The assassination of Charlie Kirk has revealed something uncomfortable about our national soul. In the hours since his murder, I’ve watched people struggle with a basic human response: grief over the violent death of a young father. This has deeply saddened me, as have the other acts of violence that have marked our recent days - the shooting at Evergreen High School in Colorado where 16-year-old Desmond Holly wounded two students before taking his own life , the unprovoked stabbing murder of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on Charlotte’s light rail by Decarlos Brown Jr. in August , and the attack on Senator Hoffman and his wife.
These tragedies, unfolding over recent weeks and months, paint a portrait of a nation where violence has become our default response to frustration, mental illness, political disagreement, and human brokenness. Each incident reflects a different facet of our crisis: political assassination, school violence, random urban crime, and attacks on public servants. Yet they share a common thread - the complete breakdown of our ability to resolve conflict without bloodshed.
Kirk’s murder on September 10th wasn’t just about politics. Holly’s rampage at Evergreen High that same day wasn’t just about mental health. Zarutska’s killing on August 22nd wasn’t just about urban crime. These are symptoms of a deeper sickness - our transformation into a society that has forgotten how to disagree without demonizing, how to struggle without destroying, how to be human without being violent.
What breaks my heart is realizing that each perpetrator was once someone’s child with potential. Tyler Robinson’s father had to recognize his own son in FBI photos and make the agonizing decision to turn him in. Desmond Holly’s family discovered their 16-year-old had been “radicalized by some extremist network.” Decarlos Brown’s sister believes her brother “suffered a disastrous mental break” while struggling with homelessness and mental illness. These families now carry an unimaginable burden - grieving not only for the victims but for the children they thought they knew.
Kirk represented something we’re losing: the courage to engage with those who disagree with us. He set up tables on college campuses with his “Prove Me Wrong” branding, urging people to debate him rather than silence him. “If you believe in something, you need to have the courage to fight for those ideas - not run away from them or try and silence them,” he once said. This philosophy - that ideas should compete in the marketplace of debate rather than be settled by violence - is exactly what we’ve abandoned.
Consider the contrast: Kirk spent his final moments wearing a white shirt with the word “FREEDOM” in black letters, casually flinging caps into a crowd of 3,000 people before taking his seat under the tent reading “PROVE ME WRONG.” He was doing what democracy requires - engaging directly with critics, answering hard questions, trusting that better ideas would prevail through argument rather than force. Meanwhile, Holly was loading ammunition into a revolver, planning to “fire and reload, fire and reload” at his classmates. Weeks earlier, Brown had unfolded a pocketknife to stab a stranger three times in the throat.
The difference isn’t just in their actions - it’s in their fundamental beliefs about how human conflict should be resolved. Kirk believed in persuasion; they chose violence. Kirk trusted in dialogue; they embraced destruction. Kirk saw opponents as people to be convinced; they saw targets to be eliminated.
“I’m trying to be proactive about encouraging dialogue between people who disagree,” Kirk told CNN in 2021. Even his critics acknowledged this. Student journalist Levi Coovert, who had debated Kirk and called some of his views “very, very hateful,” still wrote after his death: “What he did really well to inspire young people was he talked about giving their life a purpose.” As Vice President J.D. Vance noted, “If you actually watch Charlie’s events—they are one of the few places with open and honest dialogue between left and right.”
This is what we’re losing when we choose violence over dialogue. Iryna Zarutska had fled war in Ukraine only to be murdered while simply trying to get home from work. Matthew Silverstone and another student remain in critical condition because their classmate chose bullets over words. Kirk will never again challenge young people to think critically about their beliefs. Each act of violence doesn’t just end lives - it ends possibilities, conversations, and the chance for human connection.
The aftermath of Kirk’s murder tells a powerful story: “more than 18,000 new chapter requests” for his organization since the assassination. Violence intended to silence ideas often amplifies them instead. This should remind us that the pen truly is mightier than the sword - but only if we have the courage to keep writing, keep talking, keep engaging even when it’s difficult or dangerous.
We live in an era where 34 percent of college students now say using violence to stop someone from speaking on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases - an increase of 10 percentage points over the last four years. We’ve normalized the idea that some speech is so offensive it justifies physical response. But where does that logic end? If we accept violence against speakers we dislike, how do we object when that violence spreads to schools, to public transit, to anywhere human beings disagree?
These recent tragedies - from Charlotte’s light rail in August to Utah Valley University and Evergreen High School in September - represent different manifestations of the same cultural rot. Whether driven by political extremism, mental illness, or random violence, each incident reflects our society’s growing acceptance of force as the solution to human problems.
The families of these perpetrators deserve our compassion, not our condemnation. As one expert noted about Robinson’s family: “Life is never going to be the same for them… to think that their own blood was capable of carrying out such a heinous act. It has got to be a weight that none of us could ever imagine on our shoulders.” They too are victims of our cultural embrace of violence as conflict resolution.
Kirk’s legacy should be more Americans willing to engage in the kind of fearless dialogue he modeled - with words, not weapons. As one free speech scholar noted, “I do think it is to Kirk’s credit that in his own campus appearances he was open to debate.” That openness to engagement, that willingness to face critics directly, that faith in the power of ideas to compete fairly - these are the qualities our democracy desperately needs.
The conversations Kirk was having with young people about free speech, civic responsibility, and political engagement must continue. The safety Iryna Zarutska sought in America must be restored. The hope that students like Matthew Silverstone can learn and grow without fear of violence must be rekindled.
But these things will only happen if we choose dialogue over destruction, engagement over elimination, persuasion over violence. Kirk believed ideas should compete in the marketplace of debate. His death, alongside these other recent tragedies, reminds us what happens when we abandon that marketplace for the battlefield.
The choice is ours. We can honor the victims by returning to the hard work of democracy - listening to those we disagree with, engaging with ideas that challenge us, and proving that in America, the best argument still wins. Or we can continue down this path where violence becomes our answer to every frustration, disagreement, and human failing.
Kirk died believing in the better angels of our nature. The question is whether we still believe in them too.
