In response to: Don’t Let the Cold Civil War Turn Hot
Hold On
Editor's Note
The assassination of Charlie Kirk was more than a crime. His murder was a declaration that reasoned debate itself is no longer tolerated in America. Kirk built his life on the conviction that citizens could argue out their differences, yet for this, he was marked as an enemy. His death, and the public glee that followed, reveal a culture that no longer contests ideas but destroys the men who hold them.
In this essay, Glenn Ellmers shows how the reaction to Kirk’s killing exposes the depth of our national derangement. When civilians celebrate political assassination as if it were normal, the sickness is no longer at the margins but at the core. Ellmers argues that only by clinging to conscience and common sense — refusing to yield to the madness — can citizens preserve the possibility of civilization itself.
We are surely living in the strangest epoch in human history. Both Left and Right agree that something is deeply, fundamentally wrong. Of course there is no agreement about what is wrong. The nation is starkly divided about the source of our problems, which might be reduced to fascism versus wokeism. Each side accuses the other of being illegitimate, unworthy or incapable of citizenship, un-American.
As innumerable writers (including me) have noted: Americans seem to be living in alternate realities. But I think the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk offers some objective grounds — hard data, as the social scientists say — for determining which side is more disconnected from the real world.
I knew Charlie personally. He was a 2021 Lincoln Fellow with the Claremont Institute, and a frequent and enthusiastic student in several online courses I taught for the Institute.
As many commentators have noted, Charlie was the face of the reasonable Right. His whole career was based on the belief that we could argue out our disagreements. If that is beyond the pale, if Charlie was murdered for wanting to debate, there seems little hope we can resolve our differences amicably.
It is especially striking, therefore, to consider the logic (if that is the right word) of the many people who shared their glee over what happened — celebrating the murder of a 31-year-old father, not with embarrassment and in private, but publicly and proudly on Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok.
Of course, as anyone could have predicted, many of these people are losing their jobs, or facing other personal and professional consequences. Retribution for social media postings is hardly new—the Left, in fact, pioneered this trend. Yet an astounding number of the people making these disgusting posts do so under their own names, without any apparent regard for what might happen, as if applauding violent murder is perfectly normal and acceptable behavior.
You can see the distressingly large number of such gruesome postings on sites that have started to archive them. Among the perpetrators are nurses, teachers and professors, attorneys, members of the military, and even a Secret Service agent. The last example is especially revealing. As a friend of mine commented, “If an active Secret Service agent thinks he can post this, at this time and in this administration, and not see consequences, he should donate his brain to science.”
There are too many of these cases, by too many people in positions of authority and trust, to dismiss this phenomenon as the rantings of a few lunatics. Some ideological contagion, a kind of mind virus, is interfering with their brains. In a very literal sense, they cannot think. And the most worrisome part is that because this derangement is so perplexing, because we don’t know what to make of it, the rest of us have difficulty thinking clearly, too. When the world stops making sense, we are all in danger of losing our grip on reality.
Stephen Miller, one of the toughest and shrewdest people in Trump’s inner circle, has remarkable political acumen. Yet a heartfelt tweet he posted this week shows that he is as flummoxed as the rest of us. “There is an ideology that has steadily been growing in this country,” Miller wrote, “which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved.” He says, correctly, that the “fate of millions depends upon the defeat of this wicked ideology.” Tellingly, however, Miller never names this ideology, and he is vague about how to combat it.
Political victory, by itself, does not seem to be enough. Trump won the 2024 election by a large margin. But rather than accept defeat, his enemies have only become more extreme, more intractable. So how do we fight this ideology? Nobody seems to know. Charlie’s murder shows that the Left not only rejects debate, but despises it. (Under fascism, by the way, it is typically the enemies of the regime — not its supporters — who get shot.)
I’m afraid I don’t have any simple or clear answers either. I’m as befuddled as everyone else. But I do have one suggestion. It seems very modest. But if our civilization is undergoing some fundamental change, if reason itself is under assault by an unprecedented mass delusion, then this small thing might turn out to be very powerful. I offer it especially to the young.
My suggestion is: Don’t let go; don’t give in.
Cling to your common sense with courage and confidence. Recognize that insanity really is as crazy as it looks. Don’t succumb to the fatigue when faced with increasingly barbaric conduct that has become routine.
Hold on to that basic human awareness: the feeling you get when your gut, your heart, and your mind are all telling you, “This is wrong.” Don’t relinquish that. Don’t accept that the bizarre, inexplicable, inhuman behavior we are witnessing is in any way normal. It isn’t.
Don’t forget — and don’t let anyone bully you into denying — that you are a human being with a soul, endowed by God and nature with a conscience, and especially with the ability to think.
It’s not you, it’s them. Hold on.