RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2025/09/11/the-left-celebrating-charlie-kirks-killing/

Political killings are among the vilest acts in a democracy, and among the most disruptive. The stable world of citizens – the essential backdrop of any constitutional democracy – is upended, its foundations shaken. After all, the heart of that democracy is free speech, free and peaceful assembly, and an orderly means of choosing leaders. Political assassinations strike at those foundations.

The impact is multiplied when several killings (or narrow escapes) happen within a few years. In that perilous moment, the nation looks beyond each act and asks, “Has something gone badly wrong in our country? Will the latest violence lead to still more?”

Those are the questions Americans are asking right now. They are especially urgent as the hunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer continues and as the nation remembers the most catastrophic and consequential act of political killing in recent history, the terrorist attacks of Sept 11 2001.

Charlie Kirk was a charismatic conservative activist, only 31 years old, but with years in the public eye and very close ties to President Trump and the Maga movement. At a time when that movement is flooded with articulate spokesmen, he was unique. Starting when he was only 18, he began building a following, a political movement, and an organisation, Turning Point USA. The result was impressive. It complements Trump’s Maga base but with a much younger following. As one friend wrote me, “There are thousands out there inspired by Kirk. Shock and heartbreak will give way to righteous determination to see our country aspire to Greatness again. Kirk inspired a generation. That generation is NOT going to be silent.”

Polling reinforces the point. Even before this tragic event, opinion polls have shown younger voters shifting sharply away from the Democratic Party and toward Republican and Independent affiliation. They are also voting with their feet, leaving progressive “Blue” states by the millions for conservative “Red” ones. They are flocking South for college, too, having watched the suppression of alternative views in the Ivy League and beyond.

How did Charlie Kirk inspire his followers? Not with vitriol or name-calling, but with engagement.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/is-america-heading-toward-a-new-civil-war/

Is America heading toward a civil war? The assassination of Charlie Kirk shows yet again that the chasm between patriotic Americans and the left is certainly growing all the time and shows no signs of healing. One telling indication that the nation might be heading toward a new civil conflict is the fact that political tensions have not been this high since the run-up to secession and the attack on Fort Sumter, and that numerous leftists are increasingly open about their lust for violence, cheering.on Kirk’s death with unalloyed joy.

The murder of Charlie Kirk didn’t happen in a vacuum. Leftist leaders have been calling for violence, and now their calls have been heeded.

“Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption — but I am now,” said far-left Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker back in April. “These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.” That was after Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Victimhood) said in February: “This will be a congressional fight, a constitutional fight, a legal fight, and on days like this a street fight, yes we will stand.” And that was not long after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-Hey, I’m a Victim Too) said this of the “extreme MAGA Republican agenda”: “We are going to fight it legislatively. We are going to fight it in the courts. We’re going to fight it in the streets.”

Before them, it was Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, and Kamala Harris inciting leftist violence. And let’s not forget Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-Grillmaster) saying in 2020, when condemning the pro-life leanings of Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch; I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price.”

Leftists outside of politics joined in the fun as well: remember, to take just a few of many available examples, Kathy Griffin holding Trump’s bloody severed head, or Madonna saying she wanted to blow up the White House, or Robert DeNiro bellowing that he wanted to punch Trump in the face.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/charlie-kirk-targeted-for-assassination/

Turning Point USA founder and conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was the target of an assassin on Wednesday afternoon as he fielded questions from a large audience during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.

Amid a student Q&A session, a shot rang out, reportedly from a building about 200 yards from the stage, and witnesses attest that Charlie was shot in the neck. Video captures show him flinching from a neck wound. Kirk’s security team whisked him away. The event erupted into chaos as attendees fled, but in short order social media circulated claims that a suspect was in custody. Those claims unsurprisingly turned out to be false.

Initial reports were that Kirk’s condition was serious but not life-threatening, but shortly after the shooting Kirk’s broadcast platform, Real America’s Voice, posted, “Charlie Kirk Has Passed.” And then the eulogies began pouring in.

President Trump himself posted on X, “The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie.”

JD Vance weighed in online as well: “Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.”

Ron DeSantis mourned, “Rest in Peace, Charlie Kirk. Casey and I are praying for his family. Charlie was a warrior for liberty, and his murder is a tragedy for our nation.”

A poster called FischerKing wrote, “They killed a 31 year old father of two whose only crime was to go to university campuses and engage in good faith with people who disagreed with him. If this isn’t a wake up call then we’re never going to wake up.”

Brace yourself for the usual deflections from the Left-wing media as they try to justify the killing with such excuses as “Kirk was a polarizing figure,” as well as the predictable, outright gleeful gloating on Left-wing social media outlets like Bluesky. Such hateful rhetoric, including the Left’s vicious and routine demonization of their political opponents as Nazis and fascists, is precisely what leads to everyone from Catholic schoolchildren to the President of the United States – and now Charlie Kirk – being targeted for murder.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-dangerous-wages-of-oikophobia/

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were the most momentous and vicious assaults on our homeland in its history. The primary targets––the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon–– were chosen in order to inflict the maximum spectacular carnage on innocent people, and to achieve the greatest symbolic resonance of hatred against our global power.

