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  21. <title>Charlie Kirk talked with young people at universities for a reason – he wanted American education to return to traditional values</title>
  22. <link>https://themoderatevoice.com/charlie-kirk-talked-with-young-people-at-universities-for-a-reason-he-wanted-american-education-to-return-to-traditional-values/</link>
  23. <comments>https://themoderatevoice.com/charlie-kirk-talked-with-young-people-at-universities-for-a-reason-he-wanted-american-education-to-return-to-traditional-values/#respond</comments>
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  26. <pubDate>Mon, 15 Sep 2025 15:06:49 +0000</pubDate>
  27. <category><![CDATA[Assassination]]></category>
  28. <category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
  29. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  30. <category><![CDATA[academia]]></category>
  31. <category><![CDATA[Charlie Kirk]]></category>
  32. <category><![CDATA[higher education]]></category>
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  41. <description><![CDATA[<p>Charlie Kirk speaks at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025, in Orem, Utah, shortly before he was shot and killed. Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images Daniel Ruggles, Brandeis University Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10, 2025, at the start of a college campus tour that centered on Kirk discussing politics<a class="read-more" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/charlie-kirk-talked-with-young-people-at-universities-for-a-reason-he-wanted-american-education-to-return-to-traditional-values/"> [&#8230;]</a></p>
  42. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/charlie-kirk-talked-with-young-people-at-universities-for-a-reason-he-wanted-american-education-to-return-to-traditional-values/">Charlie Kirk talked with young people at universities for a reason – he wanted American education to return to traditional values</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  43. ]]></description>
  44. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>      <img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690674/original/file-20250912-56-6ye6hh.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&#038;rect=0%2C16%2C3069%2C1650&#038;q=45&#038;auto=format&#038;w=754&#038;fit=clip" /><figcaption>
  45.          Charlie Kirk speaks at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025, in Orem, Utah, shortly before he was shot and killed.<br />
  46.          <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/charlie-kirk-speaks-at-utah-valley-university-on-september-news-photo/2234095376?adppopup=true">Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images </a></span><br />
  47.        </figcaption><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/daniel-ruggles-2233623">Daniel Ruggles</a>, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/brandeis-university-1308">Brandeis University</a></em></span></p>
  48. <p><em>Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/us/charlie-kirk-shooting-timeline-map.html">Sept. 10, 2025</a>, at the <a href="https://www.americancomebacktour.com/">start of a college campus tour</a> that centered on Kirk discussing politics – and education – with students.</em></p>
  49. <p><em>A large part of Kirk’s political activism centered on what education should look like. Amy Lieberman, The Conversation’s education editor, spoke with <a href="https://www.danieljruggles.com/">Daniel Ruggles</a>, a scholar of conservative youth activism, to better understand the beliefs about education that influenced Kirk and the connection he tried to make with young people.</em></p>
  50. <figure class="align-center zoomable">
  51.            <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690675/original/file-20250912-56-g2ojcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="A young man wearing a black t-shirt extends his arm toward a crowd of young people, many of whom are wearing red hats." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690675/original/file-20250912-56-g2ojcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690675/original/file-20250912-56-g2ojcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690675/original/file-20250912-56-g2ojcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690675/original/file-20250912-56-g2ojcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690675/original/file-20250912-56-g2ojcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690675/original/file-20250912-56-g2ojcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690675/original/file-20250912-56-g2ojcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"/></a><figcaption>
  52.              <span class="caption">Charlie Kirk arrives to speak at University of Nevada in Reno in October 2024.</span><br />
  53.              <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/conservative-political-activist-and-youtuber-charlie-kirk-news-photo/2176767147?adppopup=true">Andri Tambunan/AFP via Getty Images</a></span><br />
  54.            </figcaption></figure>
  55. <p><strong>What is most important to understand about Charlie Kirk’s views on education?</strong> </p>
  56. <p>Charlie Kirk’s education philosophy was founded upon the idea of not being on the left. One of the problems with that approach is that it’s harder to explain your ideas and values in a positive way instead of just being “anti” left.</p>
  57. <p>Conservatives, well before Kirk’s time, have been trying to reclaim education from liberals whom they view as valuing equity and belonging instead of timeless values of order and traditional values in society. This philosophy overall focuses on reclaiming education from liberals.</p>
  58. <p>There is a lot of alignment with Kirk’s education philosophy and the Make America Great Again movement, but his approach predates Donald Trump’s rise. It is focused on returning to what conservatives call Western and “traditional” values. This means rolling back the clock to an idealized time when men and women had set gender roles in society and life was more harmonious and wholesome. At its best, this education philosophy can be valuable – teaching what society views as virtuous behavior, ethics and tradition – but it can also prioritize tradition and privilege over justice and equity.</p>
  59. <p>This philosophy also has to do with not feeling a need to apologize for one’s identity. A big divide between liberals and conservatives is how they explain disadvantage. Conservatives like Kirk believe they <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/us/charlie-kirk-views-guns-gender-climate.html">should not have to apologize</a> for their identities, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjmysFunUjE">other people’s identities should not</a> be a reason for special treatment.  </p>
  60. <p>This philosophy is not so much about making education more effective as much as it is about not being “woke.” <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-free-to-begin-gutting-department-of-education-after-supreme-court-shadow-ruling-5-essential-reads-261218">De-woking the classroom</a> is usually the overall goal. This involves ridding the classroom of what is known as grievance politics – meaning someone believes they have been marginalized because of their identity, race, gender or sexuality.</p>
  61. <p><strong>How far back can you trace this educational philosophy?</strong></p>
  62. <p>The 1960s had an explosion of progressive activism amid the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/New-Left">New Left</a> and antiwar movements as young adults realized that they could now demand certain rights. At the same time, there were a lot of young conservatives on campuses who felt fine with the way things were or who were concerned about some of the more radical ideas promoted by the New Left.</p>
  63. <p>Universities became more inclusive in the 1960s, too. Generally, there were not any gender studies programs at American universities <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/reading-list-gender-studies/">until the 1960s and 1970s</a>, nor were there any <a href="https://www.asccc.org/content/ethnic-studies-looking-back-looking-forward">race and ethnicity programs</a>. Some conservatives pushed back on the emergence of these programs, saying that if there is an African American studies department, they want to see a conservative studies department, too.</p>
  64. <p>After the 1960s, conservative education fights died down. Conservatives still wanted their voices heard on campus, but their merit-only based education philosophy seemed less relevant when left-wing campus protests had <a href="https://depts.washington.edu/moves/antiwar_intro.shtml">declined significantly</a>.</p>
  65. <p><strong>How did Charlie Kirk capitalize on the conservative feelings regarding education?</strong></p>
  66. <p>Kirk founded his political nonprofit, <a href="https://www.americancomebacktour.com/">Turning Point USA</a>, in 2012. Kirk didn’t originally support  Trump, but he became friends with Donald Trump Jr., and eventually became <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/us/politics/trump-kirk.html">close with the president</a>. Like Trump, <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/04/06/trump-young-conservatives-college-charlie-kirk-turning-point-usa-217829">Kirk saw academia</a> as the source of a plethora of problems in American society. His goal was to make college campuses more friendly to conservative students by making conservative ideas like free market economics and traditional gender roles more popular.</p>
  67. <p>There was a lot of foundation laying over time for Kirk’s conservative education philosophy. Hamas’ <a href="https://education.cfr.org/learn/learning-journey/why-did-hamas-attack-israel/about-this-journey">Oct. 7, 2023, attack</a> in Israel, as well as the subsequent war in Gaza and Palestinian rights protests in the U.S., offered a moment for conservatives like Kirk to brand progressives at schools as this <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-says-tpusa-staffers-beaten-hamas-supporters-1837146">huge threat</a>.</p>
  68. <p><strong>What was Kirk’s tour focused on accomplishing?</strong></p>
  69. <p>Kirk and others in the conservative youth movement want their followers to have a close relationship with them. This helps conservatives influence government and society, using college campuses to recruit young adults as conservative voters and activists, making the university appear less progressive in the process. Let’s say progressive college kids have Bernie Sanders or Che Guevara posters hanging in their dorm rooms. Conservatives like Kirk have built an all-encompassing, alternative world for young conservatives to become involved in, where they have proximity to political and thought leaders, including Kirk. Turning Point has used flashy slogans, <a href="https://tpusamerch.com/?srsltid=AfmBOorseiuw_gEwARv-mYKXTC3PkQMfn2pIG40HwHP2P2a8NvdX50vK">signs and bumper stickers</a> to help make conservatism cool on campus.</p>
  70. <p>Kirk’s tour had just begun, but he had planned to make stops at universities in Colorado, Utah, Minnesota, Montana and other states. It was important that Kirk himself was in the room with young people, and that they could ask him questions and talk with him. He was considered approachable in a way that most politicians would not be.</p>
  71. <p>Conservatives have used this strategy for a long time. My <a href="https://www.proquest.com/docview/3245931801?pq-origsite=primo&amp;searchKeywords=Daniel%20ruggles">own research</a> shows how college students would write to conservative leaders like Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley in the 1960s and 1970s and these figures would write back. This kind of proximity between leaders and young supporters isn’t seen on the left. The goal is to cultivate a conservative movement community. Many of those conservative college students later worked for the government. Kirk’s tour was about continuing that kind of direct relationship between conservative leaders and young people.</p>
  72. <p>Conservatives have a pipeline – meaning, let’s say you’re in high school and you discover conservative ideas by watching Charlie Kirk on YouTube. In college, you can go to Turning Point events and meet conservative leaders. After you graduate, you can even get a job with a conservative group through websites like <a href="https://conservativejobs.com/">ConservativeJobs.com</a>. The point of the pipeline is to always give young conservatives a next step to becoming more involved in politics. While not everyone follows this pipeline, it helps the conservative movement cultivate new generations of talent. I think Kirk had a lot he was trying to accomplish, including building up a reservoir of young talent through Turning Point. </p>
  73. <figure class="align-center zoomable">
  74.            <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690676/original/file-20250912-64-awqrld.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="Two men wearing dark shirts with yellow writing stand behind a yellow roped off area that has signs that say 'American Comeback.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690676/original/file-20250912-64-awqrld.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690676/original/file-20250912-64-awqrld.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=340&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690676/original/file-20250912-64-awqrld.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=340&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690676/original/file-20250912-64-awqrld.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=340&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690676/original/file-20250912-64-awqrld.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=427&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690676/original/file-20250912-64-awqrld.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=427&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690676/original/file-20250912-64-awqrld.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=427&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"/></a><figcaption>
  75.              <span class="caption">FBI staff on Sept. 11, 2025, investigate the area at Utah Valley University where Charlie Kirk was shot and killed the day before.</span><br />
  76.              <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/staff-investigate-the-area-of-the-campus-of-utah-valley-news-photo/2234251288?adppopup=true">Francisco Kjolseth/The Salt Lake Tribune via Getty Images</a></span><br />
  77.            </figcaption></figure>
  78. <p><strong>How is Turning Point distinct from the Republican Party and MAGA?</strong></p>
  79. <p>Turning Point isn’t the same as the Republican Party, but it’s helping to push the party further to the right. Turning Point has alienated other members of the conservative movement in certain ways. In 2018, the conservative youth group Young America’s Foundation <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/leaked-memo-from-conservative-group-cautions-students-to-stay-away-from-turning-point-usa/">accused Turning Point</a> of taking over the conservative youth movement and crowding out other groups. Turning Point’s total revenue has grown considerably in the last few years, <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/800835023">topping US$85 million in 2024</a> – that matters because money and attention help Turning Point push out other conservative voices. </p>
  80. <p>Kirk and Trump agreed on a lot of policy issues. Kirk used Turning Point to define conservatism on his terms and to defend Trump. Education is the bulk of Turning Point’s work, a continuation of what has historically also been been the most important cultural issue on the right since the 1960s.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img loading="lazy" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/265190/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p>
  81. <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/daniel-ruggles-2233623">Daniel Ruggles</a>, PhD Candidate in Politics, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/brandeis-university-1308">Brandeis University</a></em></span></p>
  82. <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlie-kirk-talked-with-young-people-at-universities-for-a-reason-he-wanted-american-education-to-return-to-traditional-values-265190">original article</a>.</p>
  83. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/charlie-kirk-talked-with-young-people-at-universities-for-a-reason-he-wanted-american-education-to-return-to-traditional-values/">Charlie Kirk talked with young people at universities for a reason – he wanted American education to return to traditional values</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  84. ]]></content:encoded>
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  87. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  90. </item>
  91. <item>
  92. <title>Military spending has exploded to $2.7 trillion while world poverty deepens, UN report says.</title>
  93. <link>https://themoderatevoice.com/military-spending-has-exploded-to-2-7-trillion-while-world-poverty-deepens-un-report-says/</link>
  94. <comments>https://themoderatevoice.com/military-spending-has-exploded-to-2-7-trillion-while-world-poverty-deepens-un-report-says/#respond</comments>
  96. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Brij Khindaria, Foreign Affairs Columnist]]></dc:creator>
  97. <pubDate>Mon, 15 Sep 2025 06:11:25 +0000</pubDate>
  98. <category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category>
  99. <category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
  100. <category><![CDATA[Finance]]></category>
  101. <category><![CDATA[International]]></category>
  102. <category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
  103. <category><![CDATA[United Nations]]></category>
  104. <category><![CDATA[military spending]]></category>
  105. <category><![CDATA[Poverty]]></category>
  106. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://themoderatevoice.com/?p=287151</guid>
  107.  
