DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: How the Left Programmed Young People to Hate.
Thus, the question of 1975 — “Who’s sick?” — has found its answer. It is no longer only the young who jeer at murder, though they remain responsible for their choices. Yet their conduct reflects more than personal failing. It is the outcome of a society that abandoned its traditions, hollowed out its own authority and left its youth open to manipulation by those who profit from discord. Individuals may bear the guilt, but the culture that fashioned them must also stand condemned.
The signs of decay are no longer hidden. It is the parable of the Emperor’s New Clothes: the pretence sustained only so long as no one dares to speak what all can see. What we are living through is an epidemic of noticing — a slow, reluctant recognition that the social fabric is threadbare and that the fractures are premeditated, not incidental.
David Horowitz, who as editor of the radical 1960s periodical Ramparts once marched in the ranks of the radical Left before renouncing it, understood these dynamics better than most. He argued that the upheavals of the era were not motivated by the “longing for justice”. It was “not a quest for peace but a call to arms. It is war that feeds the true radical passions, which are not altruism or love, but nihilism and hate.” The reality of their political programme, he lamented, “entails only permanent war, that observes no truth and respects no law, and whose aim is to destroy the only world we know”.
Related: Nihilism and the Crisis of the West.
At the deepest level, Charlie Kirk was executed because he attempted to live out his animating principle, “Prove Me Wrong.” The anti-civilization Left could tolerate his conservative values and policy prescriptions, but they could not tolerate his method of public discussion. Charlie was winning over tens of thousands of young people to his cause because of his benevolent, reasoned approach to public debate. The Left was losing to Charlie’s benevolence and his reason, and they knew it. This is what they hated most.
I have no doubt that the public assassination of Charlie Kirk is a defining moment in American history in the way that, say, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. was. It will be engraved on the public psyche for decades to come.
Where to from here, America?
.@benshapiro: "Make that choice: choose between the demons who are celebrating Charlie's death, and the rest of us who would like to have a functional country where we can talk to one another." pic.twitter.com/7mQISwptEU
— Human Events (@HumanEvents) September 16, 2025