Charlie Kirk, one of America’s leading conservative activists and a close friend of President Donald Trump’s son Don Jr. has been murdered. We do not yet know who did it, or why. We do not know how the Trump administration will respond.

What we do know, however, is that there are good reasons to be afraid.

When a prominent political figure is assassinated, the very foundations of democracy come under attack. Democratic politics is, at its heart, a system for containing political violence: a system for resolving the inevitable deep disagreements between citizens without anyone resorting to bloodshed. It works when all major factions believe that the others are committed to following the rules of the peaceful political game; when that belief erodes, it breaks down.

In the past, the Americ

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