The People’s immediate reactions were an outpouring of righteous anger and patriotic passion––from flying flags to enlisting in the military services. But it wasn’t enough to prevent in a few years the widespread return of oikophobia, the hatred of our country, its political order, history, mores, and fellow citizens; or restore our traditional oikophilia, the patriotic pride and love for all those defining goods of America that had been brutally attacked by terrorists.

Despite the various rationalizations promulgated by Osama bin Laden and his Islamic jihadist propagandists, America was attacked not for our alleged geopolitical sins, but for what we are: a multiethnic, self-governing, liberal democracy that maximizes freedom and autonomy under law for the greatest number of people––a way of life and a suite of ideals whose obvious global success and power, symbolized by the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, incite the envy and hatred of all those cultures that subordinate individual freedom and worth, to the power and privilege of economic, political, or religious elites, and so ensure their own societies’ dysfunctions and tyranny.

On 9/11, many patriotic Americans, including even liberals, displayed their grief and patriotism at a level we hadn’t seen since the brief celebrations of Ronald Reagan’s dismantling of the Soviet Union, and kicking communism’s biggest power into the rubbish-bin of history.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/conservatives-trump-anti-semitism-conspiracism-racialism

There is a moment in the life of every political movement when aspirations become reality, when the dissidents become the establishment.

For the Right, that moment is now. After the death of George Floyd in 2020, the Right functioned mostly as a dissident movement. It rallied opposition to coronavirus lockdowns, the radicalization of our institutions, and corruption in the federal government. With Donald Trump’s victory last year, however, this opposition movement earned an opportunity to become the new establishment.

I watched the process unfold behind the scenes. During the transition period, the incoming Trump administration’s best thinkers finalized their plans and, in many cases, announced them on Inauguration Day. Many of the ideas formed during the Right’s dissident period—including some of my own—suddenly became policy: abolishing the DEI bureaucracy, rescinding Lyndon Johnson’s executive order on affirmative action, dismantling the Department of Education. In the early months of this year, the feeling was triumphant.

The administration continues to do good work, but I’ve noticed a growing concern—more discussed in private than in public—about elements of the Right that have failed to make the transition. Since Inauguration Day, we’ve seen a splintering, especially in the media and intellectual worlds. Some have assumed the responsibilities that come with victory, while others prefer to remain as dissidents and, unfortunately, have fallen into various ideological rabbit holes.

Sometimes it’s a question of temperament. There will always be gadflies and pot-stirrers who fixate on criticism and grant trust only sparingly. My concern, however, is with a larger section of the Right that has proved vulnerable to three ideological trends: racialism, anti-Semitism, and conspiracism.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/say-her-name/

The savage murder of Iryna Zarutska in North Carolina last month has laid bare the daily terror of American urban life, the hypocrisy of the American mainstream media, and the negligence of the American political elite. 

On Monday, President Donald Trump briefly addressed the murder during a speech on religious liberty. “When you have horrible killings, you have to take horrible actions,” Trump said. “There are evil people. We have to be able to handle that. If we don’t handle that, we don’t have a country.”

I agree with the sentiment. My basic philosophy of law and order is this: Someone’s head is getting bashed. The only question is which heads will be bashed and who will be doing the bashing. Personally, I think we’ll all fare better if the heads belong to bad guys and the bashers have police badges.

But the president should do more to highlight the Zarutska murder, discussing it in blunt terms to seize the political advantage, kick off an honest conversation about violent crime in America, and restore public safety. A Truth Social post he published later on Monday was a great start, and the Trump administration needs to keep up the pressure on the Democrats and liberal media.

A Ukrainian refugee who fled her war-torn homeland in 2022, the 23-year-old Zarutska was stabbed to death last month by Decarlos Brown Jr., a 34-year-old black man, on a light-rail car in Charlotte. Zarutska entered the car a little before 10 p.m. after finishing a shift at the pizzeria where she worked. She sat in front of Brown, looked at her phone, and made herself most unobtrusive, tiny arms and ankles crossed.

That proved too much for Brown to handle. A career criminal whose numerous past convictions include armed robbery, felony larceny, assault, and breaking and entering, Brown rubbed his forehead and shifted in his seat before stabbing the young woman repeatedly with a pocketknife from behind. In a clip that went viral on X Monday evening, Brown stumbles through the car, blood dripping from his blade, and appears to mutter “I got that white girl.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/09/10/unhappy-with-fed-worried-about-economy-70-of-voters-say-interest-rates-are-too-high-ii-tipp-poll/

If Americans were asked to vote right now on whether the Federal Reserve should continue existing, the central bank might have a tough time staying in business. Why? Voters overwhelmingly think interest rates and prices are too high and that the Fed is not doing enough to bring them down, as the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

There’s no question that average Americans are keenly awaiting a cut in interest rates. And that anticipation no doubt grew last Friday after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a meager 22,000 jobs created in August, with unemployment hitting 4.3%, its highest point since October 2021.

In the latest online national I&I/TIPP Poll, taken from Aug. 27-29, 1,362 adults were asked the following question: “How would you describe the cost of borrowing money these days — for things like credit cards, car loans, or mortgages?”

An overall 70% described interest rates as either “very high” (39%) or “somewhat high” (31%), while a mere 4% described rates as either “very low” (2%) or “somewhat low” (2%). Another 13% said they were “not sure.” The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.9 percentage points.