  108. <description><![CDATA[<p>The unprecedented $2.7 trillion spent on weapons and the military has left global spending on building peace and sustainable development far behind and is intensifying wars and geopolitical tensions, a new United Nations report warns. Spending on security needs increased across all five global regions during 2024, marking the steepest year-on-year rise for at least<a class="read-more" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/military-spending-has-exploded-to-2-7-trillion-while-world-poverty-deepens-un-report-says/"> [&#8230;]</a></p>
  109. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/military-spending-has-exploded-to-2-7-trillion-while-world-poverty-deepens-un-report-says/">Military spending has exploded to $2.7 trillion while world poverty deepens, UN report says.</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  110. ]]></description>
  111. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img loading="lazy" src="https://themoderatevoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/aaaaaaaa-e1757948119917.jpg" alt="" width="760" height="509" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-287161" /></p>
  112. <p>The unprecedented $2.7 trillion spent on weapons and the military has left global spending on building peace and sustainable development far behind and is intensifying wars and geopolitical tensions, a new United Nations report warns.</p>
  113. <p>Spending on security needs increased across all five global regions during 2024, marking the steepest year-on-year rise for at least the last 30 years. In comparison, the world could eliminate extreme poverty for just under $300 billion.</p>
  114. <p>“The world is spending far more on waging war than in building peace,” the UN Chief António Guterres said. “The evidence is clear: excessive military spending does not guarantee peace. It often undermines peace – fueling arms races, deepening mistrust, and diverting resources from the very foundations of stability.”</p>
  115. <p>“A more secure world begins by investing at least as much in fighting poverty as we do in fighting wars,” he pointed out.</p>
  116. <p>The report entitled, “The Security We Need; Rebalancing Military Spending for a Sustainable and Peaceful Future”, notes that the shortfall in spending on poverty reduction has reached a record $4 trillion.</p>
  117. <p>Its conclusions run counter to President Donald Trump’s insistence on greatly expanding US military capabilities and enriching Americans by using economic and other coercion to reach new trade and financial deals in their favor with almost all the world’s countries. </p>
  118. <p>Military spending last year was almost 13 times the combined development assistance provided by the world’s richest countries and 750 times the UN annual budget.  </p>
  119. <p>&#8220;Investing in people is investing in the first line of defense against violence in any society,” Guterres added. While more is being spent on militaries, less is being spent on social investment, poverty reduction, education, health, environmental protection and infrastructure.</p>
  120. <p>Redirecting even a fraction of today’s military spending could close vital gaps – putting children in school, strengthening primary health care, expanding clean energy and resilient infrastructure, and protecting the most vulnerable.</p>
  121. <p>The world could fund education for every student in low and lower middle-income countries, eliminate child malnutrition globally, fund climate change adaptation in developing nations, and bring the international community closer to achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed by all member states. The SDGs are widely seen as humanity&#8217;s blueprint for a more equitable future. </p>
  122. <p>The report calls for prioritizing diplomacy, peaceful settlement of disputes, and confidence-building measures to address the underlying causes of growing military expenditure. That would include bringing military spending to the forefront of disarmament negotiations and improving links between arms control and development. </p>
  123. <p>Importantly, governments should pay much more attention to promoting transparency and accountability around military expenditure because that is vital for building trust among governments while reducing corruption and wastage of defense budgets. </p>
  124. <p>Trump’s militarist preferences for the US have placed all other nations at a crossroads facing stark choices between military security for the world’s richest country and better lives for the global majority. </p>
  125. <p>The paths chosen will profoundly shape prospects for decades to come. For better outcomes, Trump could choose to avoid military escalation, restore transparency and trust, and emphasize investments in preventing wars. He could help to promote sustainable development to rid the world of debilitating poverty and strengthen climate resilience.</p>
  126. <p>Increasing military spending would also have the undesirable outcome of adding to already high levels of public debt, thus burdening future generations and limiting their progress. </p>
  127. <p>The report notes that a one percent increase in military spending in low- and middle-income countries is linked to an almost equal reduction in public health services, jeopardizing pandemic preparedness and other lifesaving health programmes. </p>
  128. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/military-spending-has-exploded-to-2-7-trillion-while-world-poverty-deepens-un-report-says/">Military spending has exploded to $2.7 trillion while world poverty deepens, UN report says.</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  129. ]]></content:encoded>
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  137. <title>DONATE TO THE MODERATE VOICE</title>
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  141. <dc:creator><![CDATA[JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief]]></dc:creator>
  142. <pubDate>Mon, 15 Sep 2025 04:00:33 +0000</pubDate>
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  151. <description><![CDATA[<p>Donations received as of 9/14/25: $240 The Moderate Voice hasn&#8217;t done a fundraiser in quite a while &#8212; and now is the time. TMV is one of a small number of traditional news-political blogs that remains in a social media-powered era. Its posts appear on a phone news app and also on Google News. Over<a class="read-more" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/donate-to-the-moderate-voice/"> [&#8230;]</a></p>
  152. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/donate-to-the-moderate-voice/">DONATE TO THE MODERATE VOICE</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
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  155. <p><strong>Donations received as of 9/14/25: $240</strong></p>
  156. <p>The Moderate Voice hasn&#8217;t done a fundraiser in quite a while &#8212; and now is the time. TMV is one of a small number of traditional news-political blogs that remains in a social media-powered era. Its posts appear on a phone news app and also on Google News. Over the years, it won various awards and some well-known print and broadcast journalists have praised it.</p>
  157. <p>The time has com for a needed fundraiser. TMV gets a modest bit of advertising but it has no big corporate sponsor, no political group bolstering it, no big donation from an individual. It  will be increasingly adding more variety (entertainment reviews, book reviews etc) going into 2026, a critical mid-term election year.</p>
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  159. <p> Thank you for your attention in this matter.</p>
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  170. <item>
  171. <title>The Charlie Kirk/Tyler Robinson shell engravings deconstructed</title>
  172. <link>https://themoderatevoice.com/the-charlie-kirk-tyler-robinson-shell-engravings-deconstructed/</link>
  173. <comments>https://themoderatevoice.com/the-charlie-kirk-tyler-robinson-shell-engravings-deconstructed/#respond</comments>
  175. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Guest Voice]]></dc:creator>
  176. <pubDate>Sat, 13 Sep 2025 18:44:25 +0000</pubDate>
  177. <category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
  178. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  179. <category><![CDATA[Society]]></category>
  180. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://themoderatevoice.com/?p=287139</guid>
  181.  
  182. <description><![CDATA[<p>Guest voice: Chris Thomas As probably the most terminally-online, sane person I know, I&#8217;m going to explain the whole Charlie Kirk/Tyler Robinson bullet engravings to y&#8217;all so you can share it with your parents and whatnot. The bullet casings (not bullets) the FBI recovered had four messages scrawled on them 1. “Notices bulges OWO what’s<a class="read-more" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/the-charlie-kirk-tyler-robinson-shell-engravings-deconstructed/"> [&#8230;]</a></p>
  183. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/the-charlie-kirk-tyler-robinson-shell-engravings-deconstructed/">The Charlie Kirk/Tyler Robinson shell engravings deconstructed</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  184. ]]></description>
  185. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Guest voice: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1B9KHncNax/?mibextid=wwXIfr" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Chris Thomas</a></p>
  186. <p>As probably the most terminally-online, sane person I know, I&#8217;m going to explain the whole <a href="https://www.memeorandum.com/250913/p41#a250913p41" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Charlie Kirk/Tyler Robinson</a> bullet engravings to y&#8217;all so you can share it with your parents and whatnot.  </p>
  187. <p>The bullet casings (not bullets) the FBI recovered had four messages scrawled on them</p>
  188. <p>1. “Notices bulges OWO what’s this?”<br />
  189. 2. “Hey fascist! Catch!” <br /><img src="https://themoderatevoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_5380.jpeg" alt="Shell casing arrows" width="150" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-287144" srcset="https://themoderatevoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_5380.jpeg 317w, https://themoderatevoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_5380-300x70.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 317px) 100vw, 317px" /><br />
  190. 3. “Oh bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao”<br />
  191. 4. “If you read this, you are gay lmao”</p>
  192. <p>#1 is a phrase that appears in online comics making fun of people who like to engage in role-play cybersex/sexting in which they pretend to be anthropomorphic animals. If that doesn&#8217;t make sense to you that&#8217;s ok; there&#8217;s an almost infinitely deep well of variety in human sexuality and an even deeper well of ways people can make themselves feel better about themselves by making fun of it.  This message is just a taunt suggesting that Kirk is sexually deviant and weird.  </p>
  193. <p>#2 is a reference to a video game called &#8220;Helldivers.&#8221;  The arrow sequence is how a player calls in an airstrike in-game. The characters in Helldivers are fascists but they don&#8217;t really *know* that they&#8217;re fascists and so they say things like &#8220;for democracy&#8221; a lot. The shooter is echoing this phrase because it sounds both powerful and righteous; there&#8217;s a decent chance the irony is lost on him entirely.  </p>
  194. <p>#3 is an old Italian anti-fascist song. At first glance you might reasonably think this signals that Robinson is in with anti-fa but the song is also popular in the &#8220;Groyper&#8221; movement. What&#8217;s a Groyper, you ask? It&#8217;s a right-wing movement around Nick Fuentes which hates HATES Charlie Kirk and thinks he&#8217;s too liberal.  Really.</p>
  195. <p>#4  is just a homophobic meme from 4chan, an internet message board.  There&#8217;s no complexity here, just internet trolls doing what they do.</p>
  196. <p>These messages fit together to tell us who the shooter is.  He&#8217;s a Groyper &#8212; a follower of Nick Fuentes who&#8217;s gone so far down the weird,  internet culture rabbit hole that he&#8217;s basically speaking a different language.  The Groyper movement loves to use imagery and phrases that originate on the left (like the italian song) and make them their own to sew confusion.  From the way the Wall Street Journal uncritically reported on the bullets as containing &#8220;transgender&#8221; messages, it seems to have worked.</p>
  197. <p>But, especially taken together, the messages paint a clear picture of the shooter.  He&#8217;s a far right, misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic, white supremacist. He&#8217;s a member of a movement that has had an axe to grind with Charlie Kirk for some time.  And he&#8217;s about the furthest you can be from antifa, progressive, LGBTQ, leftist, or Democratic without actually invading Poland.  </p>
  198. <p>Hope this helps.</p>
  199. <p>~~~</p>
  200. <p>Posted by Kathy E Gill </p>
  201. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/the-charlie-kirk-tyler-robinson-shell-engravings-deconstructed/">The Charlie Kirk/Tyler Robinson shell engravings deconstructed</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
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  210. <title>UN declares roadmap to a two-state solution amid signs of hope in Gaza’s awful suffering</title>
  211. <link>https://themoderatevoice.com/un-declares-roadmap-to-a-two-state-solution-amid-hope-in-gazas-awful-suffering/</link>
  212. <comments>https://themoderatevoice.com/un-declares-roadmap-to-a-two-state-solution-amid-hope-in-gazas-awful-suffering/#respond</comments>
  214. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Brij Khindaria, Foreign Affairs Columnist]]></dc:creator>
  215. <pubDate>Sat, 13 Sep 2025 13:20:28 +0000</pubDate>
  216. <category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
  217. <category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
  218. <category><![CDATA[International]]></category>
  219. <category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
  220. <category><![CDATA[Palestinians]]></category>
  221. <category><![CDATA[United Nations]]></category>
  222. <category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
  223. <category><![CDATA[War]]></category>
  224. <category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
  225. <category><![CDATA[Two State Solution]]></category>
  226. <category><![CDATA[United Nation]]></category>
  227. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://themoderatevoice.com/?p=287137</guid>
  228.  
  229. <description><![CDATA[<p>The United Nations has overwhelmingly agreed on a declaration that lays out a single roadmap to deliver a two-State solution partitioning Israel and a new State of Palestine. In the UN General Assembly, 142 voted in favor, 10 voted against including Israel and the US, and 12 abstained. Those in favor included almost all large<a class="read-more" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/un-declares-roadmap-to-a-two-state-solution-amid-hope-in-gazas-awful-suffering/"> [&#8230;]</a></p>
  230. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/un-declares-roadmap-to-a-two-state-solution-amid-hope-in-gazas-awful-suffering/">UN declares roadmap to a two-state solution amid signs of hope in Gaza’s awful suffering</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  231. ]]></description>
  232. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img loading="lazy" src="https://themoderatevoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/dreamstime_s_185902065-e1757947745228.jpg" alt="" width="760" height="506" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-287157" /></p>
  233. <p>The United Nations has overwhelmingly agreed on a declaration that lays out a single roadmap to deliver a two-State solution partitioning Israel and a new State of Palestine. </p>
  234. <p>In the UN General Assembly, 142 voted in favor, 10 voted against including Israel and the US, and 12 abstained. Those in favor included almost all large members of the European Union. </p>
  235. <p>Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon said that “this one-sided Declaration will not be remembered as a step toward peace, only as another hollow gesture that weakens this Assembly’s credibility.” </p>
  236. <p>“Hamas is the biggest winner of any endorsement here today” and will declare it “the fruit of 7 October”, he added.</p>
  237. <p>The declaration demands an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, release of all hostages held there, and the establishment of a Palestinian State that is both viable and sovereign.</p>
  238. <p>It calls for the disarmament of Hamas and its exclusion from governance in Gaza, normalization between Israel and the Arab countries, and collective security guarantees.</p>
  239. <p>The declaration comes against a backdrop of greatly intensified Israeli destruction of Gaza city and a relentless push to force its nearly one million residents to flee southwards into spaces that relief organization say are cramped, unsanitary and unsafe. Yet, there are hopeful signs of relief for people fleeing the bombardment. </p>
  240. <p>UN chief Antonio Guterres said, “Gaza is piled with rubble, piled with bodies, and piled with examples of what may be serious violations of international law. Hostages taken by Hamas and other groups must be released and the atrocious treatment they have been forced to endure must stop.”</p>
  241. <p>“I appeal once again for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, unfettered humanitarian access across Gaza, and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages. </p>
  242. <p>“Starvation of the civilian population must never be used as a method of warfare. Civilians must be protected. Humanitarian access must be unimpeded. No more excuses.  No more obstacles.  No more lies,” he insisted.</p>
  243. <p>UNICEF, the UN’s agency for children, reported that over 10,000 children in Gaza city have been diagnosed with acute malnutrition in the past two months alone. The agency warned that if disconnected from their treatment, there is a high risk some of the 2,400 children currently being treated for severe acute malnutrition in the area could starve to death.</p>
  244. <p>Gaza’s health ministry said 411 people across Gaza have died due to malnutrition and starvation, including 133 since the confirmation of famine in Gaza last month. </p>
  245. <p>Despite the chaos and violence, some UN and other relief groups are still able to provide help. As people flee southwards, relief teams are providing direct support or referral services to children who have been injured, orphaned or separated from their caregivers. </p>
  246. <p>The UN is still helping humanitarian partners to keep community kitchens open, distribute clean water, and provide healthcare to people in Gaza city and elsewhere across the Gaza Strip. </p>
  247. <p>Yesterday, a UN team successfully delivered fuel to a series of critical service providers in Gaza city. This included hospitals and other health facilities, as well as installations supporting water pumping, trucking and desalination, and the management of solid waste. </p>
  248. <p>Speaking from Deir Al-Balah in Gaza, Olga Cherevko, Spokesperson for the UN aid coordination office OCHA, delivered a blunt message: “When Gaza burned, and children starved, and hospitals collapsed – did you act?”</p>
  249. <p>She said hundreds of thousands of battered civilians were ordered to flee to an already overcrowded area where “even small animals have to search for spaces to squeeze between to move around.”</p>
  250. <p>“The race against time, against death, against the spread of famine, feels as if we as humanitarians are running through quicksand.</p>
  251. <p>“The unmistakable smell of death is everywhere – a grisly reminder that the ruins lining the streets hide the remains of mothers, fathers, children,” she added. </p>
  252. <p>Yet, humanity shines through. The Palestinian doctors, nurses and paramedics are working around the clock, often without pay, medicine or electricity. Aid workers from UN agencies, the Red Cross Red Crescent and other organizations are delivering food, medicine and clean water under fire. Ordinary people share the little they have with strangers. </p>
  253. <p>“In every act of care – a refusal to let cruelty define the future. Proof that even in the darkest times, the human spirit endures,” she noted.</p>
  254. <p><em>ID <a href="https://www.dreamstime.com/macro-shallow-focus-highlighting-middle-eastern-region-gaza-macro-shallow-focus-highlighting-middle-eastern-image185902065">185902065</a> ©<br />
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  256. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/un-declares-roadmap-to-a-two-state-solution-amid-hope-in-gazas-awful-suffering/">UN declares roadmap to a two-state solution amid signs of hope in Gaza’s awful suffering</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  257. ]]></content:encoded>
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  264. <item>
  265. <title>Yes, this is who we are: America’s 250-year history of political violence</title>
  266. <link>https://themoderatevoice.com/yes-this-is-who-we-are-americas-250-year-history-of-political-violence/</link>
  267. <comments>https://themoderatevoice.com/yes-this-is-who-we-are-americas-250-year-history-of-political-violence/#respond</comments>
  269. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Guest Voice]]></dc:creator>
  270. <pubDate>Sat, 13 Sep 2025 04:07:27 +0000</pubDate>
  271. <category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
  272. <category><![CDATA[Guns]]></category>
  273. <category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
  274. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  275. <category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
  276. <category><![CDATA[Violence]]></category>
  277. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://themoderatevoice.com/?p=287133</guid>
  278.  
