- Charlie Kirk exemplified the virtues that support a free and democratic society: humility, tolerance, and a commitment to civil, rational debate
- His killer exemplified the vices that have repeatedly destroyed such societies: dogmatism, intolerance, and an implacable demand for ideological conformity
- To honor Charlie’s memory, and for the good of our country, we should follow his example and encourage others to do the same
Note: This is an abridged version of a talk I presented last month at an event called “A Tribute to Charlie Kirk, Champion of the Constitution.” The event was organized by Moms for Liberty and took place in Hillsborough, NC.
Charlie Kirk and his killer represent two sides of an ancient philosophical, ethical, and political divide. On one side of that divide are people like Charlie. People who are humble enough to recognize that everyone is fallible. People who, for that very reason, treat everyone with tolerance and respect, even those with whom they disagree. People who — also for that reason — think civil, rational debate is the best way to search for truth and resolve our disagreements. These are the republican virtues that made America free and prosperous.
On the other side of the divide are people like Charlie’s killer. People who are convinced of their own righteousness. People who regard everyone who disagrees with them as enemies who are beyond redemption. People who feel justified in silencing their enemies by any means necessary. These authoritarian vices have destroyed republican governments in the past, and today they threaten everything that has made our country great.
America’s founding fathers were clearly on Charlie’s side of the divide. They believed in humility, tolerance, and civil debate. That’s why the Constitution provides for a system of limited government in which the power to make law is delegated to representative, deliberative bodies. It’s also why it explicitly protects freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to assemble peaceably, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Those constitutional arrangements made America the freest country in the world, and they made it possible for us to become the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world as well. What’s more, to the extent other countries followed our example, those countries flourished, too. As a result, for more than a century after the American founding, liberal democracies in the Western world enjoyed an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity.
Unfortunately, it didn’t last. By the end of 19th century many intellectual and political leaders in the West had turned against the republican ideal of limited government and individual rights and transferred their allegiance to political ideologies that offered a more exciting vision of the future. In the United States, intellectuals who had become bored with liberal democracy were attracted to what they called “progressivism.” In Europe, communism and fascism vied for the allegiance of the same groups. We can debate the impact of progressivism on this side of the Atlantic, but the impact of communism and fascism on Europe was unquestionably awful.
Having abandoned the republican ideal and the virtues upon which it was based, the radicals didn’t hesitate to use lies and propaganda to frighten and polarize the public. Knowing that nothing would increase the public’s sense of fear and hostility more than the spectacle of blood in the streets, they didn’t hesitate to use violence against their political opponents as well.
In country after country, those tactics worked. The Communists took control of Russia in 1922, the Fascists took control of Italy in 1925, the National Socialists took control of Germany in 1933, and similar radical movements took control of other countries around the world in the years that followed.
Once in power, the leaders of the new regimes plunged the world into an orgy of death and destruction on a scale that would previously have been unimaginable. They invaded and subjugated their neighbors, they persecuted and murdered millions of their own people, and they initiated a global war that caused 100 million deaths and left much of Europe and Asia in ruins.
That disaster brought at least some people to their senses. In most Western countries there was a conscious effort to revive republican institutions and the republican virtues that supported them. Moreover, while the persecution and murder continued behind the Iron Curtain, by the 1990s there were signs that things were changing even there. The Soviet Union collapsed, China opened its doors to western corporate investors, and the world learned the full extent of the crimes against humanity committed under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. It seemed for a while that the entireworld might finally recognize the enduring value of freedom and democracy, of limited government and individual rights, and of humility, tolerance, and civil discourse.
Sadly, however, as time went by, dogmatism, violence, and censorship began once again to exercise their perennial appeal. Far from accepting that civil, rational debate is the best way to discover the truth and resolve our disagreements, a large and growing number of people have begun to insist that, “I am right, and you are wrong, and if you persist in saying the wrong thing, you will be punished.”
Charlie Kirk’s murderer took that attitude to the limit, but the difference between silencing someone by killing them and accomplishing the same thing by getting them censored, fired, or locked up is one of degree rather than kind. We’ve seen people on the left doing those things for years, and lately, I’m sorry to say, we’ve also been seeing more and more of that kind of behavior on the right. Ironically, some of the worst examples on the right — calls for people to be fired for things they’ve said on social media and threats against broadcasters who air offensive jokes — have come in response to Charlie’s murder.
Too many people are looking at the world in terms of friends and enemies. Too many have rejected America’s founding ideals and founding institutions. And far too many are prepared to use violence to silence their enemies and intimidate them into submission.
This is the path that Europe went down a century ago. We simply cannot allow it to happen here today, and Charlie Kirk wouldn’t want us to. He exemplified the republican virtues that made America great. The best way to honor his memory is for us to cultivate those virtues in our own lives and encourage others to do the same.
For more information see:
The Constitution and its enemies
What really divides us as Americans?
The left’s long war on the Constitution
