Political Violence is Disturbing, But Not Surprising

I just spent a week on a ship in the Caribbean with my wife, son, and daughter-in-law. We did not buy the Internet package on the ship, so I truly disconnected from the news for seven days. Unfortunately, the best way to measure how long I was gone is to count the number of Tesla vehicles that were burned .

Political violence is not a new phenomenon. It has been going on since Old Testament times. Political violence is used by people and groups that don’t believe they can accomplish their objectives through the political process. In some cases, they are correct because the system is corrupt, the people are repressed, and they are unable to control their own destiny. Some philosophers would argue that in such a situation violence is justified. That is a discussion for another day. More often, violence is used by groups that disagree with policies put in place by a legitimately elected government.

Why is the United States experiencing political violence at a pace not seen since the 1960s and early 1970s? Of course, there is no one single cause. However, it is worth considering whether something has changed in our discourse that is at least partially responsible for what we observe in 2025.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane. In November 1994, the Republicans won a wave election, in which the GOP picked up 54 U.S. House seats and eight Senate seats. Representative Newt Gingrich (R-GA) was elected Speaker of the House. President Bill Clinton was in his first term. Gingrich, Senate leaders, and President Clinton worked together to accomplish some worthy goals. Clinton was so frightened by the outcome of the 1994 Election that in his 1996 State of the Union speech he declared, “The era of big government is over.” Clinton and other leading Democrats acknowledged the will of the people and moderated their policy prescriptions as well as their tone.

In November 2010, Republicans won another mid-term wave election. This was considered to be a repudiation of President Barack Obama’s first two years in office. “Obamacare” was not popular. The GOP picked up 63 House seats, which was the largest gain since 1948. Representative John Boehner (R-OH) was elected Speaker of the House.

Unlike Clinton in 1994, Democrats did not moderate in response to the outcome of the mid-term election. During the 2011 Session, Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) proposed a change to Medicare that would have switched it to a voucher system. In May of that year, an advocacy group ran an ad in which they depicted Ryan hurling a “granny” out of a wheelchair over a cliff. The message was clear: Republicans don’t have a different view of how Medicare should operate; Republicans want to kill Medicare recipients.

Obviously, political rhetoric doesn’t change overnight. I don’t mean to suggest that politics was civil in 1996 and somehow became deranged by 2011. It evolved over time, and it has gotten ugly. Any objective observer can see the degree to which (mostly) Democrats now portray their political opponents as evil.

This trend accelerated with the election of Donald Trump in 2016. For people on the left and the “Republican” never-Trumpers, there are literally no words too harsh to describe Trump and his supporters: deplorables, Nazis, totalitarians, oligarchs, etc. Comparisons to Hitler are so common that we don’t even notice it anymore. And now, Elon Musk is fair game. Musk is so evil that it is justifiable to vandalize or burn a car manufactured by the company he created.

I am close to a free speech absolutist. In my view, there should be very few laws restricting any kind of speech. Yes, I even defend the people who call Trump and Musk Nazis, Hitler, or whatever. Nevertheless, Democrats need to acknowledge the late, great Rush Limbaugh’s maxim: Words mean things. If you truly believe that Donald Trump is Hitler and that he would put people into a gas chamber, then acts of violence against him are justified. The Trump Derangement crowd has provided rhetorical cover to those who would do harm to the President or his supporters.

Rights without responsibility cause a society to devolve into chaos and perhaps anarchy. There will always be crazy people making threats and saying outrageous things. It is the job of elected officials and others in positions of power to restrain such behavior and condemn it. Democrat leaders who condone or participate in dangerous rhetoric that emboldens the lunatics are both immoral and dangerous.