  279. <description><![CDATA[<p>Maurizio Valsania, Università di Torino The day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University, commentators repeated a familiar refrain: “This isn’t who we are as Americans.” Others similarly weighed in. Whoopi Goldberg on “The View” declared that Americans solve political disagreements peacefully: “This is not the way<a class="read-more" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/yes-this-is-who-we-are-americas-250-year-history-of-political-violence/"> [&#8230;]</a></p>
  280. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/yes-this-is-who-we-are-americas-250-year-history-of-political-violence/">Yes, this is who we are: America’s 250-year history of political violence</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  281. ]]></description>
  282. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>  <span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/maurizio-valsania-1098422">Maurizio Valsania</a>, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/universita-di-torino-3231">Università di Torino</a></em></span></p>
  283. <p>The day after conservative activist <a href="https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/charlie-kirk-shot-utah-death-09-11-25">Charlie Kirk was shot and killed</a> while speaking at Utah Valley University, commentators repeated a familiar refrain: “<a href="https://www.thebulwark.com/p/a-history-of-violence-17a">This isn’t who we are</a> <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@corybooker/video/7548657440099683639">as Americans</a>.” </p>
  284. <p>Others similarly weighed in. Whoopi Goldberg on “The View” declared that Americans solve political disagreements peacefully: “<a href="https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/the-view-charlie-kirk-assassination-b2824881.html">This is not the way we do it</a>.”</p>
  285. <p>Yet other awful episodes come immediately to mind: President John F. Kennedy was <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/november-22-1963-death-of-the-president">shot and killed on Nov. 22, 1963</a>. More recently, on June 14, 2025, Melissa Hortman, speaker emerita of the Minnesota House of Representatives,  was <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/14/us/melissa-hortman-minnesota-assassination">shot and killed at her home</a>, along with her husband and their golden retriever. </p>
  286. <p><a href="https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/12786/first-among-men?srsltid=AfmBOopfhrh-U5cNevfR6IvsrpRxigRWQ2MAvMHORlOpzh-jQw4UDJUc">As a historian of the early republic</a>, I believe that seeing this violence in America as distinct “episodes” is wrong. </p>
  287. <p>Instead, they reflect a recurrent pattern. </p>
  288. <p>American politics has long personalized its violence. Time and again, history’s advance has been imagined to depend on silencing or destroying a single figure – the rival who becomes the ultimate, despicable foe. </p>
  289. <p>Hence, to claim that such shootings betray “who we are” is to forget that the U.S. was founded upon – and has long been sustained by – this very form of political violence.</p>
  290. <figure class="align-center zoomable">
  291.            <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690690/original/file-20250912-56-whd7hc.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="A fuzzy photo of a large car with a woman leaning over in the back seat to help a slumped man next to her." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690690/original/file-20250912-56-whd7hc.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690690/original/file-20250912-56-whd7hc.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=451&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690690/original/file-20250912-56-whd7hc.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=451&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690690/original/file-20250912-56-whd7hc.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=451&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690690/original/file-20250912-56-whd7hc.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=567&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690690/original/file-20250912-56-whd7hc.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=567&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690690/original/file-20250912-56-whd7hc.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=567&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"/></a><figcaption>
  292.              <span class="caption">First lady Jacqueline Kennedy leans over to assist her husband, John F. Kennedy, just after he is shot in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963.</span><br />
  293.              <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/first-lady-jacqueline-kennedy-leans-over-to-assist-her-news-photo/514698396?adppopup=true">Bettman/Getty Images</a></span><br />
  294.            </figcaption></figure>
  295. <h2>Revolutionary violence as political theater</h2>
  296. <p>The years of the American Revolution were incubated in violence. One abominable practice used on political adversaries was tarring and feathering. It was a punishment imported from Europe and popularized by the Sons of Liberty in the late 1760s, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1559903">Colonial activists who resisted British rule</a>. </p>
  297. <p>In seaport towns such as Boston and New York, mobs stripped political enemies, usually suspected loyalists – supporters of British rule – or officials representing the king, smeared them with hot tar, rolled them in feathers, and paraded them through the streets.</p>
  298. <p><a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/tarring-and-feathering">The effects on bodies were devastating</a>. As the tar was peeled away, flesh came off in strips. People would survive the punishment, but they would carry the scars for the rest of their life.</p>
  299. <p>By the <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/loyalists/">late 1770s, the Revolution in what is known as the Middle Colonies</a> had become a brutal civil war. In New York and New Jersey, patriot militias, loyalist partisans and British regulars raided across county lines, targeting farms and neighbors. When patriot forces captured loyalist irregulars – often called “Tories” or “refugees” – they frequently treated them not as prisoners of war but as traitors, executing them swiftly, usually by hanging.</p>
  300. <p>In September 1779, six loyalists were caught near Hackensack, New Jersey. They were hanged without trial by patriot militia. Similarly, in October 1779, two suspected Tory spies captured in the Hudson Highlands were shot on the spot, <a href="https://archive.org/details/americanviolence0000hofs">their execution justified as punishment for treason</a>.</p>
  301. <p>To patriots, these killings were deterrence; to loyalists, they were murder. Either way, they were unmistakably political, eliminating enemies whose “crime” was allegiance to the wrong side.</p>
  302. <figure class="align-right zoomable">
  303.            <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690680/original/file-20250912-56-ej9ms5.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="An old portrait of an older man in a black robe." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690680/original/file-20250912-56-ej9ms5.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690680/original/file-20250912-56-ej9ms5.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=748&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690680/original/file-20250912-56-ej9ms5.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=748&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690680/original/file-20250912-56-ej9ms5.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=748&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690680/original/file-20250912-56-ej9ms5.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=940&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690680/original/file-20250912-56-ej9ms5.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=940&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690680/original/file-20250912-56-ej9ms5.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=940&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"/></a><figcaption>
  304.              <span class="caption">In 1798, Henry Brockholst Livingston – later a U.S. Supreme Court justice – killed James Jones in a duel. It did not affect his career.</span><br />
  305.              <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/brockholst_livingston">US Supreme Court</a></span><br />
  306.            </figcaption></figure>
  307. <h2>Pistols at dawn: Dueling as politics</h2>
  308. <p>Even after independence, the workings of American politics remained grounded in a logic of violence toward adversaries. </p>
  309. <p>For national leaders, the pistol duel was not just about honor. It normalized a political culture where <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300097559/affairs-of-honor/">gunfire itself was treated as part of the debate</a>.</p>
  310. <p>The most famous duel, of course, was <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Burr-Hamilton-duel">Aaron Burr’s killing of Alexander Hamilton in 1804</a>. But scores of lesser-known confrontations dotted the decade before it.</p>
  311. <p>In 1798, Henry Brockholst Livingston – later a U.S. Supreme Court justice – <a href="https://www.fayewest.ca/jones/exhibits/jones,-james---the-duel-between-brockhust-livingston-and-james-jones.pdf">killed James Jones in a duel</a>. Far from discredited, he was deemed to have acted honorably. In the early republic, even homicide could be absorbed into politics when cloaked in ritual. Ironically, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/brockholst_livingston">Livingston had survived an assassination attempt in 1785</a>.</p>
  312. <p>In 1802, another shameful spectacle unfolded: New York Democratic-Republicans <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/article/springville-journal-duel-between-john-sw/130625887/">DeWitt Clinton and John Swartwout faced off in Weehawken</a>, New Jersey. They fired at least five rounds before their seconds intervened, leaving both men wounded. In this case, the clash had nothing to do with political principle; Clinton and Swartwout were Republicans. It was a patronage squabble that still erupted into gunfire, <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-founder-of-gothams-fortunes">showing how normalized armed violence was in settling disputes</a>.</p>
  313. <h2>Gun culture and its expansion</h2>
  314. <figure class="align-center zoomable">
  315.            <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690685/original/file-20250912-64-e2szx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="A small, antique pistol." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690685/original/file-20250912-64-e2szx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690685/original/file-20250912-64-e2szx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=424&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690685/original/file-20250912-64-e2szx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=424&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690685/original/file-20250912-64-e2szx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=424&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690685/original/file-20250912-64-e2szx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=532&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690685/original/file-20250912-64-e2szx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=532&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690685/original/file-20250912-64-e2szx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=532&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"/></a><figcaption>
  316.              <span class="caption">One of the matching pair of derringer pistols used by John Wilkes Booth in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865.</span><br />
  317.              <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/lincoln-pistol-4-4-bg-9feb96one-of-the-mathcing-pair-of-news-photo/569145813?adppopup=true">Bob Grieser/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span><br />
  318.            </figcaption></figure>
  319. <p>It is tempting to dismiss political violence as a leftover from some “primitive” or “frontier” stage of American history, when politicians and their supporters supposedly lacked restraint or higher moral standards. But that is not the case.</p>
  320. <p>From before the Revolution onward, physical punishment or even killing were ways to enforce belonging, to mark the boundary between insiders and outsiders, and to decide who had the right to govern. </p>
  321. <p>Violence has never been a distortion in American politics. It has been one of its recurring features, not an aberration but a persistent force, destructive and yet oddly creative, <a href="https://archive.org/details/regenerationthro0000slot_p1h0">producing new boundaries and new regimes</a>.</p>
  322. <p>The dynamic only deepened as gun ownership expanded. In the 19th century, industrial arms production and aggressive federal contracts <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/gun_litigation-ch3.htm">put more weapons into circulation</a>. The rituals of punishing those with the wrong allegiance now found expression in the mass-produced revolver and later in the automatic rifle.</p>
  323. <p>These more modern firearms became not only practical tools of war, crime or self-defense but symbolic objects in their own right. They embodied authority, carried cultural meaning and gave their holders the sense that <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2944942">legitimacy itself could be claimed at the barrel of a gun</a>.</p>
  324. <p>That’s why the phrase “This isn’t who we are” rings false. Political violence has always been part of America’s story, not a passing anomaly, and not an episode. </p>
  325. <p>To deny it is to leave Americans defenseless against it. Only by facing this history head-on can Americans begin to imagine a politics not defined by the gun.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img loading="lazy" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/265171/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p>
  326. <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/maurizio-valsania-1098422">Maurizio Valsania</a>, Professor of American History, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/universita-di-torino-3231">Università di Torino</a></em></span></p>
  327. <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/yes-this-is-who-we-are-americas-250-year-history-of-political-violence-265171">original article</a>.</p>
  328. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/yes-this-is-who-we-are-americas-250-year-history-of-political-violence/">Yes, this is who we are: America’s 250-year history of political violence</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  329. ]]></content:encoded>
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  336. <item>
  337. <title>TRUMP MOURNS THE ATTACKS ON REPUBLICANS</title>
  338. <link>https://themoderatevoice.com/trump-mourns-the-attacks-on-republicans/</link>
  339. <comments>https://themoderatevoice.com/trump-mourns-the-attacks-on-republicans/#respond</comments>
  341. <dc:creator><![CDATA[CAGLE CARTOONS]]></dc:creator>
  342. <pubDate>Fri, 12 Sep 2025 18:29:38 +0000</pubDate>
  343. <category><![CDATA[Assassination]]></category>
  344. <category><![CDATA[Cartoons]]></category>
  345. <category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category>
  346. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  347. <category><![CDATA[Violence]]></category>
  348. <category><![CDATA[Divider]]></category>
  349. <category><![CDATA[Divisive]]></category>
  350. <category><![CDATA[Partisanship]]></category>
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  352.  
  353. <description><![CDATA[<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/trump-mourns-the-attacks-on-republicans/">TRUMP MOURNS THE ATTACKS ON REPUBLICANS</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  354. ]]></description>
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  356. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/trump-mourns-the-attacks-on-republicans/">TRUMP MOURNS THE ATTACKS ON REPUBLICANS</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
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  364. <item>
  365. <title>Charlie Kirk and the test of empathy</title>
  366. <link>https://themoderatevoice.com/charlie-kirk-and-the-test-of-empathy/</link>
  367. <comments>https://themoderatevoice.com/charlie-kirk-and-the-test-of-empathy/#respond</comments>
  369. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Dick Polman, Cagle Cartoons Columnist]]></dc:creator>
  370. <pubDate>Fri, 12 Sep 2025 18:02:05 +0000</pubDate>
  371. <category><![CDATA[Assassination]]></category>
  372. <category><![CDATA[Crime]]></category>
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  375. <category><![CDATA[Charlie Kirk]]></category>
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  378. <category><![CDATA[empathy]]></category>
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  380.  
  381. <description><![CDATA[<p>There’s an unwritten law in our doomscrolling dystopia that when something bad happens, everyone shall speedily post a clickable opinion, something that’s often little more than eye candy with empty calories. So imagine how remiss yours truly has been. I’m apparently the very last member of the far-flung commentariat to weigh in on the horrific<a class="read-more" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/charlie-kirk-and-the-test-of-empathy/"> [&#8230;]</a></p>
  382. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/charlie-kirk-and-the-test-of-empathy/">Charlie Kirk and the test of empathy</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  383. ]]></description>
  384. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img loading="lazy" src="https://themoderatevoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/dave-granlund_politics-and-violence-e1757698840507.png" alt="" width="760" height="559" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-287127" /></p>
  385. <p>There’s an unwritten law in our doomscrolling dystopia that when something bad happens, everyone shall speedily post a clickable opinion, something that’s often little more than eye candy with empty calories. So imagine how remiss yours truly has been. I’m apparently the very last member of the far-flung commentariat to weigh in on the horrific public death of Charlie Kirk.</p>
  386. <p>Call me crazy, but I felt it was wise to wait nearly 48 hours, to catch my breath and think about things in a microclimate of calm. I even boycotted social media, which in those 48 hours had predictably become a soul-sapping cesspool of lunacy.</p>
  387. <p>I also reminded myself that, believe it or not, most Americans do not live there.</p>
  388. <p>I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of empathy, how it connects us with one another, and how its absence can imperil us. An old quote from Hannah Arendt, the late philosopher and scholar of totalitarianism, has been rattling loose in my head: “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.”</p>
  389. <p>I also recall that Charlie Kirk made it abundantly clear that he had no use for empathy. In his words, “Empathy is a new-age term that’s done a lot of damage.”</p>
  390. <p>Hence my personal challenge: Feeling empathy for a person – trying to understand him, trying to walk in his shoes – when that person feels no empathy for others.</p>
  391. <p>No empathy, especially, for Black professionals (“If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy I hope he’s qualified’.”). Or for Black women (“You do not have brain processing power to otherwise be taken seriously, you have to go steal a white person’s slot”). Or for the victims of America’s gun violence epidemic, including schoolchildren (“I think it’s worth the cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights”). Or for single women (“the most depressed, suicidal, anxious, and lonely in America’s history…so they start to lash out at the rest of society”). Or for Jews (“Some of the largest funders of cultural Marxist ideas… Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them”). Or for gay people (who are “corrupting your children”).</p>
  392. <p>OK, Kirk makes it hard for me.</p>
  393. <p>But I can still put myself in his shoes. I invite you to do it as well, to sit on a stage in a spirit of open and civil debate (which he routinely did), and to perhaps feel, if only for a millisecond, the thud of a bullet canceling your consciousness forever. That is America at its primal worst, and I find it sickening that some find Kirk’s death grist for jokes and celebration.</p>
  394. <p>The place to defeat someone like Kirk is in the public square. Perhaps Kirk’s most ghoulish critics should be asking themselves why he was so successful there, and what needs to be done to win over the impressionable young people who’ve dug his message.</p>
  395. <p>Nobody deserves summary execution. Nobody’s kids deserve to be orphaned, and nobody’s wife deserves to be widowed. To feel otherwise, as Arendt wrote, is a symptom of encroaching barbarism. It would be nice, of course, if the other side felt the same way – I’m referring to the MAGA leaders who evinced no empathy in June when ex-Minnesota House Democratic Speaker and her husband were assassinated – but I see no value in responding in kind. I can’t police their souls, only my own.</p>
  396. <p>David French, the sane conservative columnist, says, “We can’t let the worst voices define how we respond to this moment.” I suspect that most Americans agree. For the sake of civility, let’s take a breath and live our best selves.</p>
  397. <p><em>Copyright 2025 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com</em></p>
  398. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/charlie-kirk-and-the-test-of-empathy/">Charlie Kirk and the test of empathy</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  399. ]]></content:encoded>
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  405. </item>
  406. <item>
  407. <title>‘This will not end here’: A scholar explains why Charlie Kirk’s killing could embolden political violence</title>
  408. <link>https://themoderatevoice.com/this-will-not-end-here-a-scholar-explains-why-charlie-kirks-killing-could-embolden-political-violence/</link>
  409. <comments>https://themoderatevoice.com/this-will-not-end-here-a-scholar-explains-why-charlie-kirks-killing-could-embolden-political-violence/#respond</comments>
  411. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Guest Voice]]></dc:creator>
  412. <pubDate>Thu, 11 Sep 2025 21:01:37 +0000</pubDate>
  413. <category><![CDATA[Assassination]]></category>
  414. <category><![CDATA[Extremists]]></category>
  415. <category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
  416. <category><![CDATA[Guns]]></category>
  417. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  418. <category><![CDATA[Violence]]></category>
  419. <category><![CDATA[Charlie Kirk]]></category>
  420. <category><![CDATA[Gun Control]]></category>
  421. <category><![CDATA[gun violence]]></category>
  422. <category><![CDATA[Polarization]]></category>
  423. <category><![CDATA[Political Assassinations]]></category>
  424. <category><![CDATA[Political Violence]]></category>
  425. <category><![CDATA[Political violence US gun control Political assassinations US gun violence Charlie Kirk US polarization]]></category>
  426. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://themoderatevoice.com/?p=287123</guid>
  427.  
