Cole Allen, the alleged shooter at Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, is the only person responsible for his actions in the Washington Hilton. But it is impossible not to see the weekend’s thwarted attack in the context of our increasingly upside-down culture, one in which political speech is derided as violence and political violence is tolerated, excused, and even celebrated.
If that sounds hyperbolic to you, we suggest sitting in on any seminar at any number of Ivy League schools with the word anti-colonial or indigenity in the course title. Or just head down to Washington Square Park and ask the NYU co-eds and twentysomethings if they think murder is ever an appropriate political tool.
Our Tanya Lukyanova did just that yesterday. Listen for yourself:
If you think education provides inoculation against such moral perversion, it’s exactly the opposite. According to one survey, 40 percent of Americans with graduate or professional degrees—compared to just 23 percent of Americans with no education beyond high school—agreed that “violence is often necessary to create social change.”
