The Rising Tide of Political Violence

The rising tide of political violence in America isn't just a symptom of extremism—it's a crisis of truth, education, and civic maturity. In this episode of *Hillsdale Dialogues*, President Larry Arnn and Hugh Hewitt confront a disturbing pattern: assassination attempts on political leaders have surged, not just in frequency but in intensity, echoing the ideological warfare of the 1960s but amplified by modern digital chaos. Arnn argues that today’s youth, shaped by two years of pandemic isolation and relentless misinformation, are especially vulnerable to conspiracy theories, not because they're inherently unstable, but because they’ve been deprived of the intellectual tools to distinguish truth from noise. The solution, he insists, lies not in censorship but in a return to the great books—those timeless works that cultivate reason, moral clarity, and the ability to step outside one’s own time. From C.S. Lewis’s call for 'the fresh sea breeze of old books' to Chesterton’s defense of adventure tales as moral training grounds, Arnn makes a compelling case that reading the classics isn’t nostalgia—it’s survival. The episode also critiques how federal overreach has eroded local governance, turned education into bureaucracy, and created a political system where power is not just contested but weaponized. The Supreme Court’s recent decision to ban race-based redistricting is hailed as a landmark victory for principle, not partisanship.