  428. <description><![CDATA[<p>A boy in Scottsdale, Ariz., attends a Catholic rosary prayer vigil for Charlie Kirk after he was killed during a Utah college event on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin Arie Perliger, UMass Lowell The fatal shooting of prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, 2025, has brought renewed attention to the<a class="read-more" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/this-will-not-end-here-a-scholar-explains-why-charlie-kirks-killing-could-embolden-political-violence/"> [&#8230;]</a></p>
  429. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/this-will-not-end-here-a-scholar-explains-why-charlie-kirks-killing-could-embolden-political-violence/">‘This will not end here’: A scholar explains why Charlie Kirk’s killing could embolden political violence</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  430. ]]></description>
  431. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>      <img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690479/original/file-20250911-56-4jik4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&#038;rect=0%2C490%2C4695%2C2640&#038;q=45&#038;auto=format&#038;w=754&#038;fit=clip" /><figcaption>
  432.          A boy in Scottsdale, Ariz., attends a Catholic rosary prayer vigil for Charlie Kirk after he was killed during a Utah college event on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025.<br />
  433.          <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/home/search?query=Charlie%20Kirk&#038;mediaType=photo">AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin</a></span><br />
  434.        </figcaption><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/arie-perliger-379619">Arie Perliger</a>, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/umass-lowell-1534">UMass Lowell</a></em></span></p>
  435. <p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-was-charlie-kirk-the-activist-who-turned-campus-politics-into-national-influence-265056">fatal shooting of prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk</a> on Sept. 10, 2025, has brought renewed attention to the climate of political violence in America. Kirk’s death reflects a sizable increase in threats against officeholders and politicians at the local and federal level.</em> </p>
  436. <p><em>Alfonso Serrano, a politics editor at The Conversation, spoke with University of Massachusetts Lowell scholar <a href="https://www.uml.edu/fahss/criminal-justice/faculty/perliger-arie.aspx">Arie Perliger</a> after Kirk’s shooting. Perliger studies political violence and assassinations and spoke bluntly about political polarization in the United States.</em></p>
  437. <p><strong>Serrano: What were your initial thoughts after Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting?</strong></p>
  438. <p><strong>Perliger</strong>: It was a bit unusual that the attack was not against an elected official. Rarely have we seen political assassinations that are <a href="https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-causes-and-impact-of-political-assassinations/">aimed at the nonprofit political landscape</a>. Usually those people are not deemed important enough. </p>
  439. <p>Secondly, and it’s something I see a lot in my research, political assassinations come in waves. We see that not only in the United States but other countries. I’ve looked at <a href="https://ctc.westpoint.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/CTC_The-Rationale-Of-Political-Assassinations-February20151.pdf">political assassinations in many democracies</a>, and one of the things I see in a fairly consistent manner is that political assassinations create <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/nation-edge-experts-warn-vicious-spiral-political-violence-after-kirk-killing-2025-09-11/">a process of escalation</a> that encourages others on the extreme political spectrum to feel the need to retaliate. And that is my main concern. That this process creates legitimization and acceptance, that it provides the sense that this is an acceptable form of political action. This will not end here.</p>
  440. <p><strong>In 2024, there were two attempts to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw5yrv2kwexo">assassinate Donald Trump</a>. Then, in early 2025, the residence of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/cody-balmer-motive-arson-gaza-palestinian-shapiro.html">Gov. Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania</a> was firebombed on Passover, and within months the U.S. witnessed the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/minnesota-house-democrats-new-leader-stephenson-hortman/">killing of Minnesota state lawmaker Melissa Hortman</a> and her husband, among other acts of political violence. The U.S., of course, is not immune to political violence, as we saw in the 1960s. But what stands out about this latest wave?</strong> </p>
  441. <p>The data shows that there’s a substantial <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/intimidation-state-and-local-officeholders">increase in the level of threats against officeholders</a> at the local and federal level. What’s different now is we see an increased support in political violence from both sides of the political spectrum. Consistently, almost a quarter of the public is willing to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/25/us-political-violence-justified-survey">support political violence in some form</a>, or see that as a legitimate form of political action.</p>
  442. <p>And as we see an <a href="https://www.brown.edu/news/2020-01-21/polarization">increased political polarization</a>, and the <a href="https://warpreventioninitiative.org/peace-science-digest/the-effects-of-political-polarization-on-political-violence-in-the-u-s-and-other-democracies/">increased demonization of political rivals</a>, we see the decline and <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10002.html">disappearance of political discourse and policymaking</a>. The <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/10/the-polarization-in-todays-congress-has-roots-that-go-back-decades/">bipartisan political process in Congress</a> in the past few years has been almost nonexistent. And that spills over to the public, where the other (political) side is seen as a one-dimensional figure that is a threat. </p>
  443. <figure class="align-center ">
  444.            <img alt="A man in a suit holds a microphone and speaks to a crowd, with the American flag in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690304/original/file-20250911-64-nixuir.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;rect=0%2C61%2C4619%2C2598&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690304/original/file-20250911-64-nixuir.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690304/original/file-20250911-64-nixuir.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690304/original/file-20250911-64-nixuir.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690304/original/file-20250911-64-nixuir.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690304/original/file-20250911-64-nixuir.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690304/original/file-20250911-64-nixuir.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"/><figcaption>
  445.              <span class="caption">Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk speaks in West Palm Beach, Fla., on July 26, 2024.</span><br />
  446.              <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/home/search?query=Charlie%20Kirk%20shot&amp;mediaType=photo">AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File</a></span><br />
  447.            </figcaption></figure>
  448. <p>We’ve had political polarization in the U.S. in the past, but usually it was around a specific issue like <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/hope-for-america/polarization-in-the-1960s.html">civil rights in the 1960s</a> and <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/vote-like-thy-neighbor-political-polarization-and-sorting/">the Vietnam War</a>. But this time there is no specific issue that we can say, “If we solve this, we solve the political polarization.” The problem is that there’s no space for convergence from both sides where they can work together, so there’s no bridges they can rely on to come together.</p>
  449. <p><strong>Does it strike you that Kirk’s assassination occurred on a college campus? It seems as if college campuses have become a flash point of violence in the U.S.</strong></p>
  450. <p>Campuses are becoming more and more contentious spaces. They were always intellectual hubs where political views were debated intensively. Activism was always part of campus life. But what we’ve seen in the past year is that campus life has become <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/22/us/antisemitic-cases-2024-campus-protests">in some cases more violent</a>. And the fact that Kirk was killed on a campus is, I think, heartbreaking because campuses symbolize a place where you can engage in political debate in a way that encourages intellectual exploration. </p>
  451. <p>What’s happened in the past year is that campuses are not those spaces anymore. Yes, we still see political activism, but it’s the activism that doesn’t leave any room for actual debate. It’s just two sides that are completely hostile to each other and unwilling to hear each other.</p>
  452. <p><strong>Trump on Wednesday night blamed the media and the “radical left” for language used to describe people like Kirk. <a href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TrumpblamesradicalleftrhetoricforCharlieKirksassassinationinWhiteHousevideostatement/bc61fde41d814d96ba882132792cc50e/video">He said this rhetoric</a> is “responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.” Any thoughts?</strong></p>
  453. <p>I agree that language and rhetoric impact people’s behavior. I’ve seen that again and again in my studies, that the discourse of political figures impacts the way people think of <a href="https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-causes-and-impact-of-political-assassinations/">the legitimacy of violence</a>. Of course, we need to understand the context here, which is that Trump himself was willing to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y7l47xrpko">pardon thousands of people who engaged in political violence</a>.</p>
  454. <p>So, on the one hand, I agree with him that political leaders should be responsible for how they discuss political issues. It’s important for them to convey that political discourse can be constructive. However, we need to acknowledge that our own government, in many cases, sends signals that provide encouragement and support that legitimize violence. I think it’s important for politicians on both sides to be consistent in understanding that the way they discuss their political rivals is important.</p>
  455. <figure class="align-center zoomable">
  456.            <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690305/original/file-20250911-64-3tboz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="A white tent appears on a college campus." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690305/original/file-20250911-64-3tboz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690305/original/file-20250911-64-3tboz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690305/original/file-20250911-64-3tboz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690305/original/file-20250911-64-3tboz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690305/original/file-20250911-64-3tboz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690305/original/file-20250911-64-3tboz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690305/original/file-20250911-64-3tboz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"/></a><figcaption>
  457.              <span class="caption">The scene after shots were fired at an appearance by Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025, in Orem, Utah.</span><br />
  458.              <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-scene-after-shots-were-fired-at-an-appearance-by-news-photo/2234098104?adppopup=true">Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Image</a></span><br />
  459.            </figcaption></figure>
  460. <p><strong>You’re an expert on the history of political assassinations. How do countries untangle themselves from waves of political violence?</strong></p>
  461. <p>Political leaders need to insist on working together. There are lots of policy areas where politicians can work together. When we see that people can work together within the political system, that sends an important message, that there is a space where we can work together. The second thing is trying to think about how the U.S. can restructure part of the political process to ensure that there is a real competition of ideas, to incentivize a constructive, productive approach that will legitimize those who are willing to engage in constructive policymaking.</p>
  462. <p><strong>Any last thoughts?</strong></p>
  463. <p>As part of my work, I track the most <a href="https://www.uml.edu/fahss/criminal-justice/faculty/perliger-arie.aspx">extremist online social media accounts</a>, and what we see right now is a strong sense that this assassination is being celebrated by parts of the left. And that has created an escalation of language from those in the extreme right social media ecosystem. There is much more willingness to discuss issues of retaliation, <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/far-right-reactions-charlie-kirk-shooting-civil-war/">an actual civil war</a>.</p>
  464. <p>And that’s my biggest worry. If you look at social media, what we see is that both sides embrace this kind of rhetoric that really concerns me. More than ever, I’ve seen calls for retaliation and a strong sense that the other side is unwilling to show any sympathy to what happened. Emotions are running very high, and I’m very worried about what may happen in the next few weeks.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img loading="lazy" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/265060/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p>
  465. <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/arie-perliger-379619">Arie Perliger</a>, Director of Security Studies and Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/umass-lowell-1534">UMass Lowell</a></em></span></p>
  466. <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-will-not-end-here-a-scholar-explains-why-charlie-kirks-killing-could-embolden-political-violence-265060">original article</a>.</p>
  467. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/this-will-not-end-here-a-scholar-explains-why-charlie-kirks-killing-could-embolden-political-violence/">‘This will not end here’: A scholar explains why Charlie Kirk’s killing could embolden political violence</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  468. ]]></content:encoded>
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  474. </item>
  475. <item>
  476. <title>Who was Charlie Kirk? The activist who turned campus politics into national influence</title>
  477. <link>https://themoderatevoice.com/who-was-charlie-kirk-the-activist-who-turned-campus-politics-into-national-influence/</link>
  478. <comments>https://themoderatevoice.com/who-was-charlie-kirk-the-activist-who-turned-campus-politics-into-national-influence/#respond</comments>
  480. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Guest Voice]]></dc:creator>
  481. <pubDate>Thu, 11 Sep 2025 16:28:29 +0000</pubDate>
  482. <category><![CDATA[Assassination]]></category>
  483. <category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
  484. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  485. <category><![CDATA[Violence]]></category>
  486. <category><![CDATA[Charlie Kirk]]></category>
  487. <category><![CDATA[Conservatives]]></category>
  488. <category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category>
  489. <category><![CDATA[GOP]]></category>
  490. <category><![CDATA[January 6]]></category>
  491. <category><![CDATA[Misinformation]]></category>
  492. <category><![CDATA[obituary]]></category>
  493. <category><![CDATA[Turning Point USA]]></category>
  494. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://themoderatevoice.com/?p=287120</guid>
  495.  
  496. <description><![CDATA[<p>Charlie Kirk addresses the 2024 Republican National Convention on July 15, 2024. Al Drago/Getty Images Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin, Boise State University The fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025, has drawn widespread condemnation and renewed attention to the climate of political violence<a class="read-more" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/who-was-charlie-kirk-the-activist-who-turned-campus-politics-into-national-influence/"> [&#8230;]</a></p>
  497. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/who-was-charlie-kirk-the-activist-who-turned-campus-politics-into-national-influence/">Who was Charlie Kirk? The activist who turned campus politics into national influence</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  498. ]]></description>
  499. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>      <img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690415/original/file-20250911-56-tbf5t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&#038;rect=0%2C272%2C5211%2C2931&#038;q=45&#038;auto=format&#038;w=754&#038;fit=clip" /><figcaption>
  500.          Charlie Kirk addresses the 2024 Republican National Convention on July 15, 2024.<br />
  501.          <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/charlie-kirk-founder-and-executive-director-of-turning-news-photo/2234090799?adppopup=true">Al Drago/Getty Images</a></span><br />
  502.        </figcaption><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/stephanie-a-sam-martin-2437177">Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin</a>, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/boise-state-university-1983">Boise State University</a></em></span></p>
  503. <p>The <a href="https://apnews.com/article/charlie-kirk-conservative-activist-shot-546165a8151104e0938a5e085be1e8bd">fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk</a> during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025, has drawn widespread condemnation and renewed attention to the climate of political violence in the United States. To many, Kirk was not just another partisan commentator. </p>
  504. <p>He was one of the <a href="https://www.cfpublic.org/2025-09-10/charlie-kirk-a-trump-ally-and-voice-for-young-conservatives-dies-at-age-31">most visible leaders of the young conservative movement</a>. Kirk helped shape Republican politics on college campuses, in media and within President Donald Trump’s coalition. </p>
  505. <p>To understand the significance of the attack — and why the reactions to it have been so strong — it helps to know who Kirk was, what the organization he built stood for, and the role he and his allies have played in national debates.</p>
  506. <figure class="align-center zoomable">
  507.            <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690418/original/file-20250911-56-6zh2xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="Two men shaking hands while sitting on a stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690418/original/file-20250911-56-6zh2xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690418/original/file-20250911-56-6zh2xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=428&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690418/original/file-20250911-56-6zh2xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=428&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690418/original/file-20250911-56-6zh2xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=428&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690418/original/file-20250911-56-6zh2xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=537&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690418/original/file-20250911-56-6zh2xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=537&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690418/original/file-20250911-56-6zh2xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=537&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"/></a><figcaption>
  508.              <span class="caption">President Donald Trump shakes hands with conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a forum dubbed the Generation Next Summit at the White House on March 22, 2018, in Washington, D.C.</span><br />
  509.              <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-donald-trump-shakes-hands-with-conservative-news-photo/936623838?adppopup=true">Mark Wilson/Getty Images</a></span><br />
  510.            </figcaption></figure>
  511. <h2>Turning Point USA founder</h2>
  512. <p>Charlie Kirk was a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/us/charlie-kirk-republicans-trump-politics.html">conservative activist, author and media personality</a> who rose to prominence unusually early. </p>
  513. <p>Raised in the Chicago suburbs, he made national headlines at 18 for founding <a href="https://tpusa.com/">Turning Point USA</a>, a conservative youth movement. Kirk <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/us/politics/charlie-kirk-dead.html">only briefly attended college</a>. Instead, he chose to devote himself full time to conservative organizing. </p>
  514. <p>That decision became central to the mythos surrounding him: He represented a choice among promising young conservatives to <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/making-of-a-martyr">skip higher education in protest</a> of the alleged left-leaning bias of universities.</p>
