America's Bloody Rejection of Its Own Ideals
By Darrell Lee
The American experiment is founded on a radical and beautiful idea: that a nation can govern itself not through the force of arms or the divine right of kings, but through the civil exchange of ideas, the casting of ballots, and the peaceful transfer of power. We hold this ideal as our foundational myth, a self-evident truth that distinguishes our republic. Shadow hangs over this noble experiment from its earliest days—political assassination. On September 10, 2025, that specter emerged once again, casting its long shadow over a university courtyard in Utah. A single echoed across the campus, and Charlie Kirk, a polarizing but profoundly influential conservative voice, was silenced forever. His murder is not an anomaly; it is the latest entry in a grim, blood-spattered ledger that mocks our most cherished democratic principles. America's long and terrifying history of political assassination is the ultimate antithesis of its creed. This recurring, violent veto demonstrates a repeated failure to live up to our own ideals. It serves as a warning of what happens when political discourse curdles into dehumanizing hatred.
The first and most traumatic tear in the fabric of the republic came at the very moment it was meant to be stitched back together. On April 14, 1865, just days after the conclusion of a civil war that had cost over 600,000 lives to affirm the Union's integrity, John Wilkes Booth crept into a theater box and murdered President Abraham Lincoln. This was no mere act of vengeance; it was a rejection of the democratic outcome. Lincoln, the man who had preached "malice toward none, with charity for all," was assassinated precisely because he represented a peaceful, reconciled future. Booth's bullet was an attempt to override the verdict of the battlefield and the ballot box, a declaration that if his side could not win by legitimate means, it would seek to decapitate the government that had defeated it. Lincoln's death was the first significant American political assassination, and it set a horrific precedent: that the final word in a political debate could belong not to the voter, but to the man with the gun. This dark tradition continued through the Gilded Age, with the murders of President James A. Garfield on July 2, 1881, and President William McKinley on September 6, 1901, both cut down by disaffected men who felt the political system had failed them and chose violence as their only recourse.
If the 19th century established this grim tradition, the 1960s cemented it as a defining feature of the American political landscape. The decade was a crucible of social change, but it was also a killing field for its most prominent leaders, a relentless cascade of violence that shattered the nation's confidence. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, was a moment of collective trauma. The image of the young, vibrant leader struck down in his motorcade ripped away the veil of post-war optimism and introduced a corrosive cynicism into American life. His death seemed to suggest that even the highest office in the land was vulnerable to the forces of violent extremism.
The bloodshed did not stop in Dallas. On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X, a brilliant and evolving leader in the struggle for Black liberation, was gunned down in Harlem. His murder was a brutal testament to the violent forces, both internal and external, that sought to silence radical voices demanding change. Then, as the nation reeled, two more devastating blows fell in the spring of 1968. On April 4, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the apostle of nonviolence and the moral conscience of the Civil Rights Movement, was murdered on a motel balcony in Memphis. His assassination was a direct assault on the very idea that change could be achieved through peace and moral suasion. It was a terrifying statement that a message of love and racial reconciliation could be met with a sniper's bullet. Just two months later, on June 5, 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, then a leading candidate for president who was building a fragile coalition of hope among the poor, the marginalized, and the disillusioned, was shot and killed in a Los Angeles hotel. His death extinguished a movement and slammed the door on the possibility of a politics of unity, suggesting that the path to change through the democratic process could be irrevocably blocked by a single act of violence. This succession of assassinations amounted to a national crisis of faith, a period where it seemed that the bullet, not the ballot, was charting the country's course.
In the decades that followed, the threat remained a constant, even as the motives of the attackers often shifted from clear political ideology to a more disturbing blend of personal grievance and psychological instability. The attempt on the life of Governor George Wallace on May 15, 1972, left him paralyzed, and the back-to-back attempts on President Gerald Ford in September 1975 further underscored the nation's vulnerability. The shooting of President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981, by a man seeking to impress an actress, seemed to drain the act of its political meaning, yet it did not diminish the terror. These events, along with the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords on January 8, 2011, served as periodic, chilling reminders that our leaders, and our democracy, were always just one disturbed individual away from catastrophe.
This brings us to the modern era, and to the courtyard in Utah. The assassination of Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025, did not happen in a vacuum. It is the horrific culmination of a political culture that has grown increasingly toxic and dehumanizing. In the 21st century, the rise of social media and a fractured, hyper-partisan media landscape has accelerated the decay of our public discourse. Political opponents are no longer treated as fellow Americans with differing opinions; they are cast as existential enemies, as traitors, as evil forces that must be not just defeated, but destroyed. The rhetoric of warfare has supplanted the language of civil debate, a constant barrage of vitriol that erodes the shared sense of humanity necessary for a functioning democracy.
Charlie Kirk was a figure who both thrived in and expertly navigated this new environment. He built a movement by engaging in the culture wars with a combative, unapologetic style that energized his followers and enraged his detractors. He was a master of the modern political spectacle. But the spectacle turned unimaginably real when a gunman, presumably motivated by that same political hatred, decided to end the debate with a bullet. The assassination of Charlie Kirk is the ultimate failure of democratic discourse. It is a terrifying illustration of what happens when we forget that behind the political labels and the ideological disagreements are human beings. His death, regardless of one's agreement or disagreement with his views, is an assault on the foundational principle of free expression. The assassin did not win an argument; he violently erased it. He replaced the microphone with a rifle, and in doing so, committed an act of supreme contempt for the democratic process.
This long, bloody history stands as a shameful refutation of the American ideal. A nation that prides itself on peaceful debate cannot ignore the fact that it has repeatedly resorted to the most brutal form of censorship. A republic designed to settle its differences at the polls cannot deny its long-standing tradition of settling them with a gun. Each assassination, from Lincoln to Kirk, is a deep wound on the body politic, a scar that reminds us of our failure to live up to our own highest aspirations. They are a testament to the fragility of the democratic order and a warning that the forces of hatred and violence are always lurking beneath the surface of our civil life.
If there is any lesson to be drawn from this tragic record, it is that our words matter. The rhetoric of our leaders and the tenor of our own public conversations have real-world consequences. When we strip our opponents of their humanity, when we label them as enemies, when we indulge in the language of violence and retribution, we till the soil in which the seeds of assassination can grow. The path back from this precipice is not easy. It requires a conscious and collective effort to restore civility, decorum, and compassion to our political life. It means recognizing that disagreement is not treason, and that the person with whom you disagree is still your fellow citizen. It means demanding more from our leaders, rejecting those who deal in hatred and divisiveness, and cultivating in ourselves the capacity for empathy and grace.
The story of America is one of a glorious ideal in constant, often violent, conflict with its own messy reality. The list of our martyred leaders is a testament to that struggle. We honor their memory not by seeking vengeance or by deepening the divisions that led to their deaths, but by recommitting ourselves to the democratic principles they championed. We must learn to have the hard conversations, to engage in the spirited debates, and to fight passionately for our beliefs, but to do so with civil words and respect. The alternative is to allow the assassin's veto to become the final word, to surrender our republic to the forces of chaos and violence, and to add yet another name to a list that is already far too long.
Darrell Lee is the founder and editor of The Long Views, he has written two science fiction novels exploring themes of technological influence, science and religion, historical patterns, and the future of society. His essays draw on these long-standing interests and apply a similar analytical lens to politics, literature, artistic, societal, and historical events. He splits his time between rural east Texas and Florida’s west coast, where he spends his days performing variable star photometry, dabbling in astrophotography, thinking, napping, scuba diving, fishing, and writing, not necessarily in that order.