The masses have had enough

Nearly everybody I know has experienced crime in our cities or had a family member threatened. A few years ago, my pregnant wife was walking in San Francisco when a deranged homeless man repeatedly asked her if she wanted to be raped. This is not unusual in America. Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, was murdered, aged 23, on the subway in North Carolina just recently. The man responsible had been charged and released 14 times under a broken system. A judge who’d never passed the bar, a city council that ignored public safety and Governor Roy Cooper’s Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice all made it harder to keep repeat offenders like Iryna’s killer off the streets. “America will never be the same,” posted Charlie Kirk, hours before he was murdered, as he shared the picture of the frightened woman looking up at her attacker. As the man walked away, he boasted, “I got that white girl.”

Iryna is now a symbol, and incensed citizens have created murals of her around the country. President Trump called for a swift trial and the death penalty for her killer. This has the potential to be a George Floyd-style turning point – but for the right. BLM built its movement around the death of a convicted felon. It took positions against the nuclear family, taught high-potential youth to think of themselves as victims and led to the release of violent criminals like Iryna’s killer. The new movement wants to make our cities safe again and protect the innocent. 

It also protects free speech. For years, even mentioning that Floyd was a felon, or that he had meth and fentanyl in his system when he died was taboo in polite American discourse. That has now changed. Charlie did more than almost anyone to break the censorial spell. His murder may signal the death of the moderate right in the country. As thousands of leftists mocked his death online – teachers, firefighters, news contributors and even elected officials (some of whom lost their jobs as a result) – the nation reeled. Charlie was a friend. I was and am furious. Yet even this new angry American right does not torch cities in response, as the left has done. Out of respect for Charlie – who modeled engagement with opponents through reasoned debate – many are seeking to channel their outrage productively. I’m a fan of policies that echo Trump’s success in Washington – where carjackings have dropped by 83 percent – to fix other cities’ corruption and dysfunction. But we are on edge. The Department of War is back, its original name chiseled on the wall. Do not fuck with the USA right now.

The new movement wants to make our cities safe again and protect the innocent

I turned 43 this month. The world is more complicated in some ways than when I was younger. It is also simpler. There is truth and beauty. There are lies and ugliness. There is good and evil. The Book of Genesis teaches that discernment is fundamental to being human. When man ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it marked the passage from innocence to moral responsibility – the birth of our capacity to judge. To live fully human is to embrace that divine gift of discernment. Yet a generational leftist phobia of judgment – an aversion to giving offense or calling out what is plainly wrong – has corroded much of our civilization. In Britain, the legal system failed to prevent thousands of its young women from being raped by “grooming gangs.” George Abaraonye, the incoming president of the Oxford Union – an institution supposedly devoted to dialogue – celebrated: “Charlie Kirk got shot, let’s fucking go.” One member of the British rap duo Bob Vylan said on stage just days after Charlie’s killing: “The pronouns was/were. Because if you talk shit, you will get banged. Rest in peace Charlie Kirk, you piece of shit.”

Crowds in British cities openly rally for the death of Jews. But when the comedy writer Graham Linehan made a joke about trans people he was arrested. Is the naive bubble of the British elite finally cracking? Will the UK come to its senses? There are signs that it might. A huge “Unite the Kingdom” march in London on September 13 – instantly branded “far-right” by most of the media – suggests the masses have had enough. Here in America, the masses are ready to rally around what is good, even if it’s a bit crass, and to stand firmly against what is dangerous and broken. Expect further symbols of resistance. What comes next, I cannot tell you. But, to borrow from President Reagan, the expectation is simple: “We win, they lose!”