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| By The Free Press |
It’s Monday, April 27. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Jed Rubenfeld on the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Kara Kennedy on Britain’s smoking ban. Abigail Shrier on stay-at-home dads. And much more.
But first: The dinner and the gunman.
One of the values that informs everything we do at The Free Press is a belief in the American project. Here’s how we explain what we mean by that on our website:
Our reporting and opinion can be harshly critical of our country and its leaders, but that is because we believe deeply in America and its promise. We make no apology for making distinctions between good and bad, liberalism and illiberalism, the rule of the law and mob rule, freedom and unfreedom—and we advocate forcefully for the former.
We were reminded of those distinctions on Saturday night at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, D.C. The evening was supposed to be a lighthearted affair. Instead it became a near-tragedy that threw those distinctions, once again, into sharp relief. Good versus bad. Liberalism versus illiberalism. The rule of law versus mob rule. Freedom and unfreedom.
Today, we offer five stories on the latest incidence of political violence in America and the permission structures that make it possible. What happened, why, and how to respond.
First, in case you missed it, read the editorial we published the morning after the thwarted attack. It’s about what it takes to stay free. “The shooting,” we wrote, “is a reminder that the First Amendment alone cannot uphold free speech.” Check it out, in full, here:
The Free Press’s culture editor Freya Sanders, a native of Great Britain, was at the event and was expecting a deeply American experience. She got that—just not exactly in the way she expected. Read her reckoning with America’s unique ailments for a perspective on what Saturday night’s ordeal looked like to an outsider.
How did the shooter get so close? That’s the question Elliot Ackerman, a Marine veteran, seeks to answer in his firsthand dispatch. “The security arrangement itself was riddled with holes—holes that, as the proximity of the gunshots to the ballroom revealed, could very well have ended in catastrophe,” he writes. Read his report:
But as with any calamity, the WHCD shooting had its unsung heroes. And for Suzy Weiss, that’s men like Ackerman, who kept the people around him—in particular the young women—calm as they ducked and covered. The security teams and Secret Service agents did their jobs. But today Suzy salutes the people in the ballroom, many of them veterans, who didn’t miss a step and stayed collected amid the chaos. In short: Dudes rock.
Finally, Free Press senior editor Peter Savodnik has written extensively about the spate of political violence that has rocked America over the last few years—including diving deeply into the biographies of the young men who take such despicable and disastrous action. Read his latest on what appears to have driven the man accused of storming the dinner:
—The Editors
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Let the Kids Smoke | ||||
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The Ten Commandments Don’t Belong in Public School | ||||
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