Maybe it was not a coincidence that Charlie Kirk was shot in the throat while talking about the trans crime wave.
Millions of conservative Americans have metaphorically been shot in the throat while sharing their worldview and learned to stay silent in public.
We decide how much murder we have in our country by how severely we track it, prosecute it, kill it, and imprison it. Why Americans often vote for an astronomical murder rate is bewildering. Virtually every Republican politician is tougher on violent crime than virtually every Democratic politician, but this is a mundane observation that marks me as a pleb.
Any large crowd in America should have a law enforcement or private security drone overhead to minimize these rooftop shooters. We need mass use of facial surveillance software. We need stop and frisk in high crime areas.
I guarantee you that there are significant physical signs that somebody is vastly more likely than average to be a murderer, but social ostracism prevents any funding or discussion or study of these important signs. Nature codes people for our benefit. When I run into freaky people who look like this shooter, my internal alarm bells ring.
If you don’t stereotype, if you don’t discriminate, if you don’t employ appropriate prejudice, if you don’t welcome nature’s flashing bright codes for danger, you are a fool. Nature has coded life for our benefit.
Bud: “The left is taking a page out of Israel’s decapitation strategy whereby if it kills the leaders, the second stringers who replace them won’t be as effective.”
Nobody can replace Charlie Kirk.
I notice the MSM calls Kirk “divisive.” That’s a fair descriptor but why is it always people on the right who get called “divisive.” Is there anyone on the left who’s divisive? was Obama divisive?
Divisiveness is not bad. Sometimes it is an adaptive strategy, sometimes unity is a better strategy. It depends on the situation. If you go into work or on to public transport and start being divisive, that’s a bad strategy. If you are looking for a niche to exploit in business or culture or religion or politics, divisiveness is often a great strategy. Sometimes a nation gets stronger when it gets large and sometimes it gets stronger when it shrinks.
Denominations can enlarge by dropping standards, or they can shrink by raising standards.
For everything there is a time and a place under heaven.
Fox News largely banned Charlie Kirk from 2015 to about 2024, just as they banned Donald Trump from 2021 to April 2023.
I’ve never thought about Charlie Kirk because I never consider the punditry of people under 30 (I might listen to the scholarship of a tiny few under age 30). It would never occur to me to look for wisdom about life from anyone under age 30.
I’ve never written or spoken about Charlie Kirk at length because I don’t pay much attention to pundits and activists in general. Only on rare occasions did I listen to him speak, but I was glad for what he did for Trump and for conservatives. I thought he was a good soldier for the cause of taking back America from the left.
I’ve found myself getting emotional over this killing. Kirk seemed to be as edgy as he could be and still build a good life for him and his…until this.
It’s hard to know how much edge you can put out there safely because the enemy gets a say.
Everyone wants to be a hero, but nobody wants to pay this price.
I thirst to be heroic, but as one friend told me, “I know you think you are a big hero, but if you were as heroic as you think you are, you’d be dead.”
I want to be a hero, but I don’t want to pay a big price for my heroism. I want my heroism on the cheap.
Why would the left not celebrate Kirk’s death? There’s no left-wing Charlie Kirk, but I expect people to enjoy the death of their enemies. What is new is for educated people in prestigious positions to publicly celebrate such assassinations. This is a crossing of the rubicon.
There will always be people doing terrible things. What’s new here is the public rejoicing over murder by educated Americans.
I don’t recall rejoicing at the murder of any American. If I were to feel joy at such a thing, I wouldn’t publicly celebrate it. Something is off in people who do this. Why would they cause their family shame? Do they have families?
I know liberals who told me they would resort to violence to stop Donald Trump and his movement (I got along with them because I only talked politics in the context of joking). None of these people, however, were particularly happy. They were all somewhat isolated, and they were all divorced. I don’t think happy people post publicly their joy in the Charlie Kirk assassination. Hurt people hurt people. If you had something to lose, such as your family and your community, you wouldn’t risk it for martyrdom.
