Arthur Goldhammer in Eurozine:
Is Charlie Kirk’s assassination-turned-martyrdom unofficially disestablishing the US constitutional clause against the government forming a national religion? And how astute would it be for diverse American sects to align their religious beliefs with Trump’s call for retribution? Even Pope Leo XIV has condemned the administration’s ‘unchristian’ policies.
After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the Bible-quoting, radical right-wing political organizer, on 10 September 2025, the US president and his top officials moved quickly. In conjunction with Kirk’s widow and Turning Point USA, the political recruiting and Christian proselytizing organization Kirk founded, they staged a memorial extravaganza that combined lachrymose emotional display with Christological imagery and bellicose political rhetoric.
The First Amendment to the US Constitution states: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.’ Strictly speaking, the Trump administration had not violated the letter of the Constitution. Congress had made no law.
But in making a martyr of Kirk, MAGA leaders exhibited a shrewd appreciation of one of the most profound insights of Alexis de Tocqueville, the nineteenth-century French historian and political theorist, who was the first and greatest student of American democracy: namely, that when it comes to guiding the evolution of democratic society, ‘mores are more important than laws’, where by ‘mores’ he meant not only ‘habits of the heart but also … the whole range of ideas that shape habits of mind … the whole moral and intellectual state of a people.’
More here.
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