Is This the Turning Point?
In the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, founder and CEO of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), while he was speaking on the campus of Utah Valley University, there were numerous witnesses to the murder interviewed by members of the media. A number of them claimed that protesters at the event erupted in cheers immediately after the bullet hit Kirk in the neck and he fell back, mortally wounded. I relayed what these bystanders were saying to a person close to me who, like me, knows our country is in serious trouble. He did not hesitate one second before saying he did not believe it. He did not believe the young Americans witnessing this horrific attack would cheer, regardless of their disagreements with the victim. We soon learned the ugly and undeniable truth. The unthinkable was shockingly widespread. Gleeful reactions condoning or celebrating the murder were coming from places not typically thought of as bastions of radicalism and organizations were responding with suspensions and firings of employees who participated. Airlines, financial institutions, law firms, biomedical research companies, retail companies, the Carolina Panthers, school districts and even MSNBC and the Washington Post were among those who sent a clear message they did not want to be associated with people who would glorify the killing of another human being for espousing political views they detest. Their motivation is unknown. Are they seeing the light or fearing damage to their revenue streams from an outraged public if they don’t respond decisively?
As we come to grips with the extent to which many have abandoned basic humanity, and, more importantly, decide individually and collectively what we are going to do about it, a number of observations merit our serious consideration.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and College Pulse, an online survey and analytics company focused on attitudes and opinions of college students, recently released their 6th annual survey on College Free Speech. In a survey of 68,510 college students nationwide they found “34% now say using violence to stop someone from speaking on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases.”
Greg Lukianoff, described as a “First Amendment expert” and Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, assert that 3 lies have infested the upbringing of American children in recent years in their 2018 book “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure”. The lies are: children are fragile; always trust your feelings, which they describe as “emotional reasoning”; and life is a battle between good people and evil people – us versus them. They contend that the results have been devastating. “Safetyism” has brought safe spaces appropriate for 2-year-olds to university campuses, complete with cookies and milk and coloring books, to help the students cope with anxiety about such catastrophes as election results they don’t like. Young people are encouraged to interpret others in the “least generous way possible”, giving rise to “microaggressions”, an attitude that if anyone is offended by another’s words or actions, that person has done something wrong regardless of their intentions. Treating children of all ages as if they are fragile is depriving them of the challenges that are required to build the competence and confidence necessary to lead successful lives. The authors make the points that discomfort is not danger; and education is supposed to make people think; not be comfortable.
Immediately following the murder of Charlie Kirk, two writers shed sobering light on the truth about how our societal failures have produced sickness and evil.
Abe Greenwald, Executive Editor of The Commentary, a monthly magazine podcast, published a column titled “How to Break a Generation”. He argues that the radical agendas being pushed on college campuses are not the only negative influence shaping Gen Z (13–28-year-olds). He makes the case that “To make a terrorist you must first break the person. And that’s what we’ve done to so many in Gen Z.” He notes they’ve been “raised half online” and as a result have not developed into “fully social beings”. Young adults too often lack empathy and self-confidence and are often depressed and anxious.
He goes on “…these kids were taught they mattered more as representatives of some group identity than as individuals. If they thought they were thriving, they found out it’s only because they were in a privileged group. If they were having problems, it was because they were in a disadvantaged group”. There was little room for personal responsibility and taking control of your own life.
And “…their personal discomfort was considered an intolerable condition. Every challenge was a threat. Even speech could harm them. They were ushered into therapy, diagnosed and medicated”. Some “were discovered to have been born in the wrong bodies. This designation was to be celebrated while it turned their lives into a sci-fi nightmare.”
All of this, Greenwald argues, prepared them, by breaking them down, for radical professors in the classroom and propaganda on their screens to remake them.
Kevin Wallsten, a political science professor, wrote a column published in the Wall Street Journal. Like Greenwald, he decries the damage higher education is contributing to America’s young people: “Students are steeped in orientation materials, DEI trainings, lectures, and syllabi that recast speech as violence and valorize resistance in the name of social justice.” But he cautions, “support for violence aimed at shutting down speech runs much deeper than college campuses.”
In his own national survey probing attitudes about offensive speech and whether violence is ever acceptable to silence it, he concluded “the biggest divide in support for political violence isn’t ideological, it’s generational.” In Wallsten’s survey only 58% of Gen Z respondents said violence is never acceptable (as compared with 93% of baby boomers who are 61–79 years old). He further found that “there is no meaningful difference between the attitudes of 18–26-year-olds whether enrolled in college or not.
He explores why “so many young people are willing to justify violence when the ‘right’ villain is talking” and concludes we have a “youth moral culture guided by an impossibly expansive definition of ‘harm’ and that elevates emotional safety above all other values, social-media dynamics that amplify outrage…and a political climate that encourages people to treat their opponents as threats that need to be neutralized rather than fellow citizens to be persuaded.”
The spread of violence, Wallsten concludes, “threatens the basic promise of a free society: that citizens can speak, assemble and participate in public life without fear” and “we need to teach and enforce the norm of persuasion over coercion” if we want to continue to live free.
The upbringing of many young Americans is proving to be a dismal failure. One would have to be willfully blind to ignore the obvious missteps that have brought us to the point where young people in their 20’s are murderers whose writings Greenwald points out “read less like manifestos than dystopian personal diaries…reflections on the devastated life that made them who they are.”
Emotion and commentary exploded in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder. The firings of those who publicly celebrated his death brought warnings about threats to free speech from many who remained silent while Americans were censored and punished for questioning the government mandates during the COVID pandemic. We would all be wise to heed the words of John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.” Freedom will not survive if we cherry pick our right to speak our minds without embracing all of the essential values of a free society; truth and personal responsibility are in dire need of our attention.
Moral leadership for a better tomorrow is not going to come from elected officials and we should not expect it from them. They are merely a reflection of who we have become and have shown us through their behavior that many are liars and power and control are their priorities. We know all we need to know to do what we must do. The leaders we need most now are in the mirror looking back at us. We have important choices to make for ourselves, our families, our communities and our country.
It is extremely difficult to come to terms with the life of such a good man being snuffed out by such evil, yet there are some encouraging signs that Charlie’s death will be the catalyst for change we have needed for a long time. In the first 8 days following his murder, Turning Point USA announced they had received 62,000 inquiries about starting new chapters on high school and college campuses. Has the sleeping giant been awakened? Is this the turning point? I hope so.