  515. <p>Over the next decade, Kirk grew into a national figure. Beginning in 2016, he <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/charlie-kirk-dead-at-31-trump-says">frequently spoke at Trump rallies</a>, which helped him to build an extensive media profile. </p>
  516. <p>In 2020 he published the “<a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-maga-doctrine-charlie-kirk?variant=32112222765090">The MAGA Doctrine</a>,” a bestselling book that argued in favor of nationalism and Trump’s “America First Agenda.” And his eponymous podcast – “<a href="https://thecharliekirkshow.com/">The Charlie Kirk Show</a>” – was <a href="https://tpusa.com/contributor/charliekirk/">downloaded more than 120 million times</a> over the past 10 months, according to Turning Point. </p>
  517. <p>Kirk’s program featured political commentary and interviews with prominent Republican personalities and politicians – guests included Tucker Carlson, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. These conversations amplified Kirk’s reach well beyond student audiences.</p>
  518. <h2>Connecting college students and GOP</h2>
  519. <p>Turning Point USA was founded in 2012 <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/right-wing-activist-charlie-kirk-dead-31-played-key-role-trumps-2024-victory-2025-09-10/">by Kirk and Bill Montgomery</a>. Kirk met Montgomery, a retired businessman, after Kirk gave a speech at a conservative youth summit in Kansas. Montgomery urged him not to pursue college but to instead dedicate himself fully to building a youth conservative movement.</p>
  520. <p>Kirk described <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/04/06/trump-young-conservatives-college-charlie-kirk-turning-point-usa-217829/#:%7E:text=On%20the%20day%20of%20the,businesses%2C%20is%20easy%20to%20see.">the early days as lonely</a>: driving to campuses, handing out flyers and trying to recruit students to talk about free markets and limited government.</p>
  521. <p>Turning Point drew significant financial backing from <a href="https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/turning-point-usa/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">high-profile conservative donors</a>, including Foster Friess, the Wyoming financier; the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation; and Illinois businessman Richard Uihlein and his family foundation. </p>
  522. <p>By 2024, Turning Point claimed chapters at more than 1,000 campuses, employed more than 400 staffers and had grown <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/magazine/charlie-kirk-american-right.html">its annual budget to over US$8 million</a></p>
  523. <figure class="align-center zoomable">
  524.            <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690318/original/file-20250911-64-vp77g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="Young women in a crowd holding signs, including one that says 'Joe Biden You're Fired!'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690318/original/file-20250911-64-vp77g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/690318/original/file-20250911-64-vp77g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690318/original/file-20250911-64-vp77g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690318/original/file-20250911-64-vp77g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690318/original/file-20250911-64-vp77g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690318/original/file-20250911-64-vp77g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/690318/original/file-20250911-64-vp77g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"/></a><figcaption>
  525.              <span class="caption">U.S. conservatives gather at The People’s Convention hosted by Turning Point USA in Detroit, Mich., on June 15, 2024.</span><br />
  526.              <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/conservatives-gather-in-the-thousands-to-see-former-news-photo/2157144923?adppopup=true">Adam J. Dewey/Anadolu via Getty Images</a></span><br />
  527.            </figcaption></figure>
  528. <p>Today, Turning Point is best known for hosting large-scale conferences. Its <a href="https://www.sas2025.com/home">Student Action Summit</a> in Florida regularly draws between 4,000 and 5,000 students and has featured appearances by GOP heavyweights including <a href="https://www.c-span.org/program/public-affairs-event/donald-trump-jr-speaks-at-turning-point-usa-summit/662440">Donald Trump Jr.</a> and <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/ted-cruz-tells-students-his-pronoun-kiss-my-gender-identity-jab-1727340">Texas Sen. Ted Cruz</a>. A 2022 gathering in Phoenix, called AmericaFest, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/18/young-conservatives-trump-turning-point-americafest-00074517">attracted more than 10,000 attendees</a>. </p>
  529. <p>Most controversially, the group’s <a href="https://www.professorwatchlist.org/">Professor Watchlist</a> webpage publishes the names of academics it accuses of bias against conservatives.</p>
  530. <p>Turning Point has also spun off like-minded subsidiaries, including <a href="https://www.tpaction.com/">Turning Point Action</a> and <a href="https://tpusafaith.com/">TPUSA Faith</a>. These organizations expand Turning Point’s reach into electoral politics and church organizing. <a href="https://tpusa.com/shows/">TPUSA’s media division</a> produces a steady stream of popular videos, livestreams and podcasts, a legacy that should ensure Kirk’s influence lasts despite his death. </p>
  531. <h2>Expanding national role for Turning Point</h2>
  532. <p>Kirk and Turning Point provided <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/magazine/charlie-kirk-american-right.html">important connections</a> for younger conservatives and the Republican Party. In 2016, Turning Point mobilized thousands of students for Trump’s campaign, and Kirk was invited to speak at the Republican National Convention.</p>
  533. <p>By 2020, the organization was playing a more overt political role. Turning Point Action ran <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/02/far-right-youth-group-turning-point-charlie-kirk">voter-registration drives</a> in battleground states, and the group sponsored buses and advertising to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ali-alexander-charlie-kirk-capitol-riot-transcript-b2252572.html">bring supporters to Washington, D.C.</a>, ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally. Kirk tweeted at the time that Turning Point would be sending “80+ buses full of patriots” to the event.</p>
  534. <p>While he later deleted the message and distanced himself from the violence, it underscored the group’s entanglement in the most contested moments of the Trump era.</p>
  535. </p>
  536. <p>Kirk also acted as a <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/charlie-kirk-turning-point-usa-founder-dead-1235424931/">crucial media surrogate</a> for Trump. He used his podcast, social media, and speaking tours to amplify Trump’s message and attack critics. He was an early and persistent <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/charlie-kirks-influence-reach-helped-propel-trump-office/story?id=125452473">promoter of Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud</a> in the 2020 election, helping translate them for younger conservative audiences.</p>
  537. <h2>Spreading misinformation, inflaming tensions</h2>
  538. <p>Critics argued that Kirk thrived on outrage and intimidation rather than debate. </p>
  539. <p>The <a href="https://www.aaup.org/issues-higher-education/political-attacks-higher-ed/targeted-harassment-faculty">Professor Watchlist</a> has been denounced by faculty associations as a blacklist that chills academic freedom. Journalistic investigations by outlets such as <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-conservative-nonprofit-that-seeks-to-transform-college-campuses-faces-allegations-of-racial-bias-and-illegal-campaign-activity?utm_source=chatgpt.com">The New Yorker</a> raised questions about Turning Point’s finances, including allegations of blurred lines between nonprofit educational work and partisan campaigning.</p>
  540. <p>Kirk was <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/audible-reckoning-how-top-political-podcasters-spread-unsubstantiated-and-false-claims/">criticized for spreading misinformation</a>, such as false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election and misleading statements about COVID-19 vaccines and mask mandates. He suggested that public health measures were a form of government control, rhetoric that public health experts argue undermined trust during a crisis. </p>
  541. <p>More broadly, his sharp attacks on political opponents – he framed them not merely as wrong but as dangerous – drew accusations that he <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/10/media/charlie-kirk-tpusa-maga-conservative-activism">fueled polarization and inflamed tensions</a> on American college campuses and beyond.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img loading="lazy" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/265056/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p>
  542. <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/stephanie-a-sam-martin-2437177">Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin</a>, Frank and Bethine Church Endowed Chair of Public Affairs, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/boise-state-university-1983">Boise State University</a></em></span></p>
  543. <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-was-charlie-kirk-the-activist-who-turned-campus-politics-into-national-influence-265056">original article</a>.</p>
  544. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/who-was-charlie-kirk-the-activist-who-turned-campus-politics-into-national-influence/">Who was Charlie Kirk? The activist who turned campus politics into national influence</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  545. ]]></content:encoded>
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  551. </item>
  552. <item>
  553. <title>DEMISE OF CIVIL DISCOURSE</title>
  554. <link>https://themoderatevoice.com/demise-of-civil-discourse/</link>
  555. <comments>https://themoderatevoice.com/demise-of-civil-discourse/#respond</comments>
  557. <dc:creator><![CDATA[CAGLE CARTOONS]]></dc:creator>
  558. <pubDate>Thu, 11 Sep 2025 15:32:49 +0000</pubDate>
  559. <category><![CDATA[Assassination]]></category>
  560. <category><![CDATA[Cartoons]]></category>
  561. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  562. <category><![CDATA[Charlie Kirk]]></category>
  563. <category><![CDATA[Violence]]></category>
  564. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://themoderatevoice.com/?p=287117</guid>
  565.  
  566. <description><![CDATA[<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/demise-of-civil-discourse/">DEMISE OF CIVIL DISCOURSE</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  567. ]]></description>
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  569. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/demise-of-civil-discourse/">DEMISE OF CIVIL DISCOURSE</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
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  576. </item>
  577. <item>
  578. <title>Why journalists are reluctant to call Trump an authoritarian — and why that matters for democracy</title>
  579. <link>https://themoderatevoice.com/why-journalists-are-reluctant-to-call-trump-an-authoritarian-and-why-that-matters-for-democracy/</link>
  580. <comments>https://themoderatevoice.com/why-journalists-are-reluctant-to-call-trump-an-authoritarian-and-why-that-matters-for-democracy/#respond</comments>
  582. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Guest Voice]]></dc:creator>
  583. <pubDate>Thu, 11 Sep 2025 02:32:56 +0000</pubDate>
  584. <category><![CDATA[Authoritarianism]]></category>
  585. <category><![CDATA[Autocracy]]></category>
  586. <category><![CDATA[demagogues]]></category>
  587. <category><![CDATA[Democracy]]></category>
  588. <category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category>
  589. <category><![CDATA[Government]]></category>
  590. <category><![CDATA[Journalism]]></category>
  591. <category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
  592. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  593. <category><![CDATA[Democratic decline]]></category>
  594. <category><![CDATA[ethics]]></category>
  595. <category><![CDATA[first amendment]]></category>
  596. <category><![CDATA[free speech]]></category>
  597. <category><![CDATA[journalistic ethics]]></category>
  598. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://themoderatevoice.com/?p=287108</guid>
  599.  
  600. <description><![CDATA[<p>A free election can still result in authoritarian rule. Photo illustration: Douglas Rissing, iStock/Getty Images Plus Karrin Vasby Anderson, Colorado State University In an authoritarian state, the leader engages in unconstitutional or undemocratic practices for the purpose of consolidating power. Key components of authoritarianism include rejecting democratic rules; denying the legitimacy of opponents; tolerating or<a class="read-more" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/why-journalists-are-reluctant-to-call-trump-an-authoritarian-and-why-that-matters-for-democracy/"> [&#8230;]</a></p>
  601. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/why-journalists-are-reluctant-to-call-trump-an-authoritarian-and-why-that-matters-for-democracy/">Why journalists are reluctant to call Trump an authoritarian &#8212; and why that matters for democracy</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  602. ]]></description>
  603. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>      <img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/689983/original/file-20250909-56-sllrgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&#038;rect=0%2C0%2C5568%2C3719&#038;q=45&#038;auto=format&#038;w=754&#038;fit=clip" /><figcaption>
  604.          A free election can still result in authoritarian rule.<br />
  605.          <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/briefing-of-president-of-us-united-states-in-white-royalty-free-image/2207936612?phrase=white%20house%20stormy&#038;searchscope=image%2Cfilm&#038;adppopup=true">Photo illustration: Douglas Rissing, iStock/Getty Images Plus</a></span><br />
  606.        </figcaption><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/karrin-vasby-anderson-275321">Karrin Vasby Anderson</a>, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/colorado-state-university-1267">Colorado State University</a></em></span></p>
  607. <p>In an authoritarian state, the leader engages in unconstitutional or undemocratic practices for the purpose of consolidating power. </p>
  608. <p>Key <a href="https://commonslibrary.org/authoritarianism-how-you-know-it-when-you-see-it/">components of authoritarianism</a> include rejecting democratic rules; denying the legitimacy of opponents; tolerating or encouraging political violence; and curtailing the civil liberties of opponents.</p>
  609. <p>Since he took office for a second time, President Donald Trump has sent National Guard troops to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ylyd9lkkqo">Los Angeles</a> and <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-nations-capital-finds-itself-at-the-center-of-a-trump-maelstrom-as-national-guard-troops-arrive">Washington</a>, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/national-guard-trump-federal-intervention-chicago-a206278c6948dfd17f9224be81c440f1">named other cities run by Democrats as targets</a> for military intervention, deployed <a href="https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5440311">masked and unidentifiable agents</a> in immigration raids, explicitly <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/donald-trump-threatens-chicago-deportations-department-war-crackdown-rcna229544">threatened the city of Chicago with a military invasion</a> and used government power to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/04/29/nx-s1-5327518/donald-trump-100-days-retribution-threats">persecute his perceived political enemies</a>. </p>
  610. <p>But many journalistic outlets have yet to call him what he is – an authoritarian.</p>
  611. <p>As a <a href="https://communicationstudies.colostate.edu/people/karrin/">political communication scholar</a>, I study how media framing shapes people’s understanding of the world. </p>
  612. <p>Because <a href="https://protectdemocracy.org/work/the-authoritarian-playbook/">authoritarianism is most visible in hindsight</a>, people often don’t recognize it until it’s too late. Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard political scientist, notes that when it comes to democratic backsliding, “<a href="https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/why-is-this-happening/protests-political-violence-alternatives-erica-chenoweth-podcast-trans-rcna205903">there are no bright lines</a> … people often find out the world they’re in after the fact.”</p>
  613. <p>That’s why it’s particularly important for journalists to label authoritarians as such when the evidence warrants. In Trump’s case, I believe the U.S. is well past that point.</p>
  614. <figure class="align-center zoomable">
  615.            <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/689988/original/file-20250909-56-qrmdqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="A group of armed soldiers walk in front of a building on which hangs a large banner of Donald Trump." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/689988/original/file-20250909-56-qrmdqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/689988/original/file-20250909-56-qrmdqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=438&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/689988/original/file-20250909-56-qrmdqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=438&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/689988/original/file-20250909-56-qrmdqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=438&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/689988/original/file-20250909-56-qrmdqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=551&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/689988/original/file-20250909-56-qrmdqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=551&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/689988/original/file-20250909-56-qrmdqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=551&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"/></a><figcaption>
  616.              <span class="caption">Armed National Guard soldiers patrol near the Labor Department in Washington, where a banner of President Donald Trump is displayed, Aug. 26, 2025.</span><br />
  617.              <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/home/search?query=National%20Guard%20labor%20Washington&amp;mediaType=photo">AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite</a></span><br />
  618.            </figcaption></figure>
  619. <h2>Trump’s authoritarianism</h2>
  620. <p>Scholars with expertise in authoritarianism have been sounding the alarm about Trump for years. </p>
  621. <p>Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s book “How Democracies Die” describes how, during the 2016 campaign and his first presidential term, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/">Trump exhibited the key indicators of authoritarian behavior</a>. He undermined the legitimacy of elections Republicans lost, baselessly described his rivals as criminals, refused to unambiguously condemn violence committed by his supporters, and threatened to punish critics and members of the media.</p>
  622. <p>Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that “no other major presidential candidate in modern U.S. history, including Richard Nixon, has demonstrated such a weak public commitment to constitutional rights and democratic norms.” </p>
  623. <p>That <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/how-trump-brought-competitive-authoritarianism-to-america.html">intensified when Trump returned to office</a> in 2025.</p>
  624. <p>Levitsky and Lucan A. Way documented Trump’s “<a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/path-american-authoritarianism-trump">path to American authoritarianism</a>” for the journal Foreign Affairs in early 2025. In March, Levitsky told New York magazine that things were <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/how-trump-brought-competitive-authoritarianism-to-america.html">going worse than even he expected</a>, asserting, “We’re pretty screwed.”</p>
  625. <p>Levitsky is not alone in that view. In a February 2025 <a href="https://brightlinewatch.org/accelerated-transgressions-in-the-second-trump-presidency/">survey of political scientists conducted by Bright Line Watch</a> – an academic organization that researches democratic health – the percentage of scholars plummeted who said that the U.S. “mostly or fully” meets the standard for democratic health.</p>
  626. <p>That was before Trump, via social media, <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115158096026629509">promised to go to war in Chicago</a>. When asked about his post, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/us/politics/trump-chicago-war-us-open.html">Trump said</a>, “We’re not going to war. We’re going to clean up our cities,” but he did not back away from the intent to deploy troops against the wishes of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. </p>
  627. <p>Pritzker responded to Trump’s post by noting, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/us/politics/trump-chicago-war-us-open.html">This is not a joke. This is not normal</a>.” </p>
  628. <p>On Sept. 7, 2025, New York Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein itemized some of Trump’s authoritarian actions, concluding, “This is not just how authoritarianism happens. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/opinion/trump-senate-democrats-shutdown.html">This is authoritarianism happening</a>.”</p>
