Alarming Poll

The arrest of Nicholas John Roske for the attempted murder of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh recalls to mind a poll commissioned last April by the far left Southern Poverty Law Center. The poll assessed the attitudes of Americans toward political assassination, and the results are very disturbing.

Here's a chart that summarizes the findings:

Notice that the allegation that political violence is favored mostly by individuals on the "far-right" is not supported by the poll. Among young males - men under 50 - more men who identify as Democrats believe assassination is justified if someone is "harming the country or our democracy" than do Republicans.

Of course, what constitutes harm is in the eye of the beholder. Many, like Mr. Roske, believe that upholding the 2nd Amendment and overturning Roe v. Wade satisfy the harm criterion and justify murder.

Surprisingly, even among younger females the numbers are alarming. Forty percent of Republican women and 32 percent of Democratic women approve of political assassinations according to the SPLC's poll!

The fact that a substantial minority of people under 50, whether Democrat or Republican, endorse political murder as a means to solving problems tells us something significant, and distressing, about the last couple of generations of Americans.

In the last fifty years we've become an increasingly secular society, and a secular society lacks the resources for instilling in the young a duty to treat others with dignity, respect and kindness. It lacks the resources to insist that some behaviors are objectively wrong.

Having largely abandoned the idea of a Divine judgment and ultimate accountability, a secular society is morally adrift. To the extent that it can assess right and wrong at all it often does so by employing pragmatic criteria - an act is right if it works to produce some desired end.

Thus, if murdering one's political adversaries enables one to prevent the implementation of undesirable policies then assassination is ethically justified.

Untethered to any source of transcendent morality and duty it's easy for politicians to justify lying, slandering, bribery, even murder, as long as they can avoid being found out.

A society which no longer believes in God - a society in which individuals no longer believe they have a duty to obey an objective moral law, indeed, in which they no longer believe there even is an objective moral law, a society in which they no longer believe they'll be held accountable for the life they've lived - is a society in which a lot of people will find nothing especially wrong with killing their political enemies.