Column: Is another era of political violence upon us?

In his life’s work, Charlie Kirk, a rising star in conservative politics, did not give me, or millions of Americans like me in the political center or left, a great deal of optimism about the direction of our nation’s partisan politics.

But his brutal assassination, captured in horrific video images none of us can unsee, poses a dire threat to our democracy, and it is the duty of all of us, regardless of political loyalty, to renounce and defuse any further political violence.

I deplored Kirk’s politics. I still do. But his politics did not merit violence of any kind. In the outpouring of rage that followed the news of his shooting, many voices on the right, from the exalted studios of Fox News to the lowest sloughs of social media, bayed that the “left” did this and that the left would