Modern America has been one of constant shock: decades of war, economic turmoil, covid lockdowns, contested elections, rising political escalation, and resulting political violence. Despite this contemporary backdrop, the assassination of Charlie Kirk is a moment that stands apart in the way that singular death—with a face, a family, a story, a particular context—is always easier to process than a broader event, no matter how horrible.

During the 2024 Presidential campaign, Republican nominee Donald Trump courted libertarians and the crypto community in his successful bid for his second US presidency. In a famous speech at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, he promised that, “America will once again be a nation that protects property rights, privacy, freedom of transaction, freedom of association, and freedom of speech.”

Ludwig Von Mises saw Austrian economics sinking in the US when he and Margit emigrated to the US in 1940 escaping German Nazi persecution of Jews. He died in 1973 at the age of 93. Margit, after Mises’s passing, gave consent to Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. and others to establish the Mises Institute to host his publications and propagate Austrian economics to the world.

Like those of us who remember the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, along with the downing of Flight 93, evoke clear memories of what people were doing when they heard about the event. The news was stunning, hard to comprehend, and made people fear for the future—and perhaps that fear was justified.

The shooter, who is reportedly still at large, fired from a distance.

Few questions have divided liberals over the centuries more than the place of religion in a free society. Some have seen faith as irrelevant to liberty, a separate sphere best kept sealed off entirely from politics. Others have viewed it as the very enemy of freedom, pointing to centuries of clerical repression. Still others argued that religion was useful, a prop to social cohesion for a regime of limited government.

New from the Journal of Libertarian Studies: