From the Editors: Charlie Kirk and the better angels of our nature

The assassination of Charlie Kirk last week is a tragedy for his family, including his wife and two young children. It is also an attack on the principles that make a democratic republic possible.

The world is full of pundits and polemicists who speak or write well, but mostly direct their words at their own existing audience. Kirk was one of the rare advocates who focused primarily on persuasion of those who disagreed with him, being willing to speak to anyone, debate anyone, in a civil and earnest manner. That freedom to speak, to listen, to persuade, and to be persuaded — and to do it all without violence — is essential for a life in a republic. It’s really the heart of Western civilization itself.

We did not know, immediately, the specific reason Kirk was killed, though that is becoming clear as evidence against the killer is made public. But even from the beginning, we could be very sure of the general reason: someone or some group disagreed with something he said and used that as a reason to take his life. The exact subject of the disagreement is worth finding out, but in another way, it doesn’t matter. The willingness to commit this evil act over a matter of words is proof enough of a rising crisis in this country.

When one person murders another because of his words, the First Amendment is not implicated. But the principle that the First Amendment protects — free speech itself — is deeply damaged. And free speech, more than any of the other rights protected by our Constitution, is essential to a republic of free people. A government can trample a lot of other rights and, while it would be harmful and wrong, the republic could survive. But if the people cannot discuss events and ideas freely and without the threat of harm coming to them, voting becomes a farce and the republic itself withers.

That attachment to free speech as an ideal — and support for the republic requires it — is an idea that many young people, especially on the left, are increasingly discarding. The temperament of the country and even the world has been trending this way for a long time as society’s outsiders and malcontents marinate in their homes, alone, online, and furious. Social media is too swift and too extreme, and fragile minds can become radicalized without even realizing it.

The quick-hit emotional tweets undermine reason. A meme gets around the world before the thinkpiece gets its shoes on. When it’s time to “lower the temperature,” it’s already too late.

In the lizard brain of every human, there lives the temptation to use violence to solve our problems, but what separates men from beasts and civilization from savagery is that we suppress this impulse and work to appeal, as Lincoln said, to the “better angels of our nature.” 

We cannot kill our way out of our problems. But whether in the drone strike or the abortionists’ office, too many of us these days see a swift death as some sort of ending — or even justice. Death builds nothing, it only destroys a life and, in the Judeo-Christian tradition that underpins our Western values, every life is an end in itself, not merely the means to some other end. Even those deaths that are widely seen as justified, such as Osama bin Laden or Gary Heidnik, solve little, practically speaking.

Neither can we solve our problems through silencing our enemies through other means. Free speech and the free exchange of ideas are, as we have said, necessary for the continued life of our republic. And while we should always feel free to disagree and to condemn those public figures who transgress the moral boundaries of decency, we should also show some grace to those private figures who mutter unwise or indecent sentiments in public.

Civil disagreement — not government coercion of speech, nor private mob action that does the same — must be our standard. Speech is not violence. Silence is not violence. Violence is violence, and we must resist absolutely those who would blur the line between the two because it ends in the grave — for individuals and for the nation.

The way forward from Charlie Kirk’s assassination is to live out the values that he stood for — and that our American republic demands. In the face of violence from the far-left and the far-right, it is hard to stand in the middle and demand that we not fight, that we not be enemies, but only fellow countrymen who at times disagree. It is the harder task, but the more human one, and the one that makes civilization possible.