John Whitehead's Commentary

We are walking a dangerous road.

America is in the midst of an epidemic of historic proportions. The contagion being spread like wildfire is not biological but moral: fear, paranoia, and intolerance. It is turning communities into battlegrounds and setting Americans one against the other.

This plague on our nation—a tragic hallmark of the post-9/11 era—has turned the nation into a pressure cooker with no steam valve, fueled by distrust and division.

We see it in moments like the recent shooting of Charlie Kirk, a political activist and commentator. Good people, in their grief and anger, have abandoned the principles they once cherished—free speech, tolerance, nonviolence—and have adopted the language of mobs and militants. Violence has become a reflex, even for those who condemn it in others.

This is what happens when citizens lose hope, when lawful and nonviolent alternatives seem pointless. It is the face of a nation in the throes of a nervous breakdown.

We are being fed a constant diet of fear: fear of terrorists, fear of immigrants, fear of those who are too religious, fear of those who are not religious enough, fear of those on the Right, fear of those on the Left. Fear has become the language of our politics, used to distract, divide, and control us.

This is not a Left or Right issue. It is not about partisanship or ideology. It is about how dehumanization—the process of stripping individuals or groups of their dignity, autonomy, or moral worth—has become a political weapon.

We must resist this descent into fear and dehumanization. Our nation was founded on the radical idea that all human beings are created equal, endowed with certain inalienable rights. Those rights are inherent, indivisible, and universal. They apply to all—or they will soon apply to none.

The Founders got this part right: their affirmation of our shared humanity is more vital than ever before. The question, as always, is where do we go from here?

Robert F. Kennedy’s warning in 1968 is as urgent today as it was then. Speaking after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Kennedy asked:

“What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? …No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders ... an uncontrolled or uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people ... Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily—whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence—whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded…

“Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them. Some looks for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul…

“We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution. But we can perhaps remember - even if only for a time - that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek - as we do - nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

“Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.”

If we are to survive as a free people, we must reject the politics of fear, resist the lure of violence, and rediscover our common humanity.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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