To combat radicalism, teach the Founding

Recent assassinations and attempts on the lives of politicians, commentators, and other high-profile leaders are horrifying, wreaking havoc on our political discourse. Those who commit, welcome, or excuse such outrageous crimes differ in ideology, but most share a common objective: to provoke a wider war that, they assume, will result in victory for their “side.”

They are, in other words, delusional.

No, I don’t deny the violence could spread. We should all pray it does not, and do whatever we can to forestall it. But Americans aren’t going to wage another civil war. The vast majority will never respond with violence to the country’s social and economic problems. Indeed, the vast majority say they’re satisfied with how their lives are going. As for our very real problems, none is comparable to the persistent institution of slavery, with its corrosive effects on the politics, character, and constitutional order of its day.

In short, there is neither the pervasive disaffection nor overriding issue required to produce a new civil war. Still, radical sentiments are clearly rising, especially among the young, and could well produce more mayhem. Our country wouldn’t fall apart — but it would be coarser, poorer, bleaker.

According to a YouGov survey taken after the murder of Charlie Kirk, 11% of US adults believe that violence is “sometimes justified” to “achieve political goals,” with 72% saying it is “never justified,” and the rest unsure or refusing to answer. Among those 18 to 29, however, 19% said violence was sometimes justified and only 51% explicitly ruled it out.

While criminals and lunatics with a range of views have committed recent acts of political violence, the YouGov poll also shows a clear ideological skew in public sentiment. More than a quarter (26%) of respondents 44 or younger who describe themselves as “liberal” say violence is sometimes justified, vs. 7% of young conservatives.

On the other hand, a 2025 survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression found university students describing themselves as “very conservative” were more likely than “very liberal” to endorse violence to silence a speaker with whom they disagree (although “democratic socialists” expressed the most support). Overall, about a third of university students expressed some support for the use of violence, up from one in five as recently as 2020.

How should policymakers respond? One part of the solution, I’m convinced, is to make civics education a higher priority. I don’t just mean in higher education, by the way. The views of young people who don’t go to college exhibit the same discouraging trends.

A recent Carolina Journal poll shed light on the problem. It asked North Carolina voters this question: “Do you have a positive or negative view of the American Founders and the principles that inspired the American Revolution?” Nearly three-quarters of respondents said they had a positive view of both the Founders and the principles. Among those aged 18 to 34, however, only 47% chose that option.

Now, one might disdain the Founders as people — as hypocrites on slavery, for example — but still embrace such principles as individual liberty, representative government, and the rule of law. If we add those respondents to the total, however, that still leaves 34% of young North Carolinians who either reject the American Founding or express no opinion about it.

That’s a failure with many authors. One of them, one over which policymakers have control, is the absence of sustained, engaging instruction on American civics and history. Our country was, indeed, founded by patriots willing to take up arms in a righteous cause — but only because they had exhausted all other means of securing their liberty and their right to govern themselves. Our system of government, with its multiple layers and separate branches, its freedoms to speak and assemble, is designed not to produce consensus but to manage disagreement, to channel it to productive rather than destructive ends.

For too many young people, these are unfamiliar truths. That’s on us.

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy and American history.