These examples only illustrate that assassination can have paradoxical side-effects — they do not redeem it. Political murder is inherently destabilizing to any political system and especially antithetical to democracy. Nothing could be more contrary to popular rule than the violent decapitation of a government, party or social movement by one self-appointed executioner.
This is why the United States is wise to invest in Secret Service protection and other measures to keep public officials safe. The impact of a major assassination on the already feverishly divided U.S. body politic today would be too awful to consider. Alas, it is also all too imaginable, as shown by the recent arrest of an armed man who, according to law enforcement, had second thoughts about killing Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and surrendered to police outside the justice’s house.
If we are honest about it, the need to field a small army of official bodyguards constitutes a deeply troubling, though tacit, admission of insufficient domestic tranquility in the United States.
Happier and, in an important sense, more democratic, is the country where weapons possession is appropriately limited, the public’s attitudes are temperate — and politicians, judges and candidates feel free to walk the streets with minimal or no security.
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