The frequency of political violence in history is often forgotten by many, and its absence is often taken for granted. This is something echoed by national bestselling author Rob Henderson, currently a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a Contributing Editor at City Journal.On his Substack, he wrote about his encounter with Charlie Kirk on Kirk's podcast — reflecting on what he stood for — Enlightenment ideals of free speech. Henderson points out late literary critic Paul Cantor produced the idea of this neglectfulness towards valuing Enlightenment values, which Cantor described as “historical amnesia.”"Living in a world with free speech, we have trouble imagining how bad things were before," Henderson remarks. "We forget that people once had to lie, scheme, or fight simply to survive under oppressive rulers."For more, check out the interview Henderson did with the Western Standard....Henderson exemplifies this by telling the tale of the "unlikely victim," French philosopher René Descartes."The Catholic Church banned his books, even though he wrote arguments in favour of God’s existence." "The problem wasn’t his conclusions — it was that he treated faith as something that could be examined and debated.""For the Church, that was unacceptable."As for Kirk, Henderson says he "believed in debate.""He believed in political persuasion rather than coercion.".Referencing Ezra Klein's New York Times article on Kirk practicing politics the right way — Klein says, "He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him.""He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion. When the left thought its hold on the hearts and minds of college students was nearly absolute, Kirk showed up again and again to break it.""Slowly, then all at once, he did.""College-age voters shifted sharply right in the 2024 election."This was the impact of Kirk..Another interesting finding that Henderson highlighted — men aged 18 to 24 are most likely to commit murder, and their victims are usually older men — aged 25 to 34."This is a classic finding.""Going back to the 1980s, Marco Wilson and Martin Daley, these were psychologists and they looked at the age-crime curve, as they called it."The rates of violence and homicide across different demographics and age groups and found that, young men, late teens to early 20s, is the group that's most likely to commit violent crimes and homicides." .This matches the description of Kirk's murderer — Tyler Robinson, a 22-years old, accused of shooting down Kirk in early September. "A 20-year-old man is 10 times more likely to commit a violent crime than a 60 year old man," Henderson says.As to the reasons this occurs — Henderson says, "One is you know, this feeling of envy or resentment.""We tend to compare ourselves to those who are doing slightly better than ourselves, someone who's a little bit older, a bit more successful.""And, you know, there are probably plenty of motives and it's going to be impossible to disentangle all of them.".Interesting stuff, eh? Click here to watch the entire interview. .Due to a high level of spam content being posted in our comment section below, all comments undergo manual approval by a staff member during regular business hours (Monday - Friday). Your patience is appreciated.
