Talking Big Ideas.
“I love people.”
~ Charlie Kirk
Like you, I’m still reeling from the murder of Charlie Kirk. A young father, a public voice, shot in the neck by a sniper while speaking peacefully at a college campus. It was depraved and evil.
Just before the attack, Angel Eduardo from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) warned of a dangerous rise in college students who say violence is justified to stop speech.
Too many in this country confuse violence and speech. They are not related. They stand on opposite sides of a chasm. Greg Lukianoff, president of FIRE, said it best in his recent TED talk: “Free speech is not violence. It is the best alternative to violence ever invented.”
Free speech is the foundation of civilization. Violence is its undoing. Charlie Kirk stood on the side of speech and faced his opponents in peace.
I admire his courage to say what he truly thought, even when unpopular. I admire his commitment to meet opponents in peace. And I admire his clarity of thought, his articulate speech, and his choice of dialogue over violence.
In this way, he remains a model for us all.
That commitment to speech is what I’ve built my own life around. I started a business that helps people speak in public. It’s scary enough without adding the increasingly common heckler’s veto, where the loud few shout others down. But the assassin’s veto is intolerable. We cannot accept a society where violence decides who may speak.
When talking peacefully risks death, free speech is lost. And with it so is pluralism, the simple idea that people with different beliefs can live, speak, and work together in peace. When we lose speech and pluralism, we lose the foundations of a free society.
History shows where this path leads. Human flourishing is predicated on inclusive institutions that protect speech and pluralism. To permit violence against peaceful speech is to risk it all.
The way forward is clear: reject violence, protect speech, and engage in peaceful dialogue with those who think different than you.
I went online to read about Kirk’s shooting to discover a gunman had also struck a school in my state. When I hear of these tragedies, when I see people online celebrate death, it feels, in that moment, the world has gone to hell and people have lost their minds.
The truth is most of us are safe. And most of us are horrified by murder. A few are violent, a few more rage online, and social media makes them sound like a multitude. But they are not. They are the few. And they do not define us. Across the country, Democrats and Republicans united to meet Kirk’s death with grief. College Democrats and Republicans stood together to condemn the violence. In New York, the Yankees paused to honor Kirk’s life:
His death came on the eve of September 11th. I was living in New York on the third anniversary of the attacks. I’ll never forget that night as I sat on the bank of the Potomac River and watched two massive lights from Manhattan cut into the sky.
I’m no longer in New York. But every year, on September 11, I keep a ritual. I watch BOATLIFT. I encourage you to join me for twelve minutes that reveal the truth of tragedy: the vast majority of men and women stay civil, and many rise as heroes.
Some commit evil. That is true. But most of us are good – and this goodness endures only when we are vigilant to protect the institutions that make it possible.
