It is hard to overestimate the enormity of what happened Wednesday on the campus of Utah Valley University, where a debate about politics taking place under sunny skies turned into a bloody horror show with what are certain to be lasting national consequences.

The immediate aftermath of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s death has evoked some of the dread and instability of late-1960s America, when the assassinations of political figures such as Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led to national introspection and angst about just exactly who we believed ourselves to be.

A violent death like this diminishes us all. Violence begets violence. It undermines the very basis of our democracy — our elections, our First Amendment freedoms, our commitment to the peaceful transfe

See Full Page