Certain long-form comments on Ethics Alarms (most blogs don’t get them or don’t allow them: I love ’em) just scream “Comment of the Day.” This one, by emerging Ethics Alarms commentariate star CEES VAN BARNEVELDT, was one of those. It concerns the decision by about half the Democrats in Congress to eschew a symbolic vote condemning political violence because apparently they couldn’t bear endorsing any sentiment complimentary to Charlie Kirk, whom their radical base considers a an evil fascist (mostly because Democrats said he was.) Here is that Comment of the Day, on the post, “It’s Come to This: a Majority of House Democrats Chose To Avoid Angering Their Radical Trump-Deranged Base Over Appealing To Sane Americans”:

***

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is a moment of absolute moral clarity. And almost all moments of absolute moral clarity have a villain. I became aware of the Charlie Kirk assassination via Ethics Alarms. When I switched on the television the news was that Charlie Kirk had died. Soon thereafter the news changed to “Republicans pounce after the death of Charlie Kirk,”following the main stream media.

But as everybody with two eyes and a couple of braincells can see, the real news since that day has been “The left goes mental after Charlie Kirk’s assassination”.

American history had more moments of absolute moral clarity. The most recent one with similar significance is the attack on the World Trade Center at 9/11/2001. Another one is the lynching of Emmett Till, among many more that are related to Jim Crow and the struggle for civil rights.

The one moment that strikes me as most comparable is another famous example of political violence. In May, 1856 Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts took to the floor of the U.S. Senate to denounce the use of force and fraud to plant slavery in the territory of Kansas. This speech is known as the “Crime Against Kansas” speech. A couple of days later, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina, with two other Southern Representatives, entered the Senate Chamber and gave Sumner such a beating with a cane that he nearly died. The other Southern Representatives made sure that the Senator could not get any help. The Southern newspapers praised the attack, and blamed Sumner for bringing his fate on himself. The cane had broken in two, and Southern supporters made sure that Preston Brooks got a new cane. An attempt to oust Brooks from the House of Representatives failed.

In 1856 the country was deeply polarized about the issue of slavery, even more polarized than today. Sumner used words and debate to persuade; however Brooks, with full support, used force and violence in order to extend their power and way of life, which included an oligarchy supported by slavery.

The caning shocked the conscience of the United States of America. The Southern Democrats had let their mask slip; they stood exposed for the entire nation as a party that disdained free speech and republican norms, and instead chose force and violence to get their vision realized.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk has a lot of similarities with what happened in 1856. The United States of America is highly polarized, with the two major parties having opposite visions of this nation. A man who uses words and debate to persuade is assassinated. And the left lets its mask slip and shows its true face, as ugly as the picture of Dorian Grey. The ugliest part are all the social media messages cheering on the assassination.

The mainstream media and the Democrat politicians lie, spin, gaslight, shift blame, impugn Charlie Kirk as a racist and a fascist, and do everything to deflect from the big elephant in the room: the left has a violence problem.

A recent YouTube poll shows that 25 percent of people who identify as very left supports violence to meet political ends. Another poll, from Rutgers University, found that 55% of those who identify as left found it at least somewhat justified to assassinate Donald Trump. These high numbers indicate that political violence is not supported by just a fringe; the base of the Democratic Party is violent. The partyhas been captured by the hard left, for whom power is everything. The Democrats have become a hard left party.

That does not mean that there are no sane Democrats who support republican norms. But what we see happening now is the same as in 1856, namely that everybody sees that the mask of reason has slipped off the Democrats face. After 1856 up to the start of the Civil War many left the Democratic Party. Another big party had just imploded, the Whigs. The result was a political realignment that lasted for generations. The beneficiary of this realignment was a new party, the Republicans, who would win the Presidency in 1860.

Between November 2024 and September 10, 2025 the Democrats have lost about two million registrations. The Republicans have gained more than two million registrations. After Kirk’s assassination, many TikTok and YouTube videos are being published of people who are horrified, and swear that they will never vote Democrat again.

The Democrat politicians and leaders are terrified. They cannot roundly denounce left wing political violence,and the demonizing rhetoric that led to this: they are afraid of losing their base. A significant number of Democrat politicians support this heated rhetoric. Ilhan Omar after Charlie Kirk’s death still labeled him as a fascist. The House failed to censor her, with the entire Democratic House voting in her favor plus four Republicans. Rashida Tlaib engaged in a wild shouting match with Byron Donalds in the House of Representatives, using words like fascist and Nazi. The vote in the House on Resolution 719, with the majority of Democrats voting against, confirms the suspicion that more Democrat representatives are in support of political violence than they want to reveal.

As the sane Democrats are leaving the party, the radicalization will continue apace. Mamdani, a radical, is most likely to become the new major of New York City. I would be surprised if the elections in Virginia and New Jersey go their way. Both states will become swing states.

The Republicans did not have much intensity going into the midterm elections of 2026. Now they have intensity. And you can be a hundred percent sure that as long as there is any Democrat politician who applies terms like fascist, racist, or Nazi extremist to a Republican, the Democrats will be reminded for many election cycles that they are a hard left party, beholden to political violence even to the extent of assassinations.

Political parties have disappeared before; I already mentioned the Whigs. Does the Democrat Party have a future? It is a good question that is too early to answer. My impression is that the future for the Democrats looks bleak, and that a major political realignment lasting for generations may be underway.