There are few spectacles more repugnant to the civilized mind than the sight of educated adults celebrating an assassination. Yet this is precisely what we witnessed in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder at Utah Valley University—not the somber recognition that political violence represents the death of argument itself, but rather a carnival of digital schadenfreude that would have made the tricoteuses of the Terror blush with shame.
The response to his killing—the gleeful memes, the barely concealed jubilation from those who style themselves as guardians of tolerance—reveals something far more poisonous than any campus provocateur could ever manage. It exposes a culture that has abandoned the very notion that ideas should triumph over bullets, that discourse should outlast the grave.
What we observed was not political opposition but something approaching bloodlust dressed up in the language of social justice. Teachers—those supposed custodians of young minds—posting celebrations as if they were toasting the fall of Franco rather than mourning the collapse of their own moral architecture. The very people who lecture about the dangers of “rhetoric” and “hate speech” revealed themselves capable of a savagery that would make a medieval mob envious.
This is not mere hypocrisy; it is the complete abandonment of the liberal project. For if we can cheer the silencing of our opponents by force, what possible argument can we make against those who would silence us in turn?
The bullet, once welcomed as arbiter, recognizes no party affiliation, no moral superiority, no claim to righteousness. It is, in Burke’s immortal phrase, the resource of the incompetent—and its celebration marks the final surrender of civilization to the barbaric.