  629. <figure class="align-center zoomable">
  630.            <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/689714/original/file-20250908-56-u5bgxj.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="A social media post with President Trump dressed as a character from Apocalypse Now." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/689714/original/file-20250908-56-u5bgxj.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/689714/original/file-20250908-56-u5bgxj.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=722&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/689714/original/file-20250908-56-u5bgxj.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=722&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/689714/original/file-20250908-56-u5bgxj.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=722&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/689714/original/file-20250908-56-u5bgxj.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=908&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/689714/original/file-20250908-56-u5bgxj.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=908&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/689714/original/file-20250908-56-u5bgxj.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=908&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"/></a><figcaption>
  631.              <span class="caption">President Donald Trump’s Sept. 7 post threatening the city of Chicago with federal intervention.</span><br />
  632.              <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115158096026629509">Truth Social Donald Trump account</a></span><br />
  633.            </figcaption></figure>
  634. <h2>What journalists have been saying</h2>
  635. <p>Although other opinion journalists like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/opinion/trump-visual-symbols-authoritarian.html">Jamelle Bouie</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/opinion/trump-ice-detentions.html">M. Gessen</a>, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/07/twenty-four-hours-authoritarianism/683401/">Jonathan Chait</a> and <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/maddow-u-s-profoundly-changed-by-authoritarian-leader-we-re-beyond-waiting-and-seeing-now-244353093883">nearly</a> <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/trump-accused-of-having-a-case-of-dictator-envy-59026501625">every</a> <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-washington-dc-chicago-baltimore-coup-authoritarianism-rcna227250">MSNBC</a> <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/democratic-leadership-failure-authoritarianism-fight-trump-rcna228528">anchor</a> have been labeling Trump an authoritarian for some time, much hard news coverage of the Trump administration has not.</p>
  636. <p>When Trump deployed troops to Washington, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/08/trump-dc-national-guard/683835/">The Atlantic’s Quinta Jurecic dismissed</a> it as “farcical” and “not a likely prelude to full authoritarian takeover.” </p>
  637. <p>A CNN analysis similarly <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/12/politics/trump-washington-dc-police-national-guard-analysis">minimized the action</a> as a “gambit,” a “distraction” and a “neat political trick.” CNN characterized concerns about authoritarianism as “hyperbolic warnings of looming tyranny that circulate all day on liberal media programs — whatever Trump does” and asserted that such reports “don’t really help voters understand what is going on.”</p>
  638. </p>
  639. <p>The New York Times’ Aug. 3 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/us/politics/trump-bls-jobs-facts.html">story by Peter Baker</a> on Trump’s “tendency to suppress facts he doesn’t like and promote his own version of reality” bore a headline that read “Trump’s Efforts to Control Information Echo an Authoritarian Playbook,” suggesting that his actions were authoritarian without applying the label to Trump directly.</p>
  640. <p>During the <a href="https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cnc/date/2025-04-14/segment/08">April 14, 2025, broadcast of CNN News Central</a>, anchor Jessica Dean spoke with Nikolas Bowie, a Harvard Law School professor participating in a lawsuit against the Trump administration. </p>
  641. <p>Bowie repeatedly called Trump an authoritarian for <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/09/03/nx-s1-5527314/trump-harvard-court-ruling-funding-boston">illegally freezing federal research funding</a> awarded to Harvard. </p>
  642. <p>When Dean noted that the “Trump administration says it’s doing all of this in an effort to combat antisemitism on campus,” Bowie responded that “antisemitism is really just a pretext for what is really an authoritarian attack on higher education.” Federal Judge Allison Burroughs later <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/09/03/nx-s1-5527314/trump-harvard-court-ruling-funding-boston">agreed with</a> that interpretation in her ruling against the Trump administration. </p>
  643. <p>Dean, however, sidestepped that interpretation, saying, “What I’m hearing is you think that enough was done to combat antisemitism, that this is about something else.”</p>
  644. <figure class="align-center zoomable">
  645.            <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/689994/original/file-20250909-56-kujcvz.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="A screenshot of a headline that reads 'Do Trump's D.C. moves echo an authoritarian playbook?'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/689994/original/file-20250909-56-kujcvz.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/689994/original/file-20250909-56-kujcvz.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=354&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/689994/original/file-20250909-56-kujcvz.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=354&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/689994/original/file-20250909-56-kujcvz.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=354&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/689994/original/file-20250909-56-kujcvz.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=445&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/689994/original/file-20250909-56-kujcvz.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=445&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/689994/original/file-20250909-56-kujcvz.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=445&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"/></a><figcaption>
  646.              <span class="caption">The headline on a recent NPR story, echoing other journalism outlets’ use of the terms ‘echo’ and ‘authoritarian playbook.’</span><br />
  647.              <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npr.org/2025/08/20/nx-s1-5508269/do-trumps-d-c-moves-echo-an-authoritarian-playbook">NPR</a></span><br />
  648.            </figcaption></figure>
  649. <h2>Competitive authoritarianism</h2>
  650. <p>There are reasons why journalistic outlets may hesitate to identify the “something else” as authoritarianism, or portray it as a looming threat rather than a current danger.</p>
  651. <p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/business/media/trump-media-lawsuits.html">Trump’s propensity to sue journalists</a>, and <a href="https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/post/abc-cbs-settlements-with-trump-are-dangerous-step-toward-commander-in-chiefs-becoming-editor-in-chief/">large media corporations’ decisions to settle even when the law was on their side</a>, have likely made journalists and editors hesitant to describe Trump as an authoritarian.</p>
  652. <p>And the imperative for balance sometimes results in a “both sides-ism” that misrepresents what authoritarianism actually looks like. </p>
  653. <p>When California Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a speech asserting Trump’s military response to immigration protests in California was an assault on democracy, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/us/newsom-speech-trump-la-protests.html">New York Times covered it</a>, quoting Newsom at length about the danger Trump presented. The article also quoted Republicans who alleged that Newsom’s public health directives during the COVID-19 pandemic made him “the ultimate authoritarian.”</p>
  654. <p>But the particular nature of the authoritarianism the U.S is facing in the 21st century also plays a role.</p>
  655. <p>Levitsky and Way have written about “<a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/news-and-updates/what-is-competitive-authoritarianism/">competitive authoritarianism</a>,” a new version of authoritarianism that doesn’t look like 20th-century fascism.</p>
  656. <p>Many laypeople associate the word authoritarianism with military dictatorships and totalitarian rule. In competitive authoritarian regimes, however, there’s a constant push and pull between democratic and autocratic impulses. Levitsky and Way write that <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/news-and-updates/what-is-competitive-authoritarianism/">elections are held, but they may not be fair</a>. The authoritarian regime uses power gained democratically to break democratic norms, undermine democratic institutions and tilt the playing field in its own favor. </p>
  657. <h2>Constraining free speech</h2>
  658. <p>Journalistic norms of independence can pressure even ethical journalists into acquiescence to competitive authoritarianism because they want to avoid looking partisan when all coverage that falls outside the authoritarian’s approved message gets characterized as resistance.</p>
  659. <p>Paramount settled what one free speech advocate described as a “<a href="https://knightcolumbia.org/blog/paramounts-trump-lawsuit-settlement-curtain-call-for-the-first-amendment">widely derided lawsuit brought by Donald Trump against ’60 Minutes</a>,’” and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/business/cbs-face-the-nation-editing-rules.html">CBS recently pledged to stop editing recorded interviews</a> on “Face the Nation” after complaints lodged by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.</p>
  660. <p>The Paramount and CBS cases suggest that, left unchallenged, a competitive authoritarian leader will use their leverage to influence what should be independent journalism. </p>
  661. <p>Words matter. And how a democratic society responds to its leaders can make the difference between a free society and one in which a leader increasingly suppresses the voices, rights and will of the governed.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img loading="lazy" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/263778/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p>
  662. <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/karrin-vasby-anderson-275321">Karrin Vasby Anderson</a>, Professor of Communication Studies, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/colorado-state-university-1267">Colorado State University</a></em></span></p>
  663. <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-journalists-are-reluctant-to-call-trump-an-authoritarian-and-why-that-matters-for-democracy-263778">original article</a>.</p>
  664. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/why-journalists-are-reluctant-to-call-trump-an-authoritarian-and-why-that-matters-for-democracy/">Why journalists are reluctant to call Trump an authoritarian &#8212; and why that matters for democracy</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  665. ]]></content:encoded>
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  671. </item>
  672. <item>
  673. <title>SORRY CHARLIE</title>
  674. <link>https://themoderatevoice.com/sorry-charlie/</link>
  675. <comments>https://themoderatevoice.com/sorry-charlie/#respond</comments>
  677. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Clay Jones]]></dc:creator>
  678. <pubDate>Thu, 11 Sep 2025 02:16:44 +0000</pubDate>
  679. <category><![CDATA[Assassination]]></category>
  680. <category><![CDATA[Cartoons]]></category>
  681. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  682. <category><![CDATA[Assassinations]]></category>
  683. <category><![CDATA[Charlie Kirk]]></category>
  684. <category><![CDATA[Clay Jones]]></category>
  685. <category><![CDATA[claytoonz]]></category>
  686. <category><![CDATA[Extremists]]></category>
  687. <category><![CDATA[MAGA]]></category>
  688. <category><![CDATA[Right Wing]]></category>
  689. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://themoderatevoice.com/?p=287104</guid>
  690.  
  691. <description><![CDATA[<p>Famous last words I don’t wish death on anyone. I’ve scolded more than one friend for posting in my comments on Facebook death wishes for Donald Trump. I don’t do that, and I don’t think liberals or Democrats should do it either. Let the other side be vile. Half of the reason I don’t want<a class="read-more" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/sorry-charlie/"> [&#8230;]</a></p>
  692. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/sorry-charlie/">SORRY CHARLIE</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  693. ]]></description>
  694. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img loading="lazy" src="https://themoderatevoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/clay-e1757556393437.jpg" alt="" width="760" height="573" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-287105" /></p>
  695. <p><em>Famous last words</em></p>
  696. <p>I don’t wish death on anyone. I’ve scolded more than one friend for posting in my comments on Facebook death wishes for Donald Trump. I don’t do that, and I don’t think liberals or Democrats should do it either. Let the other side be vile. Half of the reason I don’t want political opponents dead is that I don’t wish bad things to anyone. ANYONE. The other reason is that MAGAts would martyr the hell out of it if something happened.</p>
  697. <p>When someone, a Republican, shot at Trump at one of his hate rallies, it pissed me off. When a man with a gun was found waiting to shoot Trump at one of his shitty golf resorts, it pissed me off again. I was shouting at my TV, “You’re hurting us more than helping, f&#8212;ers!” Violence leads to more violence. This was followed by the murder of Democratic state legislators in Minnesota.</p>
  698. <p>I don’t wish bad crap to happen to bad people, but when it does, I don’t go all thoughts-and-prayers about it. Even if I did care about those people, I know that thoughts and prayers don’t work. Even when their own are murdered by guns, the thoughts-and-prayers crowd never tries to find solutions other than suggesting stupid ideas like giving teachers guns.</p>
  699. <p>And I don’t cry for these people. I didn’t dance and sing when Rush Limbaugh died from cancer, even though he didn’t want poor people to receive assistance when they had cancer. But I didn’t cry for Rush Limbaugh. I will speak the truth about someone after they die. Rush Limbaugh was a vile and hateful. If there is a Hell, he’s burning in it.</p>
  700. <p>As for Charlie Kirk, the best thing you can say about him is that he figured out how to monetize his hate at a very young age. Sure, Rush Limbaugh, Candace Owens, and other goons like that figured it out, but not at Kirk’s young age. A lot of White male college students felt that Kirk was talking to them. Like with Trump, they all hated the same people.</p>
  701. <p>To me, Kirk hadn’t lived enough life to lecture anyone about life and politics. He died today at 31. I think today’s young people are very smart, but young bigots are not. Charlie Kirk was a piece of crap. </p>
  702. <p>Kirk was a liar, a conspiracy theorist, anti-semitic, and racist. He once said, “&#8217;If I see a Black pilot, I&#8217;m going to be like, &#8216;Boy, I hope he&#8217;s qualified.’” He was a proponent of the Great Replacement Theory and argued that Democrats and Jews are bringing illegal immigrants into this nation to replace White people.</p>
  703. <p>Kirk described Martin Luther King Jr as “awful … not a good person” and as someone who is admired only because he “said one thing he didn&#8217;t actually believe.” He said the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a “huge mistake.”</p>
  704. <p>He said, “Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.”</p>
  705. <p><a href="https://claytoonz.substack.com/p/sorry-charlie">TO READ THE REST GO HERE.</a></p>
  706. <p><em><a href="https://claytoonz.com/">Visit Clay Jones website</a> and email him at clayjonz@gmail.com.</em></p>
  707. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/sorry-charlie/">SORRY CHARLIE</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  708. ]]></content:encoded>
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  714. </item>
  715. <item>
  716. <title>TRUMP ALLY CHARLIE KIRK ASSASSINATED ON CAMPUS: SO WHAT’S NEXT?</title>
  717. <link>https://themoderatevoice.com/trump-ally-charlie-kirk-assassinated-on-campus-so-whats-next/</link>
  718. <comments>https://themoderatevoice.com/trump-ally-charlie-kirk-assassinated-on-campus-so-whats-next/#respond</comments>
  720. <dc:creator><![CDATA[JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief]]></dc:creator>
  721. <pubDate>Thu, 11 Sep 2025 01:35:16 +0000</pubDate>
  722. <category><![CDATA[Assassination]]></category>
  723. <category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category>
  724. <category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
  725. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  726. <category><![CDATA[Violence]]></category>
  727. <category><![CDATA[Charlie Kirk]]></category>
  728. <category><![CDATA[Conservatives]]></category>
  729. <category><![CDATA[Democrats]]></category>
  730. <category><![CDATA[MAGA]]></category>
  731. <category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category>
  732. <category><![CDATA[Turning Point]]></category>
  733. <category><![CDATA[X]]></category>
  734. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://themoderatevoice.com/?p=287091</guid>
  735.  
  736. <description><![CDATA[<p>Charlie Kirk, a conservative youth activist and close ally of President Donald Trump who helped propel Trump into office, has died after being shot in the neck during a rally at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Expressions of outrage, sadness, and grief at yet another American in political life being murdered poured in &#8212;<a class="read-more" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/trump-ally-charlie-kirk-assassinated-on-campus-so-whats-next/"> [&#8230;]</a></p>
  737. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/trump-ally-charlie-kirk-assassinated-on-campus-so-whats-next/">TRUMP ALLY CHARLIE KIRK ASSASSINATED ON CAMPUS: SO WHAT&#8217;S NEXT?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  738. ]]></description>
  739. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img loading="lazy" src="https://themoderatevoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/aaaaaaa-1-e1757543757134.jpg" alt="" width="760" height="428" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-287092" /></p>
  740. <p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk">Charlie Kirk</a>, a conservative youth activist and close ally of President Donald Trump who<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/charlie-kirks-influence-reach-helped-propel-trump-office/story?id=125452473"> helped propel Trump into office</a>, has <a href="http://an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, on Wednesday">died after being shot in the neck during a rally  at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.</a></p>
  741. <p>Expressions of outrage, sadness, and grief at yet another American in political life being murdered poured in &#8212; <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/charlie-kirk-killing-assassination-reactions-right-wing-grief-outrage-retribution/">but so did the rumblings of partisan and ideological finger pointing</a>on<a href="https://www.memeorandum.com/250910/p150#a250910p150"> the right</a>. At this writing, no suspect is in custody. Kirk died instantly after being shot from far range. A gruesome video showing him speaking then shot in the neck with blood gushing out of his neck has appeared online. A link to it <a href="https://www.drudgereport.com/">appears on The  Drudge Report front pagE.</a></p>
  742. <p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/10/us/charlie-kirk-shot-utah">The New York Times:</a></p>
  743. <blockquote><p>Charlie Kirk, the charismatic founder of the nation’s pre-eminent right-wing youth activist group, was fatally shot on Wednesday while speaking at Utah Valley University in what the state’s governor described as a “political assassination.”</p>
  744. <p>Officials had taken two people into custody by late Wednesday as part of their investigation, but both were released without being charged in relation to the shooting. It was unclear if anyone else was in law enforcement custody.</p>
  745. <p>Charlie Kirk’s event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday was the first stop of a fall semester tour organized through Turning Point USA, the right-wing political organization he led.</p>
  746. <p>For “The American Comeback Tour,” which began this year, Mr. Kirk had traveled to college campuses across the country to discuss a range of political topics, including immigration, abortion and transgender issues.</p>
  747. <p>Over the past decade, Charlie Kirk became one of the most influential young leaders in right-wing American politics.</p>
  748. <p>Mr. Kirk, 31, who was fatally shot on Wednesday while speaking at Utah Valley University, had been an energetic member of President Trump’s inner circle, known for his abilities as a speaker, his fund-raising and his loyalty to the president.
