When political violence becomes acceptable, it becomes inevitable

A society that begins to excuse political violence should not be surprised when political violence multiplies. Once you create a moral framework in which violence is not merely understandable but righteous — once you argue that certain institutions are so corrupt, so "murderous," that the people who participate in them deserve to be killed — you are no longer condemning violence. You are licensing it. And when that cultural permission structure meets a criminal justice system increasingly designed to favor perpetrators over victims, the results are predictable: more criminals walking free, more public cynicism and more people tempted to believe that vigilantism is the only remaining form of accountability. Consider the case of Luigi Mangione, accused in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. A New York judge ruled this week that while the murder weapon will be admissible at trial, several other pieces of evidence seized during Mangione's arrest will be suppressed. The admissible items include a gun, a 3D-printed silencer and a red notebook reportedly filled with incriminating writing. But the judge excluded other evidence found in Mangione's backpack: his phone, passport, gun magazine, wallet and a computer chip. The rationale is the kind of procedural hair-splitting that leaves normal Americans wondering whether the system has lost its mind. The defense argued that the backpack was searched unconstitutionally because it had been moved away from Mangione's immediate reach before officers searched it. The judge agreed. What makes it stranger is that the search occurred in Pennsylvania — inside a McDonald's — yet the judge ruled that New York law governs suppression issues because Mangione is being tried in New York. In other words, a police officer in Pennsylvania is apparently expected to know the intricate procedural rules of New York criminal law while making an arrest in real time. This is not a recipe for justice. If Mangione was caught in California, would cops there be expected to know New York law to properly do their job? These kinds of rulings are the downstream consequence of decades of doctrine that has steadily shifted the criminal justice system away from protecting the public and toward protecting defendants. Mapp v. Ohio established the exclusionary rule, which bars evidence obtained through unconstitutional searches. The practical result is simple: When the police make a mistake, the public pays the price. The deeper problem in the Mangione case, however, is cultural. Mangione has loud supporters, and they are not operating in a vacuum. They are the product of a long-running ideological campaign -- largely from the political Left — that frames American institutions not as flawed systems in need of reform but as evil systems maintained by evil people. This worldview has been building for years. Occupy Wall Street in 2011 was a turning point. Instead of focusing anger on government policy, bailouts and political corruption, activists targeted "Wall Street" itself — the private sector, the idea of profit, and the legitimacy of business power. Today, this mentality is embedded in the rhetoric of politicians like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who recently argued that government should use its power to lower prices and make life more affordable. The underlying assumption is always the same: If people are suffering, the private sector must be guilty, and government must be the savior. That ideological reflex produces what activists now call "social murder" — the claim that private-sector actors are morally responsible for deaths caused by imperfect systems. Under this logic, a CEO operating legally within a flawed health care structure is the moral equivalent of a killer. Outside Mangione's proceedings, self-described "Mangionistas" reportedly proclaimed that Thompson's children were "better off without him" and compared Thompson to Osama bin Laden. One even praised the idea of "heroic violence." This is moral psychosis. Bin Laden orchestrated mass murder. Thompson ran an insurance company. To equate the two is not just wrong -- it is the kind of rhetoric that turns political disagreement into justification for assassination. When a culture begins to rationalize murder as justice, it will get more murder. If you want more political violence in the United States, keep telling people that political opponents are not merely mistaken but murderous — and that killing them is "heroic."