A Time for Hatred?

For two weeks, two icons of horrific violence have dominated the news: the August 22 murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, who was peacefully checking her phone on a Charlotte commuter train when the black man sitting behind her stabbed her in the neck; and the September 10 assassination of Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot in the neck during a rally at Utah Valley University. Like the dismembered body of the murdered concubine in Judges 19, both icons indict not only the individual murderers, but American politics and society. A supposedly liberal society has grown rotten when it can no longer protect young women on public transport or take free speech on university campuses for granted.