Blood on the Altars of Democracy

From Utah Valley to Charlotte, the Left Writes Its Gospel in Bullets and Blood

The Problem Before Us

This week America witnessed two horrific events. In Utah, Charlie Kirk, a husband, father, and nationally known conservative activist, was assassinated while speaking on a college campus. In North Carolina, Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska was brutally stabbed to death on a light rail train by a repeat violent offender who never should have been free.

Both killings expose the same wound: America no longer protects the innocent. The Republic has failed in its duty to secure order, and innocent blood cries out.

Facts on the Ground

Charlie Kirk rose to prominence as the founder of Turning Point USA, dedicating his youth to combatting leftist indoctrination on campus. For this, he was vilified and caricatured as an extremist. That constant dehumanization bore its poisoned fruit when he was murdered in broad daylight during his “Prove Me Wrong” tour.

Kirk was not Catholic, but an evangelical Christian who spoke often about his faith. In recent weeks, he even encouraged Protestants to speak well of the Blessed Virgin Mary, calling her a model for all Christians. His friends and neighbors in Arizona, many of them Catholic, gathered to pray the Rosary for his soul. That blending of evangelical and Catholic responses illustrates something deeper: even outside the Church, Americans instinctively turn to Marian devotion and liturgical forms when confronted with tragedy.

Meanwhile in Charlotte, DeCarlos Brown Jr., with fourteen prior arrests and a history of violent crime, was released on a “written promise to appear.” Days later he stabbed Zarutska, a young immigrant mother, to death in front of horrified commuters. Local prosecutors, animated by progressive ideology, had put the rights of the criminal above the safety of the citizen.

In both cases, the innocent were abandoned, and the guilty prevailed.

Catholic Principles Applied

Justice and the Duty of Authority

St. Paul teaches that rulers are “God’s ministers” to punish the evildoer and protect the good (Romans 13:4). St. Thomas Aquinas insists that the common good requires rulers to suppress injustice and preserve order. Pope Leo XIII warned that without true authority rooted in God, “civil society would be no more than a name.”

The state failed Kirk and Zarutska. The university could not secure its stage; the city could not secure its trains. When authority neglects its divinely ordained duty, bloodshed follows.

Subsidiarity and Its Limits

Catholic teaching prefers local authority: the family, the town, the state. But subsidiarity presumes competence. When a local prosecutor refuses to protect his citizens, higher authority is not only permitted but required to intervene. Attorney General Bondi’s decision to take federal jurisdiction over Zarutska’s case is a textbook example: higher power correcting local dereliction in service of justice.

The Common Good vs. Ideology

Both the radical left and progressive prosecutors substituted ideology for justice. The left dehumanized Kirk until he became a legitimate target. Charlotte’s prosecutors decriminalized violence until a killer walked free. Neither acted for the common good. Instead, both elevated abstract slogans, “anti-fascism,” “equity in bail,” above the safety of real human beings.

Trump’s Response in Context

President Trump called Kirk’s death a “dark moment for America.” He ordered flags lowered to half-mast. More than symbolism, his words placed Kirk within the American tradition of civic sacrifice, not as a partisan pawn but as a patriot whose life testified to liberty.

Trump understands, as Leo XIII did, that nations must honor those who defend order and truth. He also underscored the moral responsibility of rhetoric. Slander breeds violence. When the left brands conservatives as Nazis, it commits the sin of calumny on a national scale, inciting grave disorder.

America First, Catholic Truth

These events should not be read merely as isolated tragedies. They reveal a regime unable or unwilling to secure justice. The Catholic tradition holds that the legitimacy of rulers depends on their fidelity to the common good. When prosecutors let killers loose and ideologues incite assassinations, they forfeit moral authority.

An America that wishes to survive must return to the principles both Trump and Catholic tradition affirm: rulers exist to defend the innocent, restrain the wicked, and promote order under God.

Verdict

Charlie Kirk’s assassination and Zarutska’s stabbing are not random horrors. They are the predictable fruit of a system that exalts ideology over order and refuses its God-given duty to punish evil.

America First is not merely a slogan; it is an echo of Catholic truth: protect your people, honor justice, secure the common good. If we fail to do so, more blood will be shed. If we return to these principles, peace can be restored.