“Hey, fascist” said one of the engraved bullets that tells you almost everything you need to know about why Charlie Kirk is dead. Another said “bella ciao” after an Italian anti-fascist song thought to have been sung during the liberation of Italy in World War II.

The young man alleged to have assassinated Charlie Kirk, now in the custody of federal and state authorities, was radicalized into believing that he lived in a climate akin to Nazi Germany and so he took matters into his own hands to claim the life of the 31-year-old Christian conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA.

This is what happens – and will keep happening – in an environment where we commonly view political opponents in the worst possible light. Where the free and open debate that Charlie Kirk stood for is shunned and political disagreements become a cause for violence.

It’s pretty simple to understand. When you falsely portray your political opponents via media, the internet, educational institutions and so forth as mass murderers, you are putting targets on their backs. When you do it for years and years, you’ve radicalized a young generation.

Health care CEOs are assassinated in broad daylight and then the killer is glamorized.

Tesla dealerships were destroyed because Elon Musk got involved with politics.

Supreme Court justices are threatened.

Congressmen are gunned down.

Jewish students are attacked on college campuses.

Trump supporters are attacked for going to restaurants.

In 2020, cities were razed to the ground by these same madmen while being praised for their righteous cause.

They are not going away. And now they are claiming some of our youngest leaders and soon, one day, they will claim even more high-profile targets — if something is not done culturally, spiritually, societally.

We are not at war. But we might be one day if we cannot get a handle on what is happening to young Americans who increasingly are being raised in a climate of acute social and political strife. We don’t simply disagree with one another anymore.

Some young people cannot tell the difference between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler — because they are routinely taught they live in an occupied country. They must join a “resistance” that extremist groups like Antifa are able to appeal to. They become the partisans of the war they imagine but one day could come to threaten national security and federal authority.

Discredited ideologies from more than a century ago that bear no resemblance to our way of life are viewed as viable alternatives to liberalism, capitalism and the Constitution. Increasing numbers of young people think communism or socialism might be a good idea here in America.

We do not teach what is required to maintain a healthy democracy and the civil society.

America’s cities have become hotbeds some of the most violent of these mass political movements. They appear to number in the thousands however disorganized. Occasionally we see them attack federal authorities and buildings, for example, during the recent Los Angeles riots that preceded the National Guard being called in by President Trump to restore order.

While the investigation into what radicalized this specific killer is ongoing, given the repeated attempts on President Donald Trump’s life in 2024, the routine threats that prominent political and social figures receive and now the blood spilt in Utah, politics in America has not been this dangerous since the 1960s.  

Open air political events, even local ones, the lifeblood of our electoral system, no longer appear to be safe. There are not enough deterrents, not enough scruples, morals, principles against violence and love of country.

You cannot love this country if you do not love debate. Our ideas compete against one another and then we decide at the ballot box, not with bullets. We have a marketplace of ideas that is becoming mall of madness.

Friday morning the president appeared on Fox and Friends and announced the capture of the killer and also that he was considering sending the National Guard to more cities including Memphis, Tenn., St. Louis, Mo. and Chicago, Ill. to bring down violent crime.

It’s time to take a stand.

There is the civil society, the one where we talk with one another, the one Charlie Kirk believed in, or there is that state of nature and being silenced that awaits us if order cannot be restored.

If we cannot defend the public square, if our cities are allowed to become war zones, if our political liberty is threatened by a mob so that we cannot even speak up, then our government of the people will not long endure. We have a Constitution, a country, but we can lose it all if we allow it.

— Robert Romano is the executive director of Americans for Limited Government Foundation.