  749. </p></blockquote>
  750. <p><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/charlie-kirk-shooting-assassination-analysis/#">The Nation: </a></p>
  751. <blockquote><p>Yet, as shocking as Kirk’s killing was, the fact that there was this kind of assassination is sadly not that unexpected. After all, America is awash in violence, political or otherwise, every day of the year.</p>
  752. <p>Responding to the initial reports of the shooting, Representative Jaime Raskin wrote: “Condemning another absolutely disgraceful act of gun violence.” The word “another” captures the disturbing truth of the news: Gun violence, whether in the form of school shootings or political violence, is out of control in the United States. This violence is a product of a political system that refuses to implement gun control even as the social fabric frays.</p>
  753. <p>We have known this for a long time. Writing in The New York Times in June, University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape argued that “since the beginning of President Trump’s second term in January, acts of political violence in the United States have been occurring at an alarming rate.”</p>
  754. <p>Pape cited the assassination of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and the attempted assassination of one of her colleagues; the arson at the home of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro; and the killing of Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC. He also noted that this surge in violence, which dates back to the polarization that started with Trump’s candidacy in 2016, also manifested itself in the January 6 insurrection, the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, and the assassination attempts against Trump, among many other cases.</p>
  755. <p>Pape painted a dismal picture of society where political violence is becoming much more common and socially accepted:</p>
  756. <p>Today’s political violence is occurring across the political spectrum—and there is a corresponding rise in public support for it on both the right and the left. Since 2021, the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, which I direct, has conducted national surveys on a quarterly basis on support for political violence among Americans. These surveys are telling because, as other research has shown, the more public support there is for political violence, the more common it is.</p>
  757. <p>Our May survey was the most worrisome yet. About 40 percent of Democrats supported the use of force to remove Mr. Trump from the presidency, and about 25 percent of Republicans supported the use of the military to stop protests against Mr. Trump’s agenda.
  758. </p></blockquote>
  759. <p><a href="https://prospect.org/politics/2025-09-10-political-violence-reality-distortion-field-charlie-kirk/">Prospect:</a></p>
  760. <blockquote><p>But what I say in this moment, or what any of those leaders say, doesn’t really matter when there’s an open struggle, in these moments of confusion, to redefine reality.</p>
  761. <p>“The Democrat party is a domestic terrorist organization,” said Sean Davis, a conservative activist who was merely echoing the words of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller just a couple of weeks ago. “Every post on Bluesky is celebrating the assassination,” said writer Tim Urban. “The Left is the party of murder,” said incipient trillionaire Elon Musk on his personal microblogging site, X.</p>
  762. <p>This effort to amp up your political side in times of extreme emotion, to not just condemn the individual act but to slander all your political opposition at once, is the kind of thing you see in societies in open civil warfare. The only time we’ve seen it in America was in the prelude to open civil warfare. The consensus about the pointlessness of political violence, if you scratch the surface, almost surely still exists. But an infinite scroll that pounds ideas into people’s heads, and dares them to take action, perverts that consensus.</p>
  763. <p>America has often been on the brink of deciding that it is intolerable to live among one another. There have been secession threats for as long as there has been a country. In recent years, it has been dealt with through a kind of whispered segregation, where we ideologically sort ourselves among ideological lines. But we cannot divorce ourselves entirely. We come together in the noisy black hole of our social media feeds, where we read the heaviest users tell lies about each other and perform what can only be described as perpetual incitement. And that definitely feels like what happens right before societies break, and turn on each other.</p>
  764. <p>I had the sad occasion to discuss political violence a year ago, when our current president was also shot at, turning his head at the most opportune moment to survive the attack. What I said then remains true: This is not a singularly violent moment in our history, we are a deeply violent country, and no political party or ideology holds an absolute monopoly on the manifestation of that violence. Eleven of the last 12 presidents have seen at least some sort of plot on their lives. We have been here before and in greater numbers, as the names Kennedy and King will surely reveal. It’s part of the background noise of living in this country.</p></blockquote>
  765. <p><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/far-right-reactions-charlie-kirk-shooting-civil-war/">Wired: </a></p>
  766. <blockquote><p>Minutes after right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while speaking at an event in Utah on Wednesday, far-right influencers and extremist communities lit up social media with calls for violence against the left.</p>
  767. <p>Kirk, the cofounder of conservative youth organizing group Turning Point USA, was shot and killed while taking questions at a TPUSA event held at Utah Valley University. Law enforcement officials said late afternoon Wednesday that a “person of interest” was in custody, but that individual was later released. No motive has yet been reported by authorities.</p>
  768. <p>Despite this, many far-right influencers and Republican officials immediately blamed the left for carrying out the shooting. In some extremist groups, members called for civil war and violent retribution. “This is a war, this is a war, this is a war,” said Alex Jones, the influencer and school shooting conspiracy theorist, during a livestream on his Infowars channel.</p>
  769. <p>“For years those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” said President Donald Trump in a taped address posted to his Truth Social account. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in the country today.”</p>
  770. <p>Oath Keeper founder Stewart Rhodes, who had his sentence for seditious conspiracy with regards to the January 6 Capitol riot commuted by Trump earlier this year, announced on Infowars that it was time to restart his militia group in order to provide public protection for figures like Kirk.</p>
  771. <p>“I&#8217;m going to be rebuilding the Oath Keepers, and we will be doing protection again,” said Rhodes. “If my security team had been at that event, if they had been up there on the high point, looking for potential threats, they would have saved Charlie Kirk from being shot.”</p>
  772. <p>Rhodes then called on Trump to “do what’s right, what’s necessary” and “invoke the Insurrection Act” in the wake of the shooting. “You should declare the left in this country is in obvious open rebellion against the law of the United States, they’re committing insurrection, they&#8217;re aiding and abetting an invasion, and they&#8217;re blocking the execution of federal law,” Rhodes said.</p>
  773. <p>More mainstream right-wing commentators and lawmakers have also joined in the rush to blame the left and call for action.</p>
  774. <p>Ed Martin, the US pardon attorney and former acting US attorney for DC, wrote on X: “For it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord,” citing Romans 12:19.</p></blockquote>
  775. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  776. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Trump in his video: “For years, the radical left has compared wonderful Americans like Charlie Kirk to Nazis and the world&#39;s worst mass murderers and criminals. This type of language is directly responsible for the terrorism we’re seeing in our country today.&quot;</p>
  777. <p>&quot;Radical left… <a href="https://t.co/hMleYQ41uQ">https://t.co/hMleYQ41uQ</a></p>
  778. <p>&mdash; Sam Stein (@samstein) <a href="https://twitter.com/samstein/status/1965945407780880643?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  779. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  780. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  781. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Lot of people on this here website need to be put on 72 hour psych holds. Yikes. <a href="https://t.co/m6wnjvWyJ2">https://t.co/m6wnjvWyJ2</a></p>
  782. <p>&mdash; Mike Rothschild (@rothschildmd on blu sky) (@rothschildmd) <a href="https://twitter.com/rothschildmd/status/1965922519837454430?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  783. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  784. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  785. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">The president is laying a pretext for investigations and other actions against a currently undefined group of people and organizations in the wake of Kirk’s murder, in ways he has not for other murders: <a href="https://t.co/eWOfFjcOyq">https://t.co/eWOfFjcOyq</a></p>
  786. <p>&mdash; Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) <a href="https://twitter.com/IsaacDovere/status/1965946996310814768?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  787. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  788. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  789. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Statement by President George W. Bush:</p>
  790. <p>&quot;Today, a young man was murdered in cold blood while expressing his political views. It happened on a college campus, where the open exchange of opposing ideas should be sacrosanct. Violence and vitriol must be purged from the public…</p>
  791. <p>&mdash; George W. Bush Presidential Center (@TheBushCenter) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheBushCenter/status/1965912789328830561?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  792. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  793. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  794. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">He&#39;s right <a href="https://t.co/ySXitwahf0">https://t.co/ySXitwahf0</a></p>
  795. <p>&mdash; Michael A. Cohen (NOT TRUMP’S FORMER FIXER) (@speechboy71) <a href="https://twitter.com/speechboy71/status/1965870996784820274?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  796. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  797. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  798. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Im devastated by the death of Charlie Kirk. While I didnt agree with much he said, this was a young man with a wife, kids and a full life ahead. Something horrible is happening to us, &amp; an innocent paid the price. And please, be a damn human and don&#39;t make this tragedy partisan.</p>
  799. <p>&mdash; Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) <a href="https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/1965911302423146509?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  800. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  801. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  802. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">We need to stop saying &quot;they&quot; did a thing. </p>
  803. <p>No. The shooter did the thing. The shooter is responsible. <a href="https://t.co/lK47tVUOsu">https://t.co/lK47tVUOsu</a></p>
  804. <p>&mdash; Chris Kieser (@ckieser13) <a href="https://twitter.com/ckieser13/status/1965875617259487708?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  805. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  806. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  807. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Loomer once doxxed my home address on this website and repeatedly encouraged her followers to go after me resulting in death threats that mentioned my son. <a href="https://t.co/T4VqcXQLFw">pic.twitter.com/T4VqcXQLFw</a></p>
  808. <p>&mdash; Mike Nellis (@MikeNellis) <a href="https://twitter.com/MikeNellis/status/1965927488992981238?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  809. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  810. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  811. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Declaring “war” is not only dumb but incredibly dangerous. You might get views and likes on social media, but this only divides us further and puts more people in danger. Nobody, left or right, should be speaking like this. My thoughts go out to Charlie Kirk’s family. <a href="https://t.co/QM4SA9wXNM">pic.twitter.com/QM4SA9wXNM</a></p>
  812. <p>&mdash; Harry Sisson (@harryjsisson) <a href="https://twitter.com/harryjsisson/status/1965918896353063336?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  813. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  814. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  815. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Every living former President has now issued a statement on the assassination of Charlie Kirk. <a href="https://t.co/0YdwwxvjL3">https://t.co/0YdwwxvjL3</a></p>
  816. <p>&mdash; Yashar Ali ? (@yashar) <a href="https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1965915845533860085?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  817. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  818. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  819. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">1. Yes, I see the right calling for civil war. It’s what they do. Don’t take the bait.</p>
  820. <p>2. That wound wasn’t survivable. He could have landed on an ER table and still wouldn’t have made it 9 times out of 10. </p>
  821. <p>3. Two children lost their father. Have some compassion.</p>
  822. <p>&mdash; Angry Staffer (@Angry_Staffer) <a href="https://twitter.com/Angry_Staffer/status/1965901057164456004?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  823. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  824. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  825. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">My god this is so f&#39;ing irresponsible.</p>
  826. <p>Blaming Democrats because a right-wing celebrity was killed WILL FUEL MORE POLITICAL VIOLENCE.</p>
  827. <p>And we still have no idea who committed this shooting and their motive. Nancy Mace is a menace. <a href="https://t.co/vf5kcg6hsF">https://t.co/vf5kcg6hsF</a></p>
  828. <p>&mdash; Michael A. Cohen (NOT TRUMP’S FORMER FIXER) (@speechboy71) <a href="https://twitter.com/speechboy71/status/1965903829494530104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  829. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  830. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  831. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">ZOOM IN: Just seconds after Charlie Kirk was shot, look closely at the roof of the Losee Center.</p>
  832. <p>You can see a figure sprinting away.</p>
  833. <p>This was tactical.</p>
  834. <p>Elevated position. Long-range precision. Clean getaway.</p>
  835. <p>That’s not a lone crazy; that’s a trained hand. <a href="https://t.co/gr9Df1oU58">pic.twitter.com/gr9Df1oU58</a></p>
  836. <p>&mdash; Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) <a href="https://twitter.com/allenanalysis/status/1965898046958703026?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  837. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  838. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  839. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">If you notice someone lying on a roof like this at an event, try screaming instead of filming <a href="https://t.co/5YIcXNiWsu">https://t.co/5YIcXNiWsu</a></p>
  840. <p>&mdash; Rachel Bitecofer ?? (@RachelBitecofer) <a href="https://twitter.com/RachelBitecofer/status/1965901698750361630?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  841. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  842. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  843. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">I strongly condemn the tragic, politically charged violence that claimed the life of Charlie Kirk today at Utah Valley University. No cause or ideology can ever justify taking a life. This is a reprehensible attack on free speech and civic dialogue.</p>
  844. <p>&mdash; Jack Hopkins (@thejackhopkins) <a href="https://twitter.com/thejackhopkins/status/1965887855483564077?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  845. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  846. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  847. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Fox News’ Jesse Watters says “we’re gonna avenge Charlie [Kirk’s] death.”</p>
  848. <p>“Everybody’s accountable. And we’re watching … the politicians, the media, and all these rats out there. This can never happen again. It ends now.” <a href="https://t.co/4BYsnjm7NW">pic.twitter.com/4BYsnjm7NW</a></p>
  849. <p>&mdash; The Recount (@therecount) <a href="https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1965889376610566338?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  850. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  851. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  852. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Already seeing the MAGA influencers and characters like Elon Musk saying “the left” killed Charlie Kirk. By that flawed logic, “the MAGA right” killed the Minnesota state legislators. This irresponsible rhetoric needs to stop. <a href="https://t.co/wFqyz2cHLE">https://t.co/wFqyz2cHLE</a></p>
  853. <p>&mdash; Michael Freeman (@michaelpfreeman) <a href="https://twitter.com/michaelpfreeman/status/1965884094509912146?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  854. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  855. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  856. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">He wants more violence. </p>
  857. <p>He hates this country. <a href="https://t.co/E8OkwD45rL">https://t.co/E8OkwD45rL</a></p>
  858. <p>&mdash; Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) <a href="https://twitter.com/KaivanShroff/status/1965868617788207172?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  859. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  860. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  861. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Charlie Kirk lost his life today because someone thought violence was the answer to political disagreement.</p>
  862. <p>It&#39;s never the answer, and political violence has no place in our country. I&#39;m praying for his wife and children.</p>
  863. <p>&mdash; Senator Mark Kelly (@SenMarkKelly) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenMarkKelly/status/1965881251526742474?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  864. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  865. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  866. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Our family grieves for Charlie Kirk’s family.</p>
  867. <p>We must collectively find a way forward during these polarized times.</p>
  868. <p>&mdash; John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnFetterman/status/1965881768445358348?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  869. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  870. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  871. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Awful. Rest in peace. Anyone who dares praise this despicable act should be shunned right off the political stage. <a href="https://t.co/TwfYR8fdgL">https://t.co/TwfYR8fdgL</a></p>
  872. <p>&mdash; Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) <a href="https://twitter.com/LarrySabato/status/1965881721674698895?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  873. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  874. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  875. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">“I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.”<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CharlieKirk?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CharlieKirk</a> <a href="https://t.co/T2TqwgpbVv">pic.twitter.com/T2TqwgpbVv</a></p>
  876. <p>&mdash; Pete (@splendid_pete) <a href="https://twitter.com/splendid_pete/status/1965863983409459212?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  877. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  878. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  879. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Add in the arson attack on Gov. Josh Shapiro&#39;s home. Political violence in America, unlike, say, in Colombia or in Years of Lead Italy, is mostly the work of deranged individuals inspired by political ideology or paranoid fixation or yearning for fame. Or a combination. <a href="https://t.co/QyIH5sTPra">https://t.co/QyIH5sTPra</a></p>
  880. <p>&mdash; Aaron Astor (@AstorAaron) <a href="https://twitter.com/AstorAaron/status/1965884493044257227?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  881. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  882. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  883. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Whatever your political viewpoint, the sickening assassination of Charlie Kirk at a public event on a college campus is an unspeakable tragedy for his family but also for our country. <br />Unless we turn back, the escalation of political violence is a plague that will consume us.</p>
  884. <p>&mdash; David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) <a href="https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1965885969896452333?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  885. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  886. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  887. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">The owner of this website is currently personally fanning the flames of violence. This is what he wants. <a href="https://t.co/ig8WkcPFpX">https://t.co/ig8WkcPFpX</a> <a href="https://t.co/U67xaiGTGL">pic.twitter.com/U67xaiGTGL</a></p>
  888. <p>&mdash; Centrism Fan Acct ? (@Wilson__Valdez) <a href="https://twitter.com/Wilson__Valdez/status/1965873689926459484?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  889. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  890. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  891. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Every single Democrat is condemning the attack on Charlie Kirk — as they should. </p>
  892. <p>Some Republicans like Elon Musk are trying to incite more violence and blame the left.</p>
  893. <p>Less than 3 months ago, a Trump supporter murdered Melissa Hortman and her husband.<a href="https://t.co/E1FrxcOgEz">https://t.co/E1FrxcOgEz</a></p>
  894. <p>&mdash; Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) <a href="https://twitter.com/KaivanShroff/status/1965870273917563117?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  895. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  896. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  897. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Charlie Kirk was assassinated today. we are all weaker because of it. A tragedy. I am thinking of his family.</p>
  898. <p>&mdash; Jack Schlossberg (@JBKSchlossberg) <a href="https://twitter.com/JBKSchlossberg/status/1965882057277714570?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  899. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widge
  900.  