If Charlie Kirk’s murderer had been married with kids, I don’t think he would have become Charlie Kirk’s murderer.
I find it telling that when he was confronted by his father over what he had done, the murderer said he wanted to kill himself, but the father got his local Mormon bishop on the phone, and this man convinced the killer to turn himself in.
Conservatives say marriage settles men down, but it is probably more likely that settled men marry.
Politics matter more to liberals than to conservatives, who instead focus on family, faith and work.
Because politics matters more to people on the left, they are more likely than those on the right to support murder to accomplish political goals.
Prior to the 2024 election, journalist Mark Halperin talked about his fears over a mass mental health breakdown on the left if Trump were elected. Perhaps this passion for murder on much of the left reflects a mental health breakdown?
Conservatives bemoaned cancel culture when people who said trivial things were fired. Publicly celebrating an assassination of a fellow American is a different kettle of fish from saying, for example, “That’s gay.”
I wouldn’t report someone who posted on social media about his job at the Charlie Kirk assassination (because I don’t like what this would do to me), but I’m not sure I have a big objection to this reporting. Whenever people in my social media or in the chat of my livestreams talk about organizing boycotts, it’s not something I support, but sometimes I recognize its utility.
I don’t want to be an activist. That’s not where my gift lies. I’m better suited to the observer and analyst role. A man has to know his limitations. Given the lurid nature of my history, I don’t bring glory to any cause I espouse.
Charlie Kirk was a high-functioning political activist. He followed his passion and he expanded his life. He had over 1,000 employees. He married a beauty queen and had children. He had a pastor and a religious community. By contrast, for many political activists on all sides of the political spectrum, their political activism makes their lives smaller.
A common meme in the online right is — “You don’t hate [MSM, the Left, etc] enough.” I don’t think that was Charlie Kirk’s attitude. His politics expanded his life. Imbibing the attitude that you don’t hate your enemies enough is usually going to to shrink your life. If you have a strong in-group identity, you will hate your enemies and you should have people in your circle who you can talk to. Overall, however, extreme hatred over politics and religion and race is not usually going to ennoble you. For the healthy person, their primary focus should be their family, and if they have room after that, it should be on their work, friends and community. Extreme hatred won’t improve your happiness and your effectiveness, your adaptability, and your relationships with others and with yourself. It won’t improve your communal and work life. It’s a recipe for self-destruction. If you are fighting for your life alone in a dark alley, hating your would-be killer is an excellent attitude. For most of the rest of life, it doesn’t serve you.
I don’t think porn is good, but if a couple uses porn in a way that brings them closer together, that’s far better than using porn to diverge from each other. Anything that separates you from the people you love is usually bad. Intense hatred usually separates you from healthy people.
The highest functioning, most well-adjusted are the least likely to post publicly their applause for assassinations or their broad hatred for various groups.
If you can channel your fury over the Charlie Kirk murder to bond with people you love, that’s awesome. If your anger over it separates you from those you love, that reduces your effectiveness in life.
Almost everything in life comes down to how do you use it.
The Charlie Kirk assassination is a huge loss for MAGA. The left had a big win. You can deplore it all you want, but the left won this round. They changed the nature of reality. One of the right’s top three warriors along with Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, a possible future president, is slain and he cannot be replaced.
Reality is corporate. Group strategies out-compete individual strategies. The left as a group won this round.
I’ve been expecting the assassination of prominent supporters of Donald Trump for a decade. I’m surprised it didn’t happen before. I’ve often discussed this privately with friends and how it would likely lead to tit for tat.
Ten left-wing Charlie Kirks are not as significant as the one real Charlie Kirk.
Everybody wants to save America but almost nobody wants to pay the price. It feels great to speak up for what you hold sacred until you pay the price. Every poster loves others listening to them but nobody likes the blowback.
For every thousands keyboard warriors, there’s one person willing to keep typing when the typing gets tough.
