The Lesson of Charlie Kirk

“Fear can cow us into silence. Regardless of the assassin’s motive, that is what Kirk’s assassination has the potential to do."

Untitled, Kit Knuppel

John Coleman is the 22-year-old president of Dartmouth Conservatives from Pacific Palisades, California. He studies History and Government at Dartmouth College.

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I was sitting at the beach enjoying my last days of summer vacation when a notification popped up on my phone. “Charlie Kirk shot,” it read. Then a notification from a news outlet reported shots fired at a Charlie Kirk event. I could not believe it. Growing up conservative in liberal Los Angeles, Charlie Kirk was a fixture on my social media ‘for you’ pages. His willingness to boldly address controversial topics caught my attention. But it was his willingness to engage with seemingly anyone anywhere that drew me in. I knew many young people, primarily boys, who were pulled off the sidelines by Charlie Kirk — my youngest brother chief among them.

I started scrolling immediately, hoping that a would-be assassin had missed or a gun had gone off accidentally. Then I, like too many others, saw the video. First that grainy one from far away — it looked bad enough — then the infamous one. I dropped my phone and felt physically sick. “No, no, no, that can’t be real,” I thought. Group chats, from close friends on iMessage to my fraternity on GroupMe, started blowing up. My brother said the video had to have been manipulated. It looked too much like a Tarantino film. My liberal friends said the close-up video was perhaps the most disturbing real-life video they had ever seen. I picked up a call from a family member only to hear sobbing on the other end of the line. In an age when trauma is overused, the images of the assassination are truly sickening.

Genuine disgust and horror were the reactions in every single text message I got after the news broke. The sense seemed to be that something like this just does not happen in America. Then things changed. As the shock wore off, we started to discuss what this means for the country. The Los Angeles Times declared that civil war historians see parallels between the Kirk assassination and some of the worst moments of the antebellum period. Predictions of America’s accelerated decline, never few in these past couple of years, came to occupy a large part of the collective reaction.

Civil strife and even reactionary violence could certainly stem from Kirk’s assassination, but that does not need to be the case. The first step is mourning and remembering. Over the past two days, I have spent a lot of time doing that. I have mourned Charlie Kirk as a fellow conservative, for he was the de facto leader of a generation of young conservatives. I have mourned him as an American, for political violence strikes at the very root of our experiment and can only beget further violence. But most importantly, I have mourned him as a Christian, for we are called by God to abhor the destruction of all human life. That is how Kirk, who months ago said that he wanted to be primarily remembered for courage in his faith, would want us to mourn him.

There has been much consternation over Kirk’s assassination and what it means for the future of our democracy. Those questions need to be discussed, but they should never come before an acknowledgement of the simple human tragedy that occurred. A 31-year-old man with a wife and two young children, a man whose life was in its prime and full of promise, was shot to death in front of the world. That cannot become just another shocking event on which pundits pontificate. Too many of us have seen the video, have seen life leave someone, to deny the human tragedy. If we all, regardless of political affiliation, fail to mourn as is demanded in these situations, I fear we will be unable to heal as a nation in the way we must.

In the aftermath of Kirk’s assassination, politicians across the political spectrum have universally condemned political violence, and many seem genuinely shocked and saddened (Vice President JD Vance and Senator Bernie Sanders, for example). But I have also seen more disturbing responses on social media. Some on my side of the aisle — too many — have tied this assassination to leftist rhetoric and declared that we are “at war,” as if many besides the man who pulled the trigger need to pay dearly. Some on the other side — again, too many — have outright celebrated Kirk’s death or have written about their conflicted feelings, as if somehow Charlie Kirk’s opinions (not actions — because he never held any position with power to implement policy or make decisions that directly impacted people he never met — his only power was that of his words) potentially justify his murder. I simply cannot believe that anyone who mourns firstly for the loss of human life and thinks firstly of the now husbandless wife and fatherless children could respond in those ways.

If we first acknowledge the tragedy, we as a nation can begin to discuss how to ensure this never happens again because we can all agree that it was unequivocally wrong. Charlie himself gave us the key: “When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence.” He was right. We must never stop talking. In fact, we need to start talking a lot more.

This horrible event can be a turning point, a moment when we collectively decide to engage in political discourse, to talk and listen across political differences like Kirk did. As Senator Sanders said so well in his address after the shooting, “A free and democratic society…depends on the basic premise that people can speak out, organize, and take part in public life without fear.” That premise is enshrined in our First Amendment. Americans have long assumed that the greatest threat to free speech would come from an autocratic leader — that there would be warning and a chance to resist. But that is not necessarily the case. Our freedoms do not matter if we do not exercise them. Fear can cow us into silence. Regardless of the assassin’s motive, that is what Kirk’s assassination has the potential to do. I do not know how to save America, but I know that refusing to speak our minds and allowing political disagreements to boil up inside ourselves will certainly ruin it. Now is the time, regardless of your political views, to speak out, to have a conversation about anything political, and to see the humanity in those with whom you disagree.

Unfortunately, it is also harder now than it has ever been. Gallup reports that political polarization is at an all time high. Americans are literally moving, often across state lines, to live with people who think more like them. Social media functions such that even if we cannot move to avoid our political opposites, we can pass our days in an algorithm that feeds us more and more of what we want to see. But conversations need to happen regardless of difficulty. Do not let politics subsume someone’s identity; have the conversations, engage when engaging is hard or awkward, and you will be much better off for it. America will be too.

Those conversations cannot simply be sharing your own views and listening as someone shares his. Ask questions. Try to understand why he thinks the way he does. Is it life experience or a fundamental political philosophy? Dig deep, and when you talk with people with whom you disagree, though you may find common ground, you will certainly find another person who reasons just as you do, who experiences the same emotions you do, and who may just happen to feel differently about one specific issue. I am a conservative Republican born and raised in one of the most liberal cities in the United States (Los Angeles), and I go to one of the more liberal schools in America. On my very first day of orientation at Dartmouth College, I remember a conversation with some people I had just met. They did not know where I stood politically and, laughing, one of them said she often “forgets Republicans exist” and had certainly never been friends with one. I became friends with them nevertheless, and through a series of little moments, my politics eventually became clear. But we had developed a friendship before discussing politics and had, as a friend group, come to know and respect each other as individuals.

Charlie Kirk was a giant of the young right. He is primarily responsible for the political awakenings of millions, including many of my friends and family. But turn on any news channel or visit any news website and you will see countless stories from people who knew him and the insides of his movement far better than I ever did. To me, Charlie Kirk was someone fundamentally committed to discourse. He died doing what he loved. He was not giving a speech but engaging with students. His very tour was named “Prove Me Wrong.” He was not preaching. He was inviting questions and opposing viewpoints. The possibility he was wrong was always there. He spent his working life asking students and average Americans to engage with one of the biggest names in politics. Charlie Kirk founded an organization with thousands of chapters and hundreds of thousands of members. Many considered him the most prominent unelected conservative in America. When was the last time someone of his stature did that?

Charlie Kirk stood for a lot of things, though many see him as someone who stood only for his opinions. They would be right had he never given anyone the chance to challenge him. But that was not the case. As Vice President Vance tweeted, Kirk was primarily “working to broaden the scope of acceptable debate.” He was working to make it easier to have conversations. His opinions were not always popular, but by repeatedly engaging with political opponents, he was doing the work needed to avoid the very political violence that killed him.

Charlie Kirk’s death must not be in vain. As Americans, we must rise to the occasion. We must talk more and debate more, even if that means expressing opinions with which Kirk would have vehemently disagreed. That’s how we turn something so dark, something with the potential to ruin America, into something that can save it.