The US was founded through political violence and has regularly confronted it in the nearly 250 years since.
The US was founded through political violence and has regularly confronted it in the nearly 250 years since.
The assassinations of Charlie Kirk, of Minnesota Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman, of her husband Mark Hortman, of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump all in the last year have rekindled a conversation now ablaze about political violence in the US.
After Kirk’s death, lawmakers and media nationwide united to tell Americans they should just stop being so violent, since this kind of thuggery is beneath American society.
Kirk’s legacy should be “a new American commitment to free speech and debate,” said the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board. Political violence is “antithetical to America,” said the New York Times Editorial Board.
His assassination tempts “an uncorking of political chaos and violence that we cannot risk in America,” said New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. There is “no place in this country,” for such violence writes both Governor JB Pritzker and Kathy Salvi, chair of the Illinois Republican Party.
While these proclamations may sound dramatic, they are all both meaningless and false. Unfortunately, few things are more all-American than violence — especially when it’s political.
When you read it, try and guess what event the following quote is about.
“The anguish of this shared experience should enable us to see that all who prize freedom must share in knitting tighter the bonds of understanding, brotherhood and mutual helpfulness,” said this writer.
If you guessed any of the recent episodes of political violence you would be wrong. That was an excerpt from an opinion piece titled “Time for Soul Searching” which appeared in the November 25, 1963 edition of The Washington Post concerning the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. What about this next one?
“There has been much talk of the sick society, of the need to reduce violence in general, to overcome hate, to unite the country,” wrote this author. “While all of these goals are, of course, worthy, the tragic truth must be faced: political assassinations are linked only indirectly to the general state of the Nation.”
If you guessed JFK’s assassination again, you are unfortunately still wrong. That excerpt came from another opinion piece titled “Political Assassins Are Not Finished” by Amitai Etzioni which appeared in the June 9, 1968 edition of The Washington Post. Then, Etzioni was referring to the assassinations of both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
Thankfully those were just isolated incidents, right? There totally haven’t been any other major instances of violence in American history. No other presidents have been assassinated or survived assassination attempts, no civil wars have ever occurred here, the police have always been largely apolitical and nonviolent and the country was of course founded after King George III freely offered independence to the colonies.
Oh wait, everything in the last paragraph is dead wrong.
The US was founded through political violence and has regularly confronted it in the nearly 250 years since. To pretend otherwise, to hide behind some notion of America being too good to stoop to such lows, is massively irresponsible and only makes it more difficult to tackle the problem behind this enduring tradition.
We only need to look again to the aftermath of the ‘68 assassinations to discover the necessary remedy. In another article in the June 9 edition of the Washington Post, journalist Lewis Diuguid asked a number of foreign experts about this uniquely American problem.
“Most of the sociologists, criminologists and anthropologists surveyed said that the U.S. social structure contributed to violence,” Diuguid wrote. “The label ‘sick society’ recurred in the most critical analyses. A heavy majority expressed amazement that gun laws commonplace elsewhere had not been developed in the United States.”
The root problem today is the same as it was then — the embarrassing lack of meaningful gun control legislation.
Between 2000 and 2010, there were an estimated 10,000 people killed by guns in the entire European Union. Between 2013 and 2023, over 127,000 Americans were killed by guns with 15,244 in just 2022. In Illinois, ranked number three in the country for gun law strength, the gun violence rate is less than half of Mississippi’s, rated second to last on the same list.
Clearly there is a place in this country for political violence. If these statistics are ever to change, the discussion around all forms of gun violence needs to acknowledge this is who we are in America. It’s not just some new trend.
The right to violence is currently enshrined into the Constitution — so important to the framers it came second only to the right to protest, worship and speak freely. As long as the Second Amendment is valued over the First, the long tradition of American political violence will persist.
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