What can (and can’t) be done about violence

After the triple impact of the Annunciation Catholic School shooting, the brutal stabbing of young Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a train in Charlotte, and then the assassination of Charlie Kirk at a Utah college, many Americans are at a breaking point. Knowing that I work in the political and news sphere, friends and family have even reached out to let me know they’re feeling angry, confused, and even hopeless about it all. They want solutions and for major changes to be implemented to fix it all — now.

But as National Review founder William F. Buckley once famously said, “A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”

So I’m sure some have been underwhelmed with the scope of my proposals in response. The reason conservatives tend to recommend against drastic action after tragedies is not that they don’t recognize the severity of what occurred or care about those affected. It’s that our worldview largely takes for granted that humanity is flawed and history is full of chaos. There is no Golden Age to go back to or utopian future ahead of us where our problems go away.

Ecclesiastes 7:10 recommends that we “Do not say, ‘Why were the old days better than these?’ For it is not wise to ask such questions.”

Marcus Aurelius says in his famous work “Meditations,” that “The rottenness of the times you live in is no new thing. It has been the same since the days of the ancients.”

GK Chesterton said in his book “Heretics” that “The main fact about modern life is that it is not a brave new world, but an old and tired world; it has been here before and will be here again.”

Samuel Johnson likewise said, “The only thing wrong with the world is that it is always the same.”

Or, for a more recent expression of the same sentiment, Billy Joel said, “We didn’t start the fire / It was always burning since the world’s been turning.”

The Founders knew this

When this country’s Founding Fathers framed the Constitution, they did so with this reality foremost in their mind. They did not envision a utopia in America. They envisioned cultural revolutions, violence and assassinations, family breakdown, and every other terrible thing that has occurred before and will again. And they created a government that they believed could best survive those inevitabilities. They believed that people should be given liberty — not because they can be trusted to do the right thing, but because those who will rule the people can be trusted to do the wrong thing.

In Federalist 51, James Madison, called the Father of the Constitution, explained his justification for adding checks and balances on power rather than trusting rulers to govern justly:

“It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices [checks and balances] should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

Those more prone to “progressive” visions of the future, see these checks and balances as obstacles to saving humanity with sweeping programs and efficient management. But as HL Mencken said, “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.”

So we must be cautious during hard times not to make any wild divergences, whether it’s banning guns or restricting speech, from what has worked. But that doesn’t mean that we are powerless to confront evil or to protect the people from enemies foreign and domestic. It just means we must do so with that bigger pictures in mind and leaning on what has worked in the past. The government does have a legitimate role to play in maintaining order, keeping the people safe, and punishing violent offenders. In fact, we could not enjoy our rights and freedoms without this protection.

We are brief guardians of a delicate order, handed to us and for us to hand on. It’s a world of entropy, where everything we have, including our institutions, is in a constant state of breaking down. It’s our role not to remake the world according to naive nostalgia or utopianism but to keep everything good around us in tact, while making small adjustments based on the same principles that built it.

The North Carolina General Assembly legislative leaders had a press conference on Thursday to announce their intention to introduce a comprehensive crime bill when they return to session later this month. Many of their proposals — limiting discretion for magistrates in setting violent criminals loose, fully funding law enforcement and corrections, avoiding soft-on-crime fads, ending cashless bail, longer sentences for violent criminals — seem like the kind of practical solutions that have worked before and will have a real impact.

What we should not do is tear down the existing order, like the French Revolutionaries, hoping utopia will magically emerge from the rubble. It won’t and never has.

So for those asking what drastic measures can be taken: Let’s consider what has worked in the past. And when it comes to violent crime, that would be community policing, arresting and keeping violent criminals behind bars, and not letting violence intimidate us to the degree where we stop exercising our hard-won freedoms.

Charlie Kirk spent his life speaking his mind and engaging civilly with those he disagreed with. He’d want us to continue doing the same, not to let his assassin successfully silence open discussion. So, while our leaders think of practical ways to address the violence, be like the students at Annunciation Catholic School, and keep faith; like Iryna Zarutska, and be hopeful about the future; and like Charlie Kirk, and speak the truth in charity.

“What can (and can’t) be done about violence” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.