The more we learn about the Charlie Kirk murderer, the more freaky he appears from a trad perspective. This embodies a pattern I notice among right-wing attitudes to the left — that the left are freaks. On the left I notice that the dominant view of the right is that we are evil.
John Podhoretz tonight on 2Way (79 minute mark): “Can I quickly point out that in 2005, Bill Kristol was at Earlham College in Indiana and had a pie thrown in his face. The same thing happened to Natan Sharansky a year earlier. People were hurling pies. Remember, George Bush had a shoe thrown at him in Iraq.
That was the “broken windows” moment. College presidents and university leaders should have said: if we don’t stop someone from throwing a pie—if we don’t kick out and prosecute the people who did it, and change the atmosphere—then 20 years from now, someone is going to shoot somebody in an open field at a campus event in Utah, of all places.
The failure is in security and in not making clear where the boundaries of acceptable behavior are. We saw this again just recently—the guy who threw a sandwich in D.C. at a National Guardsman and then ran away. Sure, it’s ridiculous, a sandwich isn’t going to seriously hurt anyone. But you cannot throw objects at law enforcement officers.
If you dismiss that charge, you encourage more people to throw things at officers. And the next thing won’t be a sandwich—it will be a bullet. That’s why security matters, and why we have to go forward recognizing that we’ve already crossed this Rubicon.”
America needs both sides of the political spectrum. We have left and right politics because these strategies proved adaptive over thousands of years. Our politics is in our genes and in our situations. In some situations, left responses are most adaptive, in other situations, right response are more adaptive. I’m right, and all of my friends are right, so how do I explain to the right that America needs the left. Describe situations where left responses are more useful, perhaps the covid response was better suited to the left.
ChatGPT says:
Right-leaning traits (order, tradition, caution about rapid change) are adaptive in times when stability, loyalty, and protection are critical — like war, threats to family or nation, or moments when institutions need defending.
Left-leaning traits (innovation, openness, willingness to take risks for collective good) are adaptive when survival depends on cooperation, experimentation, or rapid adjustment to new conditions.
Both are strategies humans have carried for millennia. Societies that swing too far one way or the other usually break down.
Situations Where Left-Leaning Responses Are More Useful
Public Health Crises (e.g., COVID-19)
Collective action (masks, vaccines, coordinated restrictions) worked better than purely individual choice.
Rapid government spending and coordination — a left-leaning approach — kept the economy afloat when private actors alone would have pulled back.
Industrial and Environmental Regulation
The market by itself won’t limit pollution or ensure clean air/water. Left-driven regulatory frameworks (EPA, Clean Air Act) gave us healthier cities and longer life spans.
Economic Safety Nets
Programs like Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance stabilize society in downturns. Right-leaning emphasis on self-reliance is important, but left-leaning safety nets prevent chaos when millions fall on hard times.
Scientific and Technological Investment
Government-funded research (often pushed by the left) built the internet, GPS, vaccines, and green energy. Private markets then commercialized them.
How to Frame It to Conservatives
Not weakness, but complementarity. Left isn’t the “enemy,” it’s the other half of an adaptive system.
Think team sports. You need offense and defense. The right is defense — protecting order and tradition. The left is offense — pushing change when needed.
Stress balance. When the left goes too far, the right pulls back. When the right resists too much, the left pushes forward. That push-pull is what keeps America from either collapsing into chaos or calcifying into stagnation.
In Genesis, God says, “It is not good for man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” The Hebrew word translated as “helper” (ezer kenegdo) doesn’t mean servant — it literally means a partner who stands opposite, a counterpart, a force that balances and challenges.
So in that frame:
Adam and Eve are not identical, but complementary. Adam without Eve is incomplete; Eve without Adam is incomplete. Together, through tension and cooperation, they create life and meaning.
Left and right in politics function the same way. One side without the other becomes distorted. The right alone might calcify into rigidity; the left alone might spin into chaos. But together — even though they clash — they create balance, correction, and progress.
