When the announcement came down that 31-year old conservative icon Charlie Kirk was lying dead before his family in a pool of blood – executed for expressing his pro-life, pro-family, pro-freedom beliefs – the giddy “he had it coming” reactions of his political adversaries left us all wondering what kind of country we are living in, and whether gentleness, kindness and human decency mean anything anymore.
Here in my home town, the employees of a local coffee shop reportedly broke out in celebratory cheering upon hearing the news. We’ve all read the Ohio judge’s snarky, approving remarks, along with countless others who have joined the creepy chorus. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, there was a cacophony of boos and yelling protests from the Democrats, when a member moved that a simple prayer be offered on behalf of Charlie and his sweet family.
We’re told not to be partisan at a time like this. Okay. But pay attention to what’s been happening, ask some questions and connect the dots. Obvious questions, like when was the last time you read of a conservative or libertarian mocking human tragedy? Reveling in human death? When have congressional Republicans ever protested prayers of condolence?
Where were the riots, the looting, the firebombing, the destruction of property and the violence against innocent people, in protest of Charlie Kirk’s murder? Indeed, when have we ever seen such behavior coming from mainstream conservative Americans? Even the January 6th events at the Capitol were remarkably nonviolent, despite the planted provocateurs in the crowd. No guns, fires or looting, and relatively limited property damage from a Mall crowd of 120,000.
Yet on the left, setting whole cities aflame has become a predictable and intellectually tolerated means of protesting “racism and white supremacy.” How come? Why this fundamental difference in human conscience and behavior, and where is it taking us?
Ideas, wrote Richard Weaver, have consequences. To understand why the politics of the left is the incubator of hatred and violence, look to its fundamental ideas. It’s both an ideology and a religion, that practices a blind faith in government as God and coercion as a moral good – based on the core belief that the purpose of civil government is to forcibly impose its will on the individual, who can’t be trusted if left free to act and think for himself. Progressive growth in government has empowered our leftist saviors to exert control over every human activity within their reach. Yet it is never enough. Everything qualifies for government intervention and control.
It's important to understand the cynical, anti-liberty, anti-individual mindset that characterizes the evangelists of the left, who presume to be saving us from ourselves. They view themselves as morally superior, and thus justified to carry around a malignant hatred for conservative Christians who stand in their way. They are steeped in a philosophy of violence against our freedom, our individual sovereignty, and our very right to exist and express our own points of view. Violence is easy when life itself has been cheapened. When the soul becomes fiction. When God is forgotten, and transcendent values no longer exist.
This is the left. The politics of compulsion, conformity and authoritarianism. Of force and aggression. Its adherents fixate on the concentration of power – power to compel the way we must think, speak, act and live. Power to exert control over human activity, creativity and enterprise, by licensing, regulating, taxing and banning some, while sanctioning, subsidizing and socializing others. In such a world, freedom is the perpetual obstacle and free thinkers the constant enemy. It is not a world the encourages tolerance or diversity of opinion – just the opposite. It is a world of violent actors and violent thinking.
By comparison, the conservative/libertarian ethic is all about free agency. About individual action, individual conscience, individual choice and individual rights – exercised in a way that always respects the rights of others to peacefully pursue their own life’s choices, consistent with their own individual values, beliefs, goals and desires. The Founders called this “the pursuit of happiness” -- an unalienable right bestowed by a Creator God. The Declaration then defines the role of government in a free society: “To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men…” Government as protector. Not provider. Not ruler. The conservative philosophy (admittedly, inconsistent among most Republican politicians.) thus insists upon a limited government, that protects our rights, establishes justice, and leaves us alone. This “do no harm,” laissez faire attitude is precisely what true conservatives extend to their fellow man. In a word: peace. Honoring and protecting individual freedom is the one and only pathway to a peaceful society.
History’s totalitarian rulers paint the picture of where leftist ideology ultimately leads. All manner of force is justified “for the good of society.” The more powerful the government, the more “good” it can achieve. In places like Communist China and the Soviet Union, all that was required was getting rid of a couple hundred million people who didn’t think right (or got in the way,) while fitting the rest with the benevolent shackles of the state, forged in the furnace of lost liberties.
In America, political violence is proceeded by name-calling and demonization – the last refuge of those who have no argument. Leftists are masters of inverting the meanings of political terms like “fascist” and ”nazi,” and falsely affixing them to peaceful, freedom-loving, idea-engaging conservatives like Charlie Kirk. Here are some definitions, straight from my Webster’s:
Fascism: Any program for setting up a centralized national regime… exercising regimentation of industry, commerce and finance, rigid censorship, and forcible suppression of opposition.
Nazism: National Socialist German Workers’ Party. (The German version of fascism, with racial supremacy thrown in.)
Forget about the sham political spectrum you’ve been taught. What these and other “isms” (liberalism, socialism, Marxism…) ultimately have in common is the subjection of the individual and the supremacy of the state. Do these systems reflect the thinking of small government, liberty-minded conservatives or of big government leftists who cancel our culture and force their woke agenda down our throats? Which one breeds the violence and hatred we all decry?
Roger Koopman is president of Montana Conservative Alliance. He served four years in the Montana House of Representatives and eight years as a Montana Public Service commissioner. He operated a Bozeman small business for 37 years.
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