America is Saying It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way. Part Two

Victor Davis Hanson

Why do foreign visitors so often do things in their host country that they would never dare to do at home? Why would anyone wave the flag of the hated country they fled and burn the flag of the nation they so sorely covet?

If you are proud of your tribe, your race, your ethnicity, your gender, your sexual orientation—more power to you.

But we can gather all that without you ramming it down our throats 24/7. All self-referencing is incidental, not essential to your individuality and your Americanness.

And if you believe otherwise and try to convince us of the same, then you should expect to be seen as the tribalist that you are. If everyone adopted the conduct of the tribalist, then America would descend into a war of everyone against everyone, as we see in most places abroad. You are not about to do that to us in our 249th year.

If the country is to survive there can be only one national language, only one national anthem, and one national ethos. Otherwise, we descend into the Balkans, Rwanda, or Iraq. You can choose that pathway, but the majority will not—and will not let your tribalist agenda prevail.

America is not divided into victims and victimizers, just because some professor, newsreader, or internet influencer claims that it is so. The self-described victim who demands exemptions, preferences, or reparatory compensation from the rest is free to demand all he wants, and free to learn that he will not receive anything that he did not earn in the here and now.

It may not be illegal to insult the recently murdered, to stomp on the flag, to trash funerary memorials, to utter obscenity to speakers, but it is anti-civilizational, and civilization certainly can damn, ostracize, and keep the wild as far away from it as possible.

Something has happened in mid-September after the recent barbaric murders and assassination: a young immigrant, throat cut, staring out at eternity as the callous passengers adjacent sheepishly walked by her in her death throes, without so much as a sign of grace, much less help, or a young father and husband smiling as he fielded questions from pro and con students suddenly jolted out of his chair backward, as a young monster blasted apart his neck on live video.

Our experts, our professors, and our media gurus babble on about a “homeless” and “voices in the head” Decarlos Brown. They advise that Tyler Robinson was acting out of character recently, that his trans-partner was a symptom of his own metamorphosis.

The people shrug that they no longer care to hear all the extenuating meae culpae, all the diagnoses of mental anguish, all the existential social forces that supposedly drove these killers to cut throats and blow apart necks. They are not interested in why Tyler Robinson murders the innocent, or why Decarlos Brown is a psychopath, only what they did and who they are, and how to make them account for the evil.

So, the tired and weary people believe in the ancient laws that once stopped the feral and anti-civilizational. That is, if Mr. Robinson knew, really knew, that once he blew apart Charlie Kirk, that he would be tried, found guilty, and quickly either imprisoned for life, or shot or hanged, or if Decarlos Brown, amid his most bewildered fits, was apprised that if he slashed the throat of an innocent, he would be quickly indicted, face trial, convicted and he, like Robinson, would no longer bother and threaten others, then both, just maybe, just possibly might not have been so callous, so cocky, so brash in their murdering.

The reasons why these two monsters murdered, despite the disparate nature of their respective victims, were not so different after all.

Robinson and Brown both assumed that even if they failed to escape, in their pathetic efforts to flee from the scene of their savagery, they likely would not be given life sentences without parole and certainly not executed.

Brown knew that his 14 felony convictions, some of them violent, had still led to his freedom to rendezvous with Iryna Zarutska—and no doubt in his mind, after he killed her, would again lead to his ability to injure and harm without lasting consequences.

Robinson chatted to his online circle, joked to his domestic partner about his murderous intent, apparently assured that he either would not get caught, or, if caught, would soon be free—as are many murderers in America today.

Both likely felt as well that there were legions of fellow sick, unhinged, and evil people out there who would not think they were especially wrong to kill.

Robinson likely assumed he would achieve Luigi Mangione cult status, and thus soon join the pantheon of iconic leftist killers. And he was right as the ghouls of the Left praised his killing.

The addled Brown, to the degree he could think at all, might well have assumed murdering a beautiful, young, white immigrant would serve as a reminder of the racial oppressions that drove a poor victim like Brown to do such a thing.

If you doubt the latter, ask why a GoFundMe site initially arose to fund the slasher, or why Brown likely muttered “I got that white girl,” or why all those adjacent, in front, and behind Brown, watched passively as he murdered, rendered zero assistance to a dying Iryna, and then side-stepped her corpse—without a shred of concern.

Brown apparently had good reason to assume that the chances of meeting a Danny Penny in this world are always infinitesimal. He knew better than we that instead he would kill, be ignored, walk free dripping blood, and interpret that indemnity as either indifference to the dying girl or tacit assent to “got that white girl.”

The Left became furious at the larger truth that Decarlos Brown was now seen as simply representative of a larger pathology of inordinate inner-city crime fueled by leftist policies. Indeed, the mayor of Charlotte made that assumption quite explicit, when in her initial comments on the killing, she seemed more worried about being unfair to the bloody Brown than worrying about the fate of the bloodied Iryna.