Just Violence

How America Should Respond to the Assassination of Charlie Kirk

Today I feel angry, sad, and even a little pensive. The darkness is ascendent, and another veil has been removed presaging the end. I knew Charlie Kirk only by reputation, but as someone who works within the conservative media ecosystem among many who called him a friend of many years, yesterday’s events hit close to home. I find myself thinking what is to be done, and I find myself more willing to speak the quiet truths out loud. Back when I was in law school, I wrote a piece for an essay competition entitled “In Defense of Zombie Movies” (available on this self-same Substack!) in response to a prompt asking about what the proper role, if any, violence might have in the context of society. I used the concept of the “zombie” as an enemy that cannot be reasoned with and intends to do one harm as a metaphor for irrational violence and how a society is to deal with it. My conclusion, that in the face of irrational violence a society cannot cohere unless it is willing to face violence with proportional violence. The only other option is to retreat, and while retreat might be an option for an individual, it is death to the community necessary for a society to function.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is the veritable cherry on top of a succession of violent events including the release of video showing the brutal slaying of Iryna Zarutska by a schizophrenic madman in Charlotte, and the mass shooting of a Catholic school by a trans madman in Minnesota. The trans shooter (I will not name him) chose to commit himself to Hell and is beyond any human justice we might visit upon him. I could be wrong, but I find it likely that Decarlos Brown will be found mentally incompetent to bear the full weight of his actions, and is likely to be a ward of the state or federal penitentiary system, meting out the rest of his tortured existence on the tax payers’ dime—and what I find most ironic here is that for this one, death might be the greater mercy. I pray—for the sake of Kirk’s poor family and for the sake of our body politic—that Charlie’s killer will be caught alive, tried for his (I am presuming the shooter was a man, as seems likely) crimes, and executed. I want him dead, on both a gut level wanting vengeance and on a higher level wanting the imbalance in our civilization to be restored, so that we might once again know some peace. I recognize the first impulse as one arising from pain, and not really befitting a Christian. But the second impulse does, I think, speak to a necessary corrective about a bad habit of mind that we have allowed to arise in modernity, infecting Christians and secularists alike. That is, we somehow think it is immoral to desire that wicked criminals be punished. My argument is, that it is immoral NOT to punish the wicked, and that we have neglected our duty as a society to mete out just (and, might I add, painful) punishment upon the wicked, which is causing this escalation of ever greater cycles of violence and pain. Allow me to explain.

I belong to a faith tradition (Orthodox Christianity) that is generally not in favor of the death penalty, or killing and violence in general. As is mete and right, the imputations of Christ are what is taught by the Church, and Jesus was not a fan (to put it mildly) of meeting violence with more violence. The only time I can think of in the Gospels where Jesus does anything which could really be interpreted as resorting to physical violence (though He did have some based zingers for the religious authorities) is when He overturned the tables of the money lenders in the courtyard of the temple in Jerusalem, and this was a violence done to objects, not to people. There is also that strange scene in at least one of the Gospels, where Jesus specifically instructs the disciples to arm themselves with two swords before heading to the Mount of Olives, though He then rebukes them for actually using them (“He who lives by the sword, dies by it”). I suppose we could take from this that at the very least, there are situations in which it might be prudent to make a show of going about armed, which is a position I heartily endorse even in the best of times, but I think we can go further than this in our analysis.

I say all of this because, as both Mr. Kirk and I are men of Christian faith (I say “are” in that I believe in the hope of the resurrection which Charlie also espoused so eloquently—so while dead, I pray he is yet alive), I think this question of how we as Christians are to respond to violence should be seen through this lens squarely as I think the duties of Christians with regards to the imputations of the Gospels have been grossly (and—in some cases—intentionally) misrepresented. Yes, employing violence is ALWAYS morally suspect, and employing just violence ALWAYS sullies the soul, which is why the Orthodox Church requires a period of penance for soldiers who have killed others in war—an action might be just from the perspective of a fallen and imperfect world, but still deleterious. But Jesus also says “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”, and to Caesar has been given the power of administering earthly justice, which includes the application of violence. You see, when we are faced with situations in which ALL options lead to bad results (and the killing of innocents such as the Catholic school children, Iryna, and Charlie, are ALL bad results) one is empowered to choose the least bad option. In ethics, this is known as the principle of the double effect. So yes, violent men who may arise in our midst may be met with JUST violence by the power of the state. In fact, true charity REQUIRES that the Sword of Caesar be meted out justly against the enemies of peace.

Now, what this does not mean (as I have heard many online intone) is that we are entitled to degrade these violent souls to the level of beasts and monsters. Evil doers are not animals (though they have become more animal-like in their degradation) but are rather evil men, still bearing the image and likeness of God—what was classically referred to as the “Imago Dei”. We forget this at our peril, as it is the font from which all of our correct impulses pertaining to law and morality flow. The wicked may be punished and killed for the sake of the body politic, but it is not our place to strip them of whatever small sliver of humanity they still have—to do this would be to usurp the place of God, which is a dread deed that none should endeavor. But when those who bear God’s image (another way to put this is that the human person is an “ICON” of the Divine) REFUSE to recognize others as equally Divine Icons, they must be punished, they must be prevented from hurting others, and (sometimes) they must be killed.

