Political violence is not new in America. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. John F. Kennedy was shot dead in 1963. Steve Scalise was shot at a congressional baseball practice in 2017. And in September 2025, Charlie Kirk was assassinated at a campus speech in Utah, while there has been several other assassination attempts against President Trump.
And yet, political violence can be a mirror of the worst in our society. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, one in five college students said it was acceptable to use violence to stop a speaker. Today that number is one in three. It did not happen in a vacuum. Every American should be concerned.
But at the same time, I want to talk about what we can do about it here in Wisconsin. It all goes to how we treat our youth, and how we hold our elected officials accountable.
The first change is building bridges between people of different political backgrounds. Instead of yelling at each other, we sit down and have honest conversations where ideas can be debated freely. Conservatives and liberals, Christians and Muslims, all of us sharing the same table.
College campuses should be where that happens. Instead, speakers face threats of violence just for showing up. We can reverse it by teaching students how to disagree well, through roundtable discussions, debate training, and real civics education on the First Amendment.
But our youth did not come up with this on their own. They learned it from watching the adults in charge.
Kirk Bangstad, a liberal activist and owner of Minocqua Brewing Company, announced he would offer two-for-one drinks at his brewery if Rudy Giuliani died. He is now collecting signatures to run for office in Wisconsin. This activist is a candidate for public office celebrating the death of a political opponent.
Read that again. A candidate running for governor said he would celebrate the deaths of Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump by giving rounds of alcohol to customers. It does not matter what someone’s political beliefs are, joking about the death of politicians is not only inappropriate but it creates a culture of hostility against one’s neighbors. It might be easy to think of Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani as politicians, but they are every bit as American as Kirk Bangstad. These are our neighbors, wishing them ill is not an America we should strive for.
10 years ago, statements like this would be unconscionable. Now candidates continue to make violent statements about opposing political opponents constantly. This is why our young people think violence is acceptable. They watch the people who are supposed to lead them normalize it every day. We have to demand better from our officials. We have to build the spaces where better is possible. And we have to start now.
