for homicide, even though the man he physically subdued was still alive after Penny released him.

Now, the press is trying to soften the public image of a man who put a bullet through Kirk's neck. ABC reporter Matt Gutman called Robinson's texts to his lover "touching" and "intimate." (Gutman has since apologized.)

According to leftists on social media, here are the rules: If your words or your views make other people angry because you disagree with them on issues like abortion, sexuality, the Second Amendment or affirmative action, you can be killed, and it's your fault. Or, as an X meme phrases it, "They don't kill you because you're a fascist; they call you a fascist so they can kill you."

In the topsy-turvy world created by extremists on the Left, words are violence, but violence in response to words isn't violence, it's struggle against entrenched power structures.

This is just depravity yoked to cultural Marxism.

But those same factions also say, "Silence is violence." Translated into the operational rules of the present Leftist culture, what does that mean? Not only, "Don't say what I don't want to hear or else you can be killed," but also, "Say what I demand to hear, or else you can be killed"?

As absurd as this seems, a version of this philosophy is already in play in many of our schools, where teachers and administrators "transition" minor children without their parents' knowledge or over their objection. California passed a law in 2023 that requires parents to affirm their children's gender transitions or lose custody. Colorado is looking to pass a similar law.

"Say what we demand to hear, or we'll tear your family apart."

There are, thank goodness, left-leaning voices that perceive the gravity of our present situation. In his opening monologue last Friday, Bill Maher told his audience to stop calling President Donald Trump and others Hitler, as it "makes it a lot easier to justify things like assassinations." Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur is making efforts to get voices on the left and right together for civil discourse. Ezra Klein wrote an impassioned defense of Kirk's political civility in The New York Times (for which he has been much maligned by his comrades on the left).

They see, I think, what so many on their side don't: We are teetering on the edge of the abyss.

Millions of ordinary conservative Americans -- not activists, politicians, podcasters or social media influencers -- hold views very similar to Kirk's. They have tolerated smears, doxxing, demonization and violence for years, and THEY. ARE. DONE. Recent events make it appear that the Left is being held captive by lunatics, and if you disagree with them, as Kirk did, you can be murdered in broad daylight, the press will run interference for your killer, and your neighbors, your nurses and your children's teachers will cheer your death.

People are beginning to understand that being polite, staying out of the fray, trying to be viewed as nonjudgmental has only permitted the situation to grow more extreme.

Even the most apolitical Americans, if pushed to the wall, will fight back. I don't mean responding in kind (nor have I seen calls for anything like that -- although all bets are off if we suffer through any more assassinations of public figures or random murders of innocent bystanders), but I am deeply concerned about a breakdown of order and civility that Americans tend to take for granted.

To avoid further escalation, cooler heads on the left had better get control of their side of the aisle, and quickly. Bland statements that "violence has no place in our society" aren't going to cut it. You can't say that now, having spent the past 10 years calling half the country "a basket of deplorables," racists, fascists, transphobes, bigots, white supremacists and Christian nationalists who are "a threat to our democracy."

Additionally, we need more responsible government and law enforcement, certainly. That means arrests, swift prosecutions, convictions and imprisonment for criminals.

But that's the easy part.

The harder part is going to be tackling our educational system. These amoral, destructive and murderous ideologies have their origins in higher education and spread from there. Weeding them out is going to require a complete overhaul of our colleges and universities: how they are funded, and the way faculty and administrators are hired, retained, promoted and, yes, let go.

This battle cannot be won unless those fighting for liberty and decency are in it for the long haul.

Our opponents are betting that we aren't.

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To find out more about Laura Hollis and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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