The Future of Freedom Foundation
September 15, 2025
With the murder of 31-year-old noted conservative advocate Charlie Kirk, it's worth asking an important question: Is America great again yet?
My answer: Far from it. In my book, Kirk's killing demonstrates that America is still a very sick, dysfunctional nation. Not only are there periodic killings like this one, there are also mass killings. Just recently, there was the killing of those children at a Catholic school in Minneapolis. There was also the recent killing of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, a refugee from Ukraine who was killed by man who seemingly had no apparent motive to kill her.
And let's not forget that we still live in a massive drug-addled society, one in which millions of Americans are ingesting drugs because, U.S. officials say, they are being "attacked" by international drug dealers who, I guess, are somehow forcing them to ingest the drugs against their will. The fact that President Trump and his militarized drug warriors are still fiercely waging the decades-old, ongoing, never-ending, perpetual war on drugs - and are now knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately killing people who they suspect of violating U.S. drugs laws, with the aim of preventing millions of Americans from ingesting drugs - is, it seems to me, proof positive that America is not yet great again.
Let's also not forget the soaring suicide rate among young people. When people who are just starting out in life are checking out early, that, to me, is a surefire sign that not only is America not great again yet but, in fact, is still a very sick society. Add to that suicide phenomenon the soaring suicide rate among veterans, including those who have supposedly protected our "freedoms" by killing millions of people in foreign countries.
And therein, I contend, lies a big problem - the fact the U.S. government - our government - is one of the biggest killing machines in history. But the fact that the millions of people it has killed are foreigners makes the killings, in the eyes of U.S. officials and many Americans, no big deal. After all, don't forget: Those millions of dead people are not Americans. They are just foreigners.
Here is my contention, one that I have regularly made over the years, especially in the context of one of America's periodic mass killings:
In every society, there are what I call "off-kilter" people. In normal times and in a healthy society, those off-kilter people don't harm anyone. We all can tell that they are off-kilter but people feel sympathy for them, not fear.
For all of our lives, the mindset has been that so long as the U.S. killing machine is killing people "over there" (i.e., in foreign lands), Americans need not concern themselves, especially if a large number of U.S. troops aren't being killed in the process. The notion has been that the mass killings in foreign lands would have no effect on American life at home. Americans could go on with their work, vacations, and hobbies and just block out of their minds, their consciousnesses, and their consciences what the Pentagon and the CIA were doing to people "over there" with their invasions, coups, assassinations, provocations, foreign aid, undeclared wars, and wars of aggression.
I contend that that was never going to happen. I hold that, like it or not, the mass killing "over there" at the hands of the U.S. national-security state was inevitably going to seep into society here at home. It is those mass killings, I contend, that have triggered something in the off-kilter people that causes them either to retaliate in a perverted way here at home for what the U.S. government has done (and continues to do) to people "over there," or to engage in some sort of warped copycat killing here at home, or both.
Most everyone is expressing tremendous shock and grief over the killing of Charlie Kirk - and, of course, rightly so. But consider, on the other hand, the U.S. government's killing of those 11 Venezuelan citizens in that boat in international waters a few days ago. Where is the grief over those deaths? It is virtually non-existent. Indeed, many right-wingers are exultant over those deaths and want the U.S. military to do it much more of the same. They exclaim, "Death to more suspected Venezuelan drug dealers!" It's considered to be no big deal. After all, it's not like they are Americans. They're just foreigners.
But it is a big deal. Every one of those dead Venezuelans was innocent - that is, if one accepts the traditional American jurisprudential principle of innocent until proven guilty in a court of law with competent and relevant evidence. Those dead people were never convicted of anything. Under the law, they are as innocent as you and I. I don't care if the president or vice-president of the United States or any other federal official are accusing them of pushing drugs. Their accusations constitute nothing. After all, let's not forget that there are plenty of people who the feds accuse of crimes who are later found not guilty by a jury.
Moreover, even if those 11 dead people were carrying drugs, that doesn't mean they deserved to be killed. It's just a drug offense, one that wouldn't even have entailed the death penalty if they had been tried and convicted in a court of law. Indeed, contrary to what U.S. officials claim, international drug dealers don't "attack" Americans by forcing them to snort cocaine or inject heroin. Instead, they sell their drugs to drug-addled Americans who are eager to buy the drugs as part of living in a very sick and dysfunctional society.
The biggest factor in all this is that those dead Venezuelans are not Americans. They are foreigners. That means they just don't count. Why should we feel sorry for them? They are no different from the millions of Iraqis, Afghans, Iranians, Vietnamese, Koreans, Chileans, Cubans, and other "gooks" who the U.S. killing machine has killed, either directly or indirectly, over the decades. Why should we feel bad about their widows and children? Those dead people weren't entitled to be arrested, prosecuted, and tried in a court of law, no matter what the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states. After all, they weren't Americans. They deserved to be killed, just like the other millions of foreigners that the Pentagon and the CIA have killed during our lifetimes. Indeed, notice what U.S. officials declared immediately after those extra-judicial killings near Venezuela - they wanted to assure the American people that no American soldiers had lost their lives while killing those Venezuelans. That's all that matters. Americans need not concern themselves. They can just return to their ordinary lives and leave the killing to their national-security-state killing machine. Except that the off-kilter people somehow fail to get the memo.
We don't know who killed Charlie Kirk and so we obviously don't know what the motive was. But I'm willing to bet that there is a good chance that whoever it was, he was one of those off-kilter people in American life. I suppose it is just a coincidence but it is ironic that many Americans are celebrating the deaths of those eleven innocent Venezuelans while, at the same time, mourning the death of American Charlie Kirk. Like I say, America is clearly not great again yet. It remains a very sick society.
Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.