Editors at National Review Online place conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination in context.
[W]hat we do know is that the murder of Kirk, while he was engaging with young Americans, is a tragic loss for his wife and two children and a shocking event that may herald a turn toward greater political violence in America. …
… Kirk’s rise came during an era when younger leftists abandoned the free-speech values that their ideological predecessors once espoused. It featured escalating attacks on conservative speakers — efforts to cancel them, to shout them down, to throw objects at them, to make threats. Despite all of this, Kirk continued to tour college campuses, to take hostile questions, and to engage with people who passionately disagreed with him. He did his ideological adversaries the favor of taking their questions seriously. This alone was a significant contribution to our civil society.
Then, on Wednesday, Kirk was shot and killed while on stage fielding a question about shootings by transgender individuals.
In a free republic, citizens are supposed to resolve their differences by arguing passionately with one another and then voting for public executives and lawmakers. Political violence is a direct threat to the foundations of our free society, and it must be condemned by all people of goodwill, with no throat-clearing or “buts.”
Disturbingly, we have seen an uptick in politically motivated violence over the past several years, not seen since the 1970s — from the shooting of Republicans at the 2017 congressional baseball practice to last year’s assassination attempts against Donald Trump to the killings of Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota. The attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, fortunately, didn’t get as far. Another politically adjacent act, the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was contextualized by prominent Democratic politicians and even celebrated in some ugly corridors of the online left.
