Opponents or Enemies? In response to the assassination of Charlie Kirk yesterday (9/10/25), numerous well-meaning individuals such as former president George W. Bush and current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson have said that our opponents on the Left are not political enemies, but fellow citizens. Setting aside the question of how many of these ‘citizens’ are illegal aliens, I have serious reservations with respect to the conciliatory remarks of Bush, Johnson, et al. We should of course all calm down and not make things worse with incendiary words and gestures. But more important than reining in emotions is using our intellects to penetrate to the truth of the matter.
A strong case can be made that our political opponents on the Left are indeed enemies. This is because they pose an existential threat to us. An existential threat is not primarily one to our physical lives, but to our way of life which encompasses our beliefs, values, religious and non-religious traditions, in a word: our culture. To live a healthy life in political dhimmitude cuts against the American cultural grain, to put it mildly. “Give me liberty or give me death!” (Patrick Henry) “Better dead than red.” (1950s slogan) Better dead than under Sharia. (So say I.) An American in the normative sense values life, liberty, and property. Not just that, but at least that. And of course the liberty in question is not an untrammeled liberty unrestrained by duties, responsibilities, prudential considerations, and the like. The classical liberalism of the Founders is part of a broader conservatism. Or so say I. A normative American as I am using the term is one who subscribes to the basic positions articulated in the founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the amendments thereto, in particular, the Bill of Rights, which are better described as additions rather than as amendments to the great document. There is a lot to be said here, but brevity, the soul of wit, is also the soul of blog, as some wit lately observed.
Consider our rights. Where do they come from? Not from government. That is the essential point. Call it the negative thesis about the origin of rights. Tim Kaine, HRC’s running mate in 2016, believes otherwise:
“The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator — that’s what the Iranian government believes,” he said. “It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia (sic) law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities. They do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator. So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.” (Quoted here.)
Tim Kaine is my political enemy. There is nothing troubling about the statement that our rights do not derive from governments or the positive laws, the laws posited by legislatures. On the contrary, it would be troubling in excelsis were our rights subject to the whims of men. That way lies tyranny. Never forget, the people in government are like the rest of us, finite, fallible, and far from wholly virtuous; indeed many of them are far worse than many of us, both morally and intellectually.
We should also be clear that even if one were to hold that God is the source of natural rights, that would not commit one to theocracy, Islamic or otherwise. But I won’t waste any more words on the sheer stupidity of Kaine’s outburst. That would be the dialectical equivalent of beating up a cripple or rolling a drunk. It it hard to believe that this guy has a J. D. from Harvard.
Now suppose that Kaine and I both accepted the negative thesis, but differed on the question whether rights come from God or are simply given with (inscribed in) human nature. The question could be put like this: If one accepts that there are natural rights, must one also accept the existence of God as the source of those rights, or could one coherently and reasonably accept that there are natural rights and be an atheist, i.e., one who rejects the existence of God? People might reasonably debate this question while accepting the fundamental negative thesis about the origin of rights. The debaters would then be political opponents, as I am using the term, but not political enemies. If Kaine were merely my opponent in this debate he would not pose an existential threat, a threat to my way of life. As it is, however, he and others of his ilk are such a threat and are therefore my enemies.
Since they are my political enemies, I want to see them politically dead. That is, I want them to have no political power. That is not to say that I want them physically dead. But of course, if an enemy is physically dead, then he is also politically dead.
We now come to a vexing question. Suppose our enemies fail to defeat us politically within the existing constitutional framework as they manifestly did fail in 2024, and this despite all their dirty tricks, e.g. the Russia collusion hoax, etc. Most of our enemies sincerely believe that it is right, proper, noble, and for the ultimate benefit of humanity that they rule. Failing to defeat us within the existing constitutionally-based system, would they not feel justified in resorting to extra-political means to attain their ends? One such extra-political means is assassination.
We don’t yet know, but it is a good bet that Kirk’s assassin was not a lone crazy man but part of a well-orchestrated plot. Suppose that is the case, and that you sincerely believe that Trump is Hitler, MAGA members are maggots, and so on. Suppose further that you are a hard-core secularist who believes that there is only one world, this physical world, no God, no soul, no post-mortem rewards and punishments, none of that religious claptrap. Could you not see your way clear to embracing politics by assassination? Assassination would then be politics by other means. The conceptual distance between the political and the extra-political would then be lessened if not obliterated.
Bear in mind that Kirk was not assassinated because of his opinions, as some have said, but because his opinions have practical consequences, consequences that stand in the way of the Left’s agenda. The glorious end, heaven on earth, the immanentization of the eschaton, justifies any and all means to its realization. People who say that Kirk was assassinated for his opinions, views, beliefs are probably imagining that political discourse is a gentlemanly debate conducted according to the dialectical equivalent of the Queensberry Rules, or that there is this marketplace of ideas in which the better ideas win.
One more vexing question and then I’ll stop for today. Suppose the foregoing is essentially correct. What should we American conservatives do to defend ourselves.? Seek common ground with our enemies? There is no common ground. Give in to them? No way! Accept political dhimmitude? No way! Commit suicide? No. Allow them to put us to the sword? No. Divide the country into Red and Blue halves? That would weaken us vis-à-vis our geopolitical adversaries.
They want us, and we want them, politically dead. If they resort to extra-political means to achieve their end, must we not do the same to achieve ours?
I shudder at the thought.