Mourn the Dead. Stop Waving Bloody Shirts.
September 12, AD 2025 - Charles James Kirk (October 14, 1993 – September 10, 2025).
Responding to the murder of Charlie Kirk is a test of whether we prefer justice over spectacle. Choose Justice. Respect the mourning of your opponents. Punish the guilty.
Tyler James Robinson, a 22-year-old from Washington, Utah, with no criminal record, and as far as we know, he was not on anyone’s watchlist, is the suspected assassin of the political activist, Charlie Kirk. Robinson was turned in by his family and a family friend who did the right thing. Because of Robinson’s actions, two families are broken and suffering, his own and his victim’s.
In June, Minnesota Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated at home; Minnesota Senator John Hoffman and his wife were shot and survived. The same day Kirk was killed, two students were shot at Evergreen High School in Colorado; the 16‑year‑old shooter took his own life.
Social media is easily exploited by the irresponsibly self‑righteous, and by bad actors from abroad who stir up problems they will never face. It seems every time political violence hits the news—whether the assassinations of Melissa Hortman and her husband (the attacker also killed their golden retriever, Gilbert) or of Charlie Kirk—someone raises the specter of a new American civil war. Cynical commentators and agitators wave the banner of Red vs. Blue, invoking the ghost of 1861 as if history is bound to repeat itself in neatly color‑coded lines of the Blue and the Gray. But this narrative is not only wrong; it is dangerous. It is, in fact, a trap.
If violence were to escalate, it would resemble not Gettysburg, but Belfast. The Troubles in Northern Ireland offer the more realistic parallel: neighborhood against neighborhood, extremists striking at public figures, ordinary citizens caught in the crossfire. Collateral damage everywhere. Criminals taking advantage of the chaos to pose as “freedom fighters” while they loot and steal. And our foreign enemies would not sit by; they are not sitting by now. We face disguised provocations by troll farms in China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. And if violence exploded, their black ops agents would add to it. Anyone who wishes for that or speaks of violent domestic conflict as “fixing” something or “solving” things is a threat to your liberty.
The truth of how to handle what is happening is more straightforward.
Violence is crime. Domestic political murder is assassination, not a call to civil war. You do not let terrorists claim the romantic mantle of revolutionary; you denigrate them as base criminals and fiercely prosecute them. And criminals should be punished, swiftly, openly, and justly, to protect the rest of us. That should end the matter.
“The problem with political violence is it metastasizes, because we can always point the finger at the other side. And at some point we have to find an off ramp, or it's going to get much, much worse.” —Utah Governor Spencer Cox, Sept 12, 2025
As a young man, George Washington copied his famous 110 Rules of Civility. Two are especially worth remembering today. Rule 22: “Show not yourself glad at the Misfortune of another though he were your enemy.” And, rule 23: “When you see a Crime punished, you may be inwardly Pleased; but always show Pity to the Suffering Offender.” These are not words of weakness, but of wisdom.
Pity does not mean indulgence; justice should never be sadism. Punish the wicked and be satisfied with justice. If convicted throw the book at Robinson. Concerning the murders of Melissa Hortman and Charlie Kirk, their politics do not matter, justice does. Nothing about their killings should be used for partisan advantage.
That does not mean Americans who opposed Charlie Kirk’s views have lost the right to speak out. That would be the rejection of Kirk’s whole approach of bringing debate to campuses. Rather, none of those disagreements is relevant to trying, convicting, and punishing a killer. Reports indicate the suspect in Melissa Hortman’s June 14, 2025 murder—the same day as the No King’s Protests and the U.S. Army parade in D.C.—kept a list of Democratic‑aligned targets. National leaders and institutions did not sustain the attention that assassination demanded, failing to launch a sustained conversation about violence in our politics and society. Let’s not fail now. And yet, those who opposed Hortman’s politics peacefully should be allowed to continue. As with hecklers, we must not permit a murderer’s veto on our speech and political liberties.
The phrase “waving the Bloody Shirt” was one of the major rhetorical devices of nineteenth-century American politics. It worked for a reason: we want to remember those we lost and punish someone for it. It referred to the Republican Party’s tactic of invoking the memory of Union soldier sacrifices to delegitimize Democrats and to reinforce their own identity as the party of Union and emancipation, particularly among Northern veterans and their families. There was a point to it during Reconstruction. However, this history is a warning about how partisan actors can exploit violence and memory.
People on the political extremes tend to flirt with violent rhetoric, act appalled when violence happens, and blame the “other” side. But on the question of promoting or fantasizing about violence, there are only two sides: for or against. The GOP of the 1870s could exploit the real connection of the Democrats to the Confederate traitors and the KKK. A problem for would‑be bloody‑shirt wavers today is that no faction has clean hands; no one can point fingers without hypocrisy.
We must reject the vulgar maneuvers that turn crimes into partisan symbols. Weaponizing wounds may deliver short-term advantage, but it boomerangs. Offer condolences to the Kirk and Hortman families. Then let the law work—charge, try, and punish those responsible.
Enough. Bloody shirts require bloody bodies; no family wants a martyr more than a life.
Well said Albert! Words of Wisdom..