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The French Enlightenment contributed much to modern thought. Like everything else human it had its flaws and ultimately its tragedies as it consumed itself within its own contradictions and Dionysian passions--something the more profound understanding of which had a wait about a century after the Enlightenment's Terror in France--in the form of Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy (1910 English translation). One term that continues to resonate--and perhaps that ought to resonate more in this age of identitarianism and its own forms of Dionysian passion--is solidarity. It is said that solidarité, undrrstood as a "communion of interests and responsibilities, mutual responsibility," was a coinage of the "Encyclopédie" (1765). But the term is as heavily invested in Catholic Social Thought (see here for references), one built around "the intrinsic social nature of the human person, the equality of all in dignity and rights and the common path of individuals and peoples towards an ever more committed unity” (John XXIII, Encyclical Letter Mater et Magistra: AAS 53 (1961), 415-417) or perhaps as well as "a moral virtue that determines the order of institutions” John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 36, 37: AAS 80 (1988), 561-564. It is a pity that the term, like most terms at this stage of historical development, have been hijacked so that they are deployed to mean or represent the opposite of a more traditional meaning basis. That is the way of cultures, perhaps, and more so this one that consumes language like a glutton consumes, well, whatever they can eat.
What may appear clear enough may be that, despite the failings of humans to live up to their own ideas, a state of human collectivity grounded in building communions of common interests and responsibilities, where those interests incorporate and represent or manifest moral value in and of the collectivity itself, and that, at its core suggests the cognitive cages, the perceptions and objectives that produce the sort of solidarity that is a prerequisite to the self conception of the collective as something that binds and distinguishes, is necessary for the stability of collectives that are not intent on ripping themselves apart. The strength of the modalities and manifestations of solidarity, the embrace of, at some acceptable level of generality, of communion among members of a collective, measures the strength of that collective to engage in and naturalize within its own discursive structures, those disagreements, differences, and transformations that are a necessary part of the lived experience of collectives that mean to me more than the representation of a group at one moment in time. Solidarity does not require conformity, but it does require commitment to the collective--to the value of the collective and to the experience and manifestations of its core values, its fundamental glue, in the everyday interactions of its members with each other--and as well, a sensitivity by those in positions of influence and authority to be mindful of that prerequisite as the baseline from out of which discourse is possible that enhances that communion even where disagreements persist.
Murder does not enhance solidarity; murder ends communion and suggests that the collective jo longer exists in its old form but requires either the elimination or the re-education of those who are now reconstructed as the "other"--as alien or threatening forces to the vision of a reconcieved communion that would necessarily exclude them. It is at this point that a society must consider carefully the extent to which it is willing to excise part of its communion now rendered as alien. And that, too, may require strong measures--there is a power both in self-restraint, and compassion, a power that in the end may be more powerful than that which vomits out from the point of a gun.
Perhaps that was what President Trump had in mind in delivering his 10 September 2025 Proclamation, Honoring the Memory of Charlie Kirk, the text of which follows below. I offer only this: at some point, the community that is the nation must decide, and do so explicitly, the extent of its commitment to principles of solidarity among all of its embers. Or like other societies that have come before, exist now and will likely in their own time produce their own tragedies in the future, determine--explicitly (there is no honor in subterfuge, but perhaps that is the nature of the thing --the extent to which they will excise, obliterate, and eliminate those elements, formerly a part of the communion, that are no longer to be considered part of the patriotic front, the core of the nation, and the like. Of course, there would be a certain irony in that within the founding premises of this Republic, and one that has, over centuries, contributed to its nature--any effort to excise identified elements itself produces a crisis in the fundamental moral value of solidarity, at least on the basis in which the Republic was established and toward which it continues to work in its own meandering way.
Solidarity does not require agreement, but it des require a commitment ot find common ground and to live, everyday, in ways that deepen the foundational value of learning to live with each other in compassion and mutual respect. There are no winners here--indeed identitarian "winner" mentalities, forced re-education mentalities, and the temptation to use the State (or other collective organs) as an instrument of forcing conformity, merely recreate and deepen the forces of dissipation of the solidarity of the Republic. What may be natural and necessary in Marxist-Leninist States can only be a toxic tonic for a liberal democratic Republic, at least one is is not meant to be "perfected" by groups of self described leaders. This Republic grows stronger with debate and with the toleration of difference that makes o difference within the micro workings of community. It has done less well whenever a self professed vanguard of social forces seeks to use the instruments of public power to advance their own points of view. In that way one might, in one's own way, honor the memory of Charlie Kirk by being mindful, as we debate, that the consequences of the dissipation of solidarity--of a basic commitment to live together with one another in a single political community--might undermine the Republic in ways that will be the subject of lamentation only after the dissipation of the passions, the lust, that produces that result.
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
As a mark of respect for the memory of Charlie Kirk, by the authority vested in me as President of the United States by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby order that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset, September 14, 2025. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same length of time at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this tenth day of September, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fiftieth.
DONALD J. TRUMP
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