A gunman opened fire from a nearby rooftop at Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Dallas field office on Sept. 24, killing one detainee and critically wounding two others. Investigators are treating it as targeted political violence and say they recovered an unspent round on which “ANTI-ICE” was etched.
This is not just wanton murder. It’s an effort to assassinate democracy.
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The golden rule of democracy is simple: No murder. No applause for murder. Yet two weeks earlier, some users on social media reveled in the sniper assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk; a university official even lost her job over a “ZERO sympathy” post. Others now try to rationalize a sniper attack on an ICE facility because they dislike the agency.
A liberal society rests on a minimal pact called the mutual vulnerability principle: I will not harm you so that you will not harm me. As John Locke wrote in his Second Treatise, no one ought to harm another in life, health, liberty, or possessions. John Stuart Mill stands on the same ground: Equal citizens are owed reasons, not blows. Western civilization doesn’t celebrate death; we sanctify life. But when leaders or partisans excuse or celebrate killing, they hand out permission slips for the next attack.
Recent polling underscores the risk. In mid-September, 25% of self-identified “very liberal” respondents said political violence can be justified in some cases; a related poll recorded tolerance for feeling happy when an opposing public figure dies. Most Americans reject that, but a significant minority is still enough to normalize the idea. Moreover, it’s quite clear that some self-described “liberals” are confused about what liberalism is.
This is not a left-wing or right-wing only problem; it’s a language problem that makes democratic discourse difficult. After Oct. 7, some activists used chants such as “resistance is justified” and held events to “honor our martyrs” when referring to Hamas’s murder spree. On the Right, President Donald Trump played a single from the J6 Prison Choir at a rally and repeatedly called Jan. 6 defendants “hostages” when referring to the Capitol riot. Political tribes wear different colors but similarly spit euphemisms.
Call violence “resistance,” “martyrdom,” or “hostages,” and someone will take it as a license to kill. As Isaiah Berlin warned in Two Concepts of Liberty, talk of liberation can slide into coercion “for their own good.”
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The law must hold a bright line without abandoning the First Amendment. Punish what the Constitution does not protect: incitement under Brandenburg v. Ohio and true threats under Virginia v. Black. Keep official channels and branding viewpoint-neutral, as R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul teaches. Use content-neutral time, place, and manner rules for safety. Apply public-employee speech law evenhandedly, Pickering v. Board of Education and Garcetti v. Ceballos set those tests. This protects fierce debate while refusing any applause for political violence.
We must all stop laundering violence through soft language. Murder is universally wrong. Refuse to dress the wolf of political violence in the sheep’s clothing of liberalism. Doublespeak is the death of democracy.
Seth C. Oranburg is a professor of law and a director at the Classical Liberal Institute.