Thus far I have turned to the rather elevated language of theology and ethics to make a necessary point about the intrinsic dignity which (if we are well formed) we know to lie in the foundation of man’s soul. Now let me speak in low language, which nevertheless springs from the elevated language I have just presented: to prevent the defilement of certain human beings by others who have chosen to assert their power unjustly, society has a RESPONSIBILITY to BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF SUCH CRIMINALS. You heard me right, and it is at this point that I should add I am speaking now primarily to the men of our age—you may have been taught by your mothers (for it is not altogether proper that women should have to think in this way) that violence was not the answer, that men are not meant to fight, and that we need to treat gently those misbehaving criminals. None of this is true. Society cannot exist without the just application of violence.

And I don’t just mean putting people into prison. Penitentiary as punishment was a disgusting invention of modernity, espoused by a heretical Christian sect (the Quakers) in the 19th century as a means of forcefully reforming the criminal mind. It was a failure from the very beginning. As originally envisioned—a forced monastic existence where the prisoners were isolated so they might confront and expiate their sins—the panopticon drove many crazy, and so the modern prison as a veritable higher education course in crime for miscreants where they cohabitated with others whose morals were more warped than their own, creating an ever more hardened class of criminal, was born. Before this, a jail was a holding cell before a criminal was sent to the courtroom (in short order, I might add, none of this ever growing list of procedural folderol for our forebears) to be sentenced. What sorts of sentences did we once mete out? Well, we were far more free with killing criminals who destabilized the social order. Even in the most anti-death penalty tradition (arguably Catholicism) there remains a justification for killing a criminal if it prevents a greater harm from being meted out on the body politic—and I think such a case could be made for (at the very least) the killer of Charlie Kirk.

How else did we punish criminals before we allowed our moral sense to be lobotomized by modernity? We used to humiliate them, for one thing. Time in the stockade in the village square, or tarring and feathering (though this was more common as a mob measure than a judicial edict), were not uncommon. Other than that, we inflicted pain upon them. Pain is not a “nice” concept for we who are infected with consequentialism, that perceives all “pain” as evil, and all “pleasure” as good. FOOLS! This is the inverse of the traditional moral order, where pain often serves as a means of teaching the body virtue and where pleasure seduces the soul into Hell! We have forgotten this, but what is most amusing, it has not prevented violence, but has rather caused violence to increase and confound modern man. Because we are too soft to administer pain and violence when pain and violence are due, we have caused it to grow beyond bounds. We have allowed our society to succumb to the dictates of a mad mother, a silly feminism that thinks all pain can be eradicated by alternately soft and scolding words.

Several years ago, while taking a class in what is called “Restorative Justice” (but which I would claim represents no justice at all, and is rather the work of silly people who don’t have a clear conceptualization of the logical difference between vengeance and retribution) I read as a sort of palate cleanser an amusing book written by an ex-Baltimore police officer named Peter Moskos entitled “In Defense of Flogging”. The point of the book was more to argue against our current prison system than it was to argue in favor of flogging per se, but it did bring up the amusing (and I think, correct) point that judicial flogging in the form of caning (such as is meted out in certain Southeast Asian societies still to great effect) would be both more likely to disincentivize future crime, more just from the perspective of the victim of violent crime, and less disruptive to the life of the criminal (probably in bed recovering for a month, rather than lingering in prison for years). Our courts got skittish about any punishment that meted out pain as “cruel and unusual” in defiance of the Constitution, but this is an obvious misinterpretation as similar modes of punishment involving the infliction of pain were not unknown in the colonies at the time of enactment (furthermore, the Bill of Rights was not then applicable to the States). This is yet another area of Constitutional interpretation where the Court might exercise some creative thinking via the application of Thomas’s historical test in Bruen. Granted, some (such as Decarlos Brown) are, and likely always were, too far gone for this approach; it would be cruel to mete such a manly punishment on such an enfeebled mind, and he should have been locked away in an insane asylum long ago, but we (in our benevolence) thought it would be more just to allow him to live a life of vagrancy and murder so as not to feel that we were racially unjust (or, something like that). At this point, it might well be more of a mercy and befitting whatever small dignity he has left to execute him, though again, I doubt we will. We have become a very unserious people

I could go on, but I have (more or less) said my piece. Violence is necessary for civilization. We have neglected this sad yet universal truth, and allowed ourselves to shirk the responsibilities of our age. In shrinking from the proper and limited application of violence, we have invited more violence in turn. If we want to turn the tide, it is time that we get serious by (a) reopening the insane asylums and transferring the truly insane (an ever growing cadre in our failed society) to these institutions for proper care and incapacitation rather than constantly sending them back onto the street until they kill someone, (b) empowering our police forces and judges to mete out appropriate applications of pain and violence (and also public mockery, a stockade in front of every courthouse would do wonders) against those who lacked a father who was willing to punish them when they did wrong, and (c) allowing ourselves to think clearly about when crimes arising to the level when they might destabilize the body politic (such as a political assassination) might truly be worthy of the death penalty, and then acting accordingly both swiftly and decisively. I have said little about race in this piece because it is ancillary to my complaint, but let me just say that I have no patience left for those who cry “disparate impact” while refusing to tackle the predicates—primarily poor family formation and a victim culture—that continue to perpetuate the violence that results in “disparate impact”. We have allowed ourselves to act as children for too long; it is time to take up the mantle of men, and gird ourselves for the hard tasks that must be done, lest our children and our heroes alike perish in the public square.

Will we do this? I doubt it, and then the question becomes, how might violence be administered when the state has neglected its duties. This is a dread question, and one which I am still thinking through.