You can put it this way to your friends on the right: God Himself didn’t want Adam unchallenged, unquestioned, or alone. He needed an equal who would sometimes resist, sometimes push, sometimes balance. That tension wasn’t a flaw — it was the design.
I’m right, but if my genes and situation were different, I’d be left.
That’s the humbling part of looking at politics as adaptive strategies rather than moral absolutes.
If your genes wired you for higher risk tolerance, novelty-seeking, or stronger empathic response, and if your life circumstances rewarded cooperation over competition, you’d probably lean left. Likewise, people who experience instability, threat, or who are wired for caution and hierarchy often lean right.
It’s not just “ideas we chose.” It’s biology × environment. Which means:
Your being right-wing isn’t proof of superior morality, it’s proof of what’s adaptive for you.
Left-wing people aren’t “wrong” by definition — they’re carrying strategies that may be better in other contexts.
The whole system needs both, because the future is unpredictable. Sometimes survival depends on conserving; other times on innovating.
You can explain it this way: “I’m right-wing because of who I am and where I’ve been. If I’d had different genes and life experiences, I’d be left. That’s not weakness — that’s how nature builds a resilient society, by giving us different lenses to see the world.”
William Barr wrote in the WSJ:
The violent crime surge was preventable. It was caused by progressive politicians reverting to the same reckless revolving-door policies that during the 1960s and ’70s produced the greatest tsunami of violent crime in American history. We reversed that earlier crime wave with the tough anticrime measures adopted during the Reagan-Bush era. We can stop this one as well.
Studies have repeatedly shown that most predatory crime is committed by a small, hard-core group of habitual offenders. They are a tiny fraction of the population—I estimate roughly 1%—but are responsible for between half and two-thirds of predatory violent crime. Each of these offenders can be expected to commit scores, even hundreds, of crimes a year, frequently while on bail, probation or parole. The only time they aren’t committing crimes is when they’re in prison. For this group, the likelihood of reoffending usually doesn’t recede until they reach their late 30s.
The only way to reduce violent crime appreciably is to keep this cohort off the streets. We know with certainty that for each of these criminals held in prison, there are hundreds of people who aren’t being victimized. This “incapacitation” strategy requires laws, like those in the federal system, that allow judges to detain repeat offenders before trial when they pose a danger to the community, and that impose tough sentences on repeat violent offenders.
History shows this strategy works. Before 1960, violent crime in the U.S. was modest and stable. In the early ’60s, however, liberal reformers pushed to turn state justice systems into revolving doors, with violent offenders quickly released on parole or probation. Predictably, violent crime exploded, going from 160 crimes per 100,000 population in 1960 to 758 per 100,000 in 1991.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration and several large states started locking up violent offenders, and the nation’s prison population rose from about 300,000 to almost 700,000. This radically flattened the rate of violent crime, which rose only 11% during the ’80s. By 1991, when I first became attorney general, the revolving door was in overdrive in many states. Nationally, murderers served less than six years on average; the average time served for rape was three years. In Texas, offenders typically served only 15% of their sentences. Five of 8 felons released from prison were arrested for new crimes within three years.
The George H.W. Bush administration initiated the doubling of federal prison capacity, pushed states to do likewise, and launched a broad movement to toughen up state justice systems. It also greatly expanded joint federal, state and local task forces to target the worst violent criminals for stiff sentences under federal gun, gang and drug-trafficking laws.
The results of these policies were stunning. By 1992, as more violent offenders were incarcerated, the trajectory of violent crime started falling for the first time in decades. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush continued these policies, and from 1991 to 2013, the total prison population in the U.S. doubled—from roughly 800,000 to 1.6 million. At the same time, violent crime plummeted, dropping for 23 years. By 2014 it had been cut in half—to a level not seen since 1970—and homicides of black victims were down by about 5,000 a year.
