Political violence in America is cause to weep

National Post, 13 September 2025

There have been far too many assassinations, Charlie Kirk's being the latest

For those who have deep admiration and affection for the United States, these are days to weep. To weep for Charlie Kirk and his young family; to weep for a land where shootings at schools and on campus are frequent enough to invoke standard protocols; to weep, in part, because many have forgotten how to weep.

The United States House of Representatives could not manage to get through a simple moment of silence and prayer upon the assassination of Charlie Kirk without rancour. It may be that the “People’s House” is not that representative of the people, but it must be, at least in part.

“Political violence has become all too common in American society, and this is not who we are,” declared House Speaker Mike Johnson.

If it has become too common, that means it is part of “who we are.” Not the whole, not the most important part, but very much a part of the American identity, a lamentable part. Lamentable things ought to be lamented. They are reasons to weep.

When Robert F. Kennedy landed in Indianapolis on April 4, 1968, for a campaign stop, he was informed that Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., was dead, killed in Memphis by an assassin’s bullet.

“My God, when is this violence going to stop?” he said, physically pained by the news. The violence did not stop. Two months later, RFK himself, like his brother before him, would be assassinated.

RFK had an address to deliver that night, and he knew how to lament, extemporaneously offering one of the greatest speeches in the history of American oratory. He began where Speaker Johnson began this week, but knew better than to make a declaration about what events had proven to be a pressing question: “In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.”

He had learned the art of the lament from his studies of classics, and reached for his “favourite poet Aeschylus,” quoting from memory: “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

Last week the film version of Hamilton opened in cinemas to mark the tenth anniversary of its premiere on stage. It tells the story of Alexander Hamilton, founding father and author of 51 of the 85 Federalist Papers.

The musical reminded Americans that he was fatally shot by Aaron Burr, the sitting vice-president of the United States. It was not an assassination but an agreed-upon duel. Still, that the first secretary of the treasury was killed by the vice-president was rather a shocking start to the new republic.

When will the violence stop? Why would it stop if it has been there from the beginning?

Twenty-five years before Hamilton the theatrical stage offered another take, when the reigning maestro of the American musical, Stephen Sondheim, wrote Assassins, a sort of tragic farce imagining an assemblage of those infamous historical characters who had killed, or attempted to kill, the American president. It was, after a fashion, an exploration of “who we are” and what the prominence of assassination reveals about the character of assassins — and the character of America.

When it opened off-Broadway in 1990, the reviews were mixed at best, tending negative. Crowds uplifted by West Side Story were not expecting a meditation on the psychology of the assassin. It took a while, but when it was revived on Broadway in 2004 it was a smash hit, winning five Tony Awards, including best revival of a musical. Sondheim knew the American songbook had to make room for the American assassin.

Joe Nocera, writing at The Free Press, reminded me about Assassins. He wrote on Aug. 31, prompted by the usual mass shootings of that week — two in Minneapolis alone. He wrote 10 days before Kirk’s assassination. Ten days or 35 years, the assassin is always approaching.

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