With last week’s murder of Charlie Kirk at an outdoor gathering in Utah, the US is continuing its descent into a dark period where constructive disagreement is being replaced by violence aimed at those with whom people disagree. Sadly, the statistics bear this out.
Through the first half of 2025, the US saw some 150 politically motivated attacks, according to Michael Jensen, a University of Maryland researcher who tracks terrorism incidents. That’s nearly twice as many as the same period last year.
While most of these have not been of well-known people, during the past five years, there have been a number of very public figures who are part of this statistic.
Politically-motivated attacks
Most recently, these include:
- December 4, 2024: Assassination of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson.
- April 13, 2025: Passover arson attack at the mansion of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, forcing his wife, their four children, two dogs, and another family to flee after a Molotov cocktail set the building on fire
.
June 14, 2025: Assassination of Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband. - June 14, 2025: Wounding of Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife.
In earlier incidents, Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, was violently beaten inside his home in 2022 by an intruder who was targeting Ms. Pelosi.
Two years earlier, 13 men were arrested for plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.
Not to forget, as well, that US President Donald Trump himself survived two assassination attempts during the last presidential campaign, and in 2017, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana was injured in a shooting while playing in a congressional baseball game.
All of this is in addition to the mass attack on the US Capitol in January 2021, which resulted in both death and injury.
Only part of the story
Yet this is only part of the story. There have also been a number of mass shootings that have occurred in the United States in 2025. As of August 31, a total of 302 people have been killed and 1,354 people wounded in 309 mass shootings this year. These include 47 school shootings, which themselves resulted in 19 deaths and 77 injuries.
The statistics become even more concerning given the large number of such incidents committed by young people. The person who shot Charlie Kirk is 22. The perpetrator of the Annunciation Church School shooting was 23. The murderer of Brian Thompson is 27.
Influencer Ben Shapiro, appearing on Bill Maher’s Real Time show on HBO last week, reported that recent statistics show that just 52% of Gen Z people (born between 1997-2012) believe violence is not the proper response to speech with which one disagrees. However, that means that half of that population agrees that violence is a proper response to disagreeable speech. Those statistics are frightening on their face.
Socially accepted violence
What causes a society to descend to the point where violence becomes a socially accepted activity for half the population? Clearly, there has been a serious failure to inculcate the value of life into the mindset of too many young Americans. Not being a sociologist, it would be difficult to pinpoint which specific failures of a society can cause such a large abandonment of values.
Yet, America seems to be an outlier. Here in Israel, for example, we also have a Gen Z population that, overall, seems to reflect the country’s generally high regard for the value of human life. They may walk around carrying their weapons in full view if they are on active duty with the IDF, but those weapons are not for casual killing, and they know it.
Of course, even in a country where the entire population is not religious, there is still a common morality that emanates from faith, even for atheists.
Most Western countries have younger populations that mimic the behavior we see here, rather than what we are witnessing in the US. The question then becomes: Why?
Perhaps it is because the United States has become less religious and less faith-oriented over the past 75 years. Based on a recent Gallup poll, the percentage of Americans without religious affiliation, often labeled as “Nones,” is between 22 and 31%. According to Gallup, the “None” answer to “religious preference” has grown from 2% in 1948 to 22% in 2023. “Other” and “No answer” have been somewhat stable.
Religion is, of course, no panacea for all the world’s ills. Still, religious affiliation does have an impact on one’s moral compass. Therefore, it is possible that the moral descent of the American body politic is, to some extent, a result of its decrease in religious affiliation.
Reintroducing the 10 Commandments
For those honestly looking to reverse the depressing trend that the statistics currently show, perhaps thought should be given to reintroducing those moral concepts that have been eliminated over the years in the interest of maintaining the separation of church and state.
It is possible that having the Ten Commandments prominently displayed in schools might not be such a bad idea. It is even conceivable that re-introducing the recital of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the US at the start of each school day would project a positive moral message.
Pendulums swing in society from one extreme to the other. But balance in life is having the pendulum be in the middle, not locked on one side or the other.
The American concepts of freedom and democracy are too important to be destroyed by wanton political violence. Let us all hope that the country can find its way back to a modicum of mutual respect and understanding.
The writer is the founder and chair of the American State Offices Association, former national president of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel, and a past chairperson of the board of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies.