Left-wing

Left-wing violence is still being normalized

Six months before being shot in the neck and murdered, the popular conservative commentator Charlie Kirk retweeted our study on political violence in America. Warning the nation that assassination culture was spreading amongst the left, Kirk highlighted our study showing that 48 percent of politically left-wing respondents in a recent poll said it would be at least somewhat justifiable to murder Elon Musk. He noted, too, that 55 percent of them also believed the same about killing President Trump. And, most acutely, he highlighted that this is the natural outgrowth of a left-wing political culture that has tolerated violence for years. Sadly, tragically and unbelievably, we learn that he has become its latest victim. Left-wing violence is still being normalized.

luigi mangione political violence

We must reclaim the word ‘progressive’

I’ve grown tired of hearing the term progressive used to describe people and policies that embody anything but progress. The word suggests a movement toward liberty, reason and human dignity. But what now passes for “progressive” ideology is a regressive assault on foundational principles: race-based social engineering, denial of biological truth, hostility toward the rule of law and an obsession with censorship disguised as compassion.Progress gave us the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, constitutional government and equal protection under the law. It was built on Enlightenment ideals – reason, open inquiry and the primacy of the individual over tribe. The ideologues now claiming the label have rejected those very foundations.

Why are young people so left-wing?

This article is in The Spectator’s November 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. The French economist Thomas Piketty, who made his name with Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), has another book out next year called Capital and Ideology in which he looks at changing patterns of voting behavior in Britain, France and America. One of his findings is that, until quite recently, the more educated voters were, the more likely they were to vote for right-of-center parties. Now, the opposite is true. Which might explain why Donald Trump declared at the height of the 2016 presidential election: ‘I love the poorly educated.’ Piketty has already published a paper about this and the data he’s accumulated is eye-catching.

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