  901. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  902. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Nancy Mace on Charlie Kirk shooting: &quot;Democrats own this.&quot;</p>
  903. <p>&quot;This guy&#39;s talking about mass trans violence, tranny violence — I’m not going to filter myself — and got shot in the neck like that.” <a href="https://t.co/DFkTq4ikJo">https://t.co/DFkTq4ikJo</a></p>
  904. <p>&mdash; Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) <a href="https://twitter.com/igorbobic/status/1965876357084357004?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a> </script><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>ts.js&#8221; charset=&#8221;utf-8&#8243;></p>
  905. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  906. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">In June we had a Democratic state legislator assassinated in Minnesota and another shot by a guy with a list of other victims — Kirk&#39;s shooting is hideous and awful and this rising tide of violence is terrifying, but anyone calling it one-sided is lying to you. <a href="https://t.co/buuqOjm2Dh">pic.twitter.com/buuqOjm2Dh</a></p>
  907. <p>&mdash; Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) <a href="https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1965870116232634677?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  908. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  909. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  910. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">He was like a son to me. Even though we were on opposite sides of the political divide these past 7yrs, I still considered him a son. I’m broken for him &amp; his family. And I’m scared for this country. Neither side has a monopoly on political violence. But most people on both sides… <a href="https://t.co/p8PSnbcTxX">https://t.co/p8PSnbcTxX</a></p>
  911. <p>&mdash; Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) <a href="https://twitter.com/WalshFreedom/status/1965880360711184433?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  912. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  913. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  914. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Absolutely sick and awful. This absolutely must stop.</p>
  915. <p>&mdash; Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) ???? (@AdamKinzinger) <a href="https://twitter.com/AdamKinzinger/status/1965865312622096759?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  916. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  917. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  918. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy. Michelle and I will be praying for Charlie’s family tonight, especially his wife Erika and their two young children.</p>
  919. <p>&mdash; Barack Obama (@BarackObama) <a href="https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1965889591090753651?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  920. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  921. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  922. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Someone recently said to me that things will get worse before they get better, but that is not true. There is no guarantee that anything gets better. Things can just continue getting worse and worse.</p>
  923. <p>I can&#39;t stop thinking about that today.</p>
  924. <p>&mdash; Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) <a href="https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1965876274918027702?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  925. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  926. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  927. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">It only took the assassination of a German diplomat to spark Kristallnacht. <a href="https://t.co/0IgVadxpWO">https://t.co/0IgVadxpWO</a></p>
  928. <p>&mdash; Rachel Bitecofer ?? (@RachelBitecofer) <a href="https://twitter.com/RachelBitecofer/status/1965877935631630622?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  929. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  930. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  931. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Democrats falling over themselves to condemn the shooting of Charlie Kirk … meanwhile on the right, they’re pouring gasoline on the fire <a href="https://t.co/gtR67CjX4u">https://t.co/gtR67CjX4u</a></p>
  932. <p>&mdash; Michael A. Cohen (NOT TRUMP’S FORMER FIXER) (@speechboy71) <a href="https://twitter.com/speechboy71/status/1965867259886448786?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  933. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  934. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  935. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Stop. Just stop. <a href="https://t.co/d96XCfr5uE">https://t.co/d96XCfr5uE</a></p>
  936. <p>&mdash; Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) <a href="https://twitter.com/SykesCharlie/status/1965870729880289548?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  937. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  938. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  939. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Hannity: The left has given us ten nonstop years of rage and hatred and a vile language. It is undeniable it is poisoning the minds of many people in our country <a href="https://t.co/SCDn8ASv3p">pic.twitter.com/SCDn8ASv3p</a></p>
  940. <p>&mdash; Acyn (@Acyn) <a href="https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1965946214597406956?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  941. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  942. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  943. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">The right wing never, ever believed in free speech. It was always a lie for gullible people. <a href="https://t.co/iHMAymJyHn">https://t.co/iHMAymJyHn</a></p>
  944. <p>&mdash; Matthew Sheffield (@mattsheffield) <a href="https://twitter.com/mattsheffield/status/1965940548726083780?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  945. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  946. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  947. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">In this statement Trump blames the “radical left” for Charlie Kirk’s death as well as the assassination attempt on his life. (Also he ignores recent episodes of political violence against Democrats).</p>
  948. <p>It’s incitement to political repression and potentially violence <a href="https://t.co/fRM4UB0OWt">https://t.co/fRM4UB0OWt</a></p>
  949. <p>&mdash; Michael A. Cohen (NOT TRUMP’S FORMER FIXER) (@speechboy71) <a href="https://twitter.com/speechboy71/status/1965944383775322219?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  950. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  951. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  952. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Truly disgusting statement by Trump from the Oval Office just now.</p>
  953. <p>I continue to oppose political violence—the fact that the current President of the United States is one of the preeminent inciters of political violence in American history notwithstanding.</p>
  954. <p>&mdash; Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) <a href="https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1965946736675098971?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  955. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  956. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  957. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Incredible. This is the way ?? <a href="https://t.co/jFHD9oedvr">https://t.co/jFHD9oedvr</a></p>
  958. <p>&mdash; Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1965944185346994306?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  959. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  960. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  961. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Elon stoking violence and I can guarantee you that he, personally, will not be doing any fighting. <a href="https://t.co/P8MwAa7CXv">pic.twitter.com/P8MwAa7CXv</a></p>
  962. <p>&mdash; Turnbull (@cturnbull1968) <a href="https://twitter.com/cturnbull1968/status/1965920463667998895?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  963. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  964. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  965. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">He’s pouring gasoline on an already raging fire. Did anyone expect anything other than this? <a href="https://t.co/aHatUKbplA">https://t.co/aHatUKbplA</a></p>
  966. <p>&mdash; Jo (@JoJoFromJerz) <a href="https://twitter.com/JoJoFromJerz/status/1965945371278135327?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  967. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  968. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  969. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">This has to end. <a href="https://t.co/Jwq9XDuaFP">pic.twitter.com/Jwq9XDuaFP</a></p>
  970. <p>&mdash; Adam Schiff (@SenAdamSchiff) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenAdamSchiff/status/1965942484363784450?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  971. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  972. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  973. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">this is spectacularly dangerous rhetoric. the Murdochs need to bench Watters immediately. vowing to “avenge” Kirk’s horrific assassination instead of calling for calm is beyond irresponsible. the country is a tinderbox and this lunatic is juggling dynamite and matches. <a href="https://t.co/G1CcGsx7r1">https://t.co/G1CcGsx7r1</a></p>
  974. <p>&mdash; Peter Twinklage (@PeterTwinklage) <a href="https://twitter.com/PeterTwinklage/status/1965915376870633859?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  975. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  976. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  977. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">This is not the message the country needs. We need unifying leadership to take down the temperature, not exploitative blame-seeking that falsely pins all political violence on one side of the spectrum to fit Trump’s narratives. Enough. Americans are tired of the divisiveness. <a href="https://t.co/Dbi6ScSdY2">https://t.co/Dbi6ScSdY2</a></p>
  978. <p>&mdash; Ahmed Baba (@AhmedBaba_) <a href="https://twitter.com/AhmedBaba_/status/1965949189747253263?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  979. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  980. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  981. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Trump is parroting what Loomer said earlier today. And it pushes people farther into partisan corners rather than taking a stand against political violence in America. It makes every one of us less safe. <a href="https://t.co/Aep9I82J6i">https://t.co/Aep9I82J6i</a></p>
  982. <p>&mdash; Karen Finney (@finneyk) <a href="https://twitter.com/finneyk/status/1965951907530432929?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  983. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  984. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  985. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Far Right Is Already Blaming the Left For Charlie Kirk’s Shooting <a href="https://t.co/29ig41Guqw">https://t.co/29ig41Guqw</a></p>
  986. <p>&mdash; The New Republic (@newrepublic) <a href="https://twitter.com/newrepublic/status/1965897477128691821?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  987. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  988. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  989. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">The &quot;liberals celebrating Charlie Kirk&#39;s death&quot; all seem to be random TikTok people so far, rather than actual Democratic politicians or significant influencers.</p>
  990. <p>&mdash; Mike Rothschild (@rothschildmd on blu sky) (@rothschildmd) <a href="https://twitter.com/rothschildmd/status/1965928125268942875?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  991. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  992. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  993. <p lang="en" dir="ltr">The president is laying a pretext for investigations and other actions against a currently undefined group of people and organizations in the wake of Kirk’s murder, in ways he has not for other murders: <a href="https://t.co/eWOfFjcOyq">https://t.co/eWOfFjcOyq</a></p>
  994. <p>&mdash; Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) <a href="https://twitter.com/IsaacDovere/status/1965946996310814768?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2025</a></p></blockquote>
  995. <p> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  996. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/trump-ally-charlie-kirk-assassinated-on-campus-so-whats-next/">TRUMP ALLY CHARLIE KIRK ASSASSINATED ON CAMPUS: SO WHAT&#8217;S NEXT?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  997. ]]></content:encoded>
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  1000. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  1003. </item>
  1004. <item>
  1005. <title>The Department of Disease Occurrence (DODO)</title>
  1006. <link>https://themoderatevoice.com/the-department-of-disease-occurrence-dodo/</link>
  1007. <comments>https://themoderatevoice.com/the-department-of-disease-occurrence-dodo/#respond</comments>
  1009. <dc:creator><![CDATA[ROBERT A. LEVINE, TMV Columnist]]></dc:creator>
  1010. <pubDate>Wed, 10 Sep 2025 14:06:28 +0000</pubDate>
  1011. <category><![CDATA[coronavirus]]></category>
  1012. <category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category>
  1013. <category><![CDATA[Extremists]]></category>
  1014. <category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
  1015. <category><![CDATA[Health]]></category>
  1016. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  1017. <category><![CDATA[DODO]]></category>
  1018. <category><![CDATA[hhs]]></category>
  1019. <category><![CDATA[ignoring experts]]></category>
  1020. <category><![CDATA[RFK. Jr.]]></category>
  1021. <category><![CDATA[trump]]></category>
  1022. <category><![CDATA[vaccine panel]]></category>
  1023. <category><![CDATA[vaccines]]></category>
  1024. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://themoderatevoice.com/?p=287083</guid>
  1025.  
  1026. <description><![CDATA[<p>With Robert F. Kennedy, Jr in control of the Department of Health and Human Services, the department should be renamed the Department of Disease Occurrence (DODO). Ignoring experts in vaccine treatments, pediatricians and infectious disease specialists, RFK, Jr is making decisions about how vaccines should be allocated to the American population. Though Kennedy says he<a class="read-more" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/the-department-of-disease-occurrence-dodo/"> [&#8230;]</a></p>
  1027. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/the-department-of-disease-occurrence-dodo/">The Department of Disease Occurrence (DODO)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  1028. ]]></description>
  1029. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img loading="lazy" src="https://themoderatevoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/299708_768_rgb.jpg" alt="" width="768" height="603" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-287087" srcset="https://themoderatevoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/299708_768_rgb.jpg 768w, https://themoderatevoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/299708_768_rgb-300x236.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" /></p>
  1030. <p><img loading="lazy" src="https://themoderatevoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/111111111-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-286976" srcset="https://themoderatevoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/111111111-300x200.jpg 300w, https://themoderatevoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/111111111.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />With Robert F. Kennedy, Jr in control of the Department of Health and Human Services, the department should be renamed the Department of Disease Occurrence (DODO). Ignoring experts in vaccine treatments, pediatricians and infectious disease specialists, RFK, Jr is making decisions about how vaccines should be allocated to the American population. Though Kennedy says he is not against the use of all vaccines in all populations in various situations, he has done nothing to promote vaccinations to assure protection for recalcitrant populations from a host of infectious diseases. And he has been unwilling to take a definitively positive stance favoring the use of vaccines.</p>
  1031. <p>Even prior to RFK, Jr becoming Head of HHS, questions were raised by researchers at the FDA about whether the United States had reached a dangerous tipping point regarding the non-use of vaccines.  The authors of a paper in a medical journal noted in January 2024 that millions of lives were saved each year by the proper administration of vaccines and that they had been shown to be overwhelmingly safe. The risk-benefit ratio was unquestionable, yet millions of Americans were no longer receiving the necessary sequence of vaccinations. For some people, safety was still a concern, while others rejected vaccines for religious or political reasons. Much of the information decrying the use of vaccines was disseminated over social media by influencers with little knowledge of medicine. But there were occasional physicians as well who for various reasons also rejected vaccines. Needed was a major campaign by the government reinforcing the requirements for the proper vaccines and the protection it would elicit for both children and adults. This is unlikely now given the current political atmosphere and Kennedy’s tenure as head of HHS.</p>
  1032. <p>In June 2025, RFK, Jr, the Health Secretary fired all 17 sitting members of the CDC’s vaccine panel, experts in the field of vaccine usage.  So far, he has replaced them with 8 members, some of whom are vaccine skeptics, or want further testing on vaccine safety which has already been done. This sets a dangerous precedent and will be harmful to American health. Also in June 2025, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an article decrying the unreliability of vaccine information under RFK, Jr and his appointees, and the alarm it has raised among physicians, public health experts and scientists.  The article notes the erosion of science under the current administration. The World Health Organization listed vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 threats to global health even before the Covid-19 pandemic.</p>
  1033. <p>A group of infectious disease specialists and vaccine experts, concerned about the non-use of vaccines, published another article in the Journal of the American Medical Association in June 2025 predicting what would happen in America if childhood vaccine rates declined by 50 percent.   They projected that measles would become endemic again with 51 million cases over 25 years. There would be almost 10 million cases of rubella (German measles), 4.3 million cases of polio, and 197 diphtheria cases. 10.3 million hospitalizations would occur along with over 159,000 deaths, virtually all of them preventable. The effects of polio are generally known with paralysis of limbs in a proportion of cases. Infected individuals can also die from polio when there is involvement of the bulbar and respiratory muscles. While rubella is generally a mild viral illness, it can cause severe birth defects in the fetus if the virus infects a pregnant woman. Vaccination would prevent the deaths and disabilities associated with polio and rubella as well as numerous other infectious diseases. </p>
  1034. <p>The first disease that was controlled by vaccination was smallpox over 2 centuries ago. Vaccines also protect against Hemophilus Influenza which can cause meningitis or pneumonia which can be fatal. Also pneumococcus infections, Hepatitis A and B, mumps, whooping cough, flu, meningococcus and a number of other diseases, some of which are more common in tropical countries. It is likely that over the last 2 centuries, vaccines have saved tens of millions to hundreds of millions of lives in the U.S. and around the globe. Serious adverse effects from vaccines are very uncommon and they definitely do not cause autism, an RFK Jr trope.</p>
  1035. <p>In May 2025, RFK Jr. rescinded the recommendation by the CDC that children 6 months to age 17 and pregnant women receive the Covid 19 vaccine.  At that point, the recommendation was for Covid-19 vaccines for adults 18 and older and some children.  But this was again changed recently to only adults over age 65 and immune compromised patients by the new vaccine panel and RFK. It’s unclear whether these recommendations will stay in place or be changed again. Vaccination is one of the most important advances medical science has made over the centuries and it is a mistake to have a vaccine skeptic like RFK, Jr. running the Department of Health and Human Services ie the Department of Disease Occurrence (DODO).<br />
  1036. www.robertlevinebooks.com<br />
  1037. Buy The Uninformed Voter on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and your local bookstore.</p>
  1038. <p>Posted at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)</p>
  1039. <p>Tags: Department of Disease Occurrence, DODO, HHS, RFK, Trump, vaccine panel, vaccines</p>
  1040. <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com/the-department-of-disease-occurrence-dodo/">The Department of Disease Occurrence (DODO)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://themoderatevoice.com">The Moderate Voice</a>.</p>
  1041. ]]></content:encoded>
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