I met Charlie Kirk twice, the second time over dinner, several years ago as he was still just starting out on what would become a spectacularly ascendent career in the polemical arena. I found him to be an especially bright, articulate, and ambitious young man, a deeply committed Christian with sharp instincts who left you, within moments of meeting him, with the distinct impression that he was bound for great deeds. I happened to be in Taiwan when I heard  the awful news of his assassination, engaging with a people who are contending with an ever-present, looming existential threat from a Maoist regime –the threat of political violence on a mass scale, if you will. The juxtaposition struck me as poignant at the time.

We find ourselves saying, again, that political violence has no place in America, and that is true – and yet it happens. It could simply be that no political system, no matter how advanced or well-structured, is capable of fully inoculating the society it governs from the impulses towards evil that are inherent in a species corrupted by original sin. There may be some solace to be taken in the fact that in America political violence remains an anomaly, neither a regular anarchic occurrence nor the state-sponsored type which Kirk’s efforts sought to preempt. Even that realization is of little comfort to a grieving widow far too young to bear that somber title, and her newly fatherless children. 

There have, of course, been other high-profile acts of political or politically-tinged violence take place recently, but this one feels different; unlike, say, the deeply mentally troubled individuals who killed Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, or attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband, or sought to assassinate Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, this was not some madman with tenuous ties to reality whose dog instructed him to kill. This was a cold, calculated act of ideological vengeance, committed on a person simply for the sin of publicly holding a contrary opinion. 

There are a number of ironies simmering in the coals of this tragedy. The first is that Kirk made his living from openly debating ideas, thriving on the cut-and-thrust of political discourse. Deeply informed, consistently well-prepared – with the added benefit of natural talent for the discursive arts – his intellectual quiver was always full: he was, quite simply, good at it. And that is precisely what got him killed. A bullet to put an end to the debate, in place of reasoned argument.

Then there is the fact that this took place on a university campus, an institution which once upon a time was intended to be a repository of ideas and an arena for arguing them. Kirk did not possess a college degree, a fact he was quite proud of, and yet was highly educated in any meaningful sense of the word. He was seemingly comfortable on college grounds – often considered hostile territory for conservatives – introducing contrary arguments into ideological echo-chambers, and thus fulfilling in a small way the role universities ought to have been fulfilling, before they reduced themselves to their current dulled state. 

And finally, it does not go unnoticed that the murder took place on the eve of the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, the largest single act of political violence in American history. That was also the last time the American people came together with a near universal sense of national purpose, united in grief, anger and resolve. Though born of tragedy, it was a beautiful twenty minutes.

The rhetorical noise peripheral to the assassination has spurred an examination of free speech. Reactions to Kirk’s murder have been mostly appropriate, but not universally so, prompting a variety of consequences. It is important those consequences remain within the realm and purview of private action, and not given official sanction backed by the force of law. Attorney General Pam Bondi has flirted with the concept of policing “hate speech”, a concept absolutely antithetical to that of freedom of speech. A reinvigoration of self-discipline and a revival of a societal moral code and attendant sense of decency – in place of government strictures – would seem to be in order, and long overdue. 

There is, of course, the nagging threat persisting in the darker corners of a sort of eye-for-an-eye retaliatory action from the right. This risk cannot be discounted. Some elements of the American right have a disappointing history of taking the bait, as it were. Following the summer of political violence from the left in 2020, which left monuments desecrated, windows boarded up or smashed, and large swaths of some urban centers virtually unlivable, the right held a dominant position on the moral high ground. That was effectively squandered on January 6, 2021. A similar retributive act would be an aggravation of what is already a national tragedy, and serve only to delegitimize the legacy of Charlie Kirk, a legacy of informed, intelligent debate which this country is in desperate need of embracing.