“You have to try to point them towards ultimate purposes and towards getting back to the church, getting back to faith, getting married, having children … I’m trying to paint a picture of virtue of lifting people up, not just staying angry,” Charlie Kirk said last week. Now he is dead, assassinated on a college campus.

I started my radio program on Sept. 10, telling my audience that events change things. On Sept. 9, 2025, we woke up to white smoke over Doha, Qatar, a new Hamas leader having been chosen by an Israeli air strike. Before bed that night, Russia had flown drones into Polish airspace. Twenty-four years ago, as people left their offices in the World Trade Center on Sept. 10, 2001, they expected to return the next day, finish the work on their desks, have meetings and lunches, and prepare to do it all over again the next day. Events change things. Before I left the air on the tenth, I would have to tell my audience that Charlie Kirk had been shot.

Charlie Kirk built the youth movement on the right through Turning Point USA. We did not always agree or see eye to eye, but there was a lot of value in his work. In a pattern I recognize from my own life, as he got older, got married and had kids, he matured and became less brash and more contemplative. He spent more and more time calling people to the church than to politics. He spoke about how heterodox it was to call on people to get married, have kids and go to church, but it was a message that resonated.

Over the past number of years, there have been more and more acts of violence in politics. MSNBC operates as an assassination fan fiction network. As an assassin fired at President Donald Trump in Butler, PA, the conversation on MSNBC, while the bullet was in the air, was on the need to stop Trump, who would otherwise be an authoritarian threatening our democracy. Shortly after the assassin shot Charlie Kirk, MSNBC’s commentary ranged from Kirk bringing this on himself to suggesting perhaps the bullet came from a Kirk fan celebrating.

The day before Kirk’s assassination, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told Chuck Todd, “Our only chance to save our democracy is to fight fire with fire right now … We’re in a war right to save this country, and so you have to be willing to do whatever is necessary to save the country,” he told Chuck Todd. Someone took up arms for that supposed war and fought Charlie Kirk’s words with bullets.

When Donald Trump says things that the left believes are violent, they demand that others denounce him. Any act of violence by anyone on the right is tied to Trump and rightwing sentiment. But time and time again, when someone on the left acts out violently, the progressive American press, Democrats, the cultural elite and Hollywood always find an excuse to say it was not them.

Floyd Lee Corkins attempted the mass assassination of the Family Research Council. James Hodgkinson attempted the mass assassination of Republican members of Congress. Two would-be assassins attempted to kill Donald Trump. Just last weekend, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz lamented that rumors of Donald Trump’s death were not true. Luigi Mangione killed United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and the left treated it as vigilante justice. Decarlo Brown stabbed Iryna Zarutska to death in Charlotte, NC, and the left insisted we empathize with the murderer. Yaron Lischinsky and Sara Milgrim, two Israeli Embassy employees, were murdered by an antisemite in Washington, D.C. The left keeps embracing violence.

But point that out, and the press and Democrats jump to “both sides do it” and give a list of rightwing violence. First, there is no need to keep score with a body count. Second, the left and Democratic leaders need to acknowledge that Democratic politicians and MSNBC hosts have been prodding progressives towards violence. Data consistently shows progressives are the most mentally fragile people in the nation, overwhelmed with despair, and Democrat politicians are grooming that fragility for violence. They must stop, or we all may lose control of what comes next.

To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM