This is a historical question, not a polemical one. (Because the assassination of President McKinley strikes me as having no illuminating parallels to the attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords.) But, in a cooler moment, would George Will, a student of history, stand by his claim this morningthat none of McKinley's contemporaries saw "promptings from the social environment" as part of the explanation for why Leon Czolgosz shot McKinley?

Based on my extensive knowledge of the War Against Anarchism at...