So where do we go now?
The assassination of Charlie Kirk was a "where were you" moment. What we do in the aftermath?
"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies...Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
— Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address (1861)
It usually takes a few days to process a tragedy. I’m old — I’ll be 70 later this month — but I remember the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I didn’t understand it until later, after it rose to a “where were you” status. I was eight years old, in third grade, and my adolescent brain knew something cataclysmic had happened but didn’t know how to respond. The world was dispirited and bereaved. Broadcast news was somber, but really, I couldn’t see the magnitude. The Zapruder film wasn’t released until 12 years later. Again, I was 8. “Oh, the president died. That’s terrible. Where’s my bat and ball?”
The killings of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy had more impact, I suppose. I was 12, and I understood that two really good men, righteous men, had been murdered. The gravity of the “where were you” shibboleth had a little more meaning. But honestly, the first real WTF moment for me was John Lennon’s assassination in 1980. I was driving home from a night class at San Diego State when I heard the news on the radio. I felt it viscerally and turned off the road to cry. Imagine.
Of course, 9/11 stands alone in its enormity. Enough said. But Charlie Kirk’s assassination, a violent, grotesque act, stands out as perhaps the most significant single political assassination of the 21st century.
The Shock
The response, the vitriol, the off-the-charts clusterfuck reaction about the accused killer’s ideology and ancillary topics have been deafening. The memes. The conjecture. The lies. Such is the state of the news. It’s too much to take in, too much to cover here.
What could have driven a confused, immature young man to commit such a heinous act? Was it just hatred, or something else? Was his relationship with his transgender roommate a factor, or is he just the normal, run-of-the-mill psychotic? Or something even more bizarre? (see: Groypers) And on and on …
“Kirk’s death feels like a watershed. It is the most stunning evidence we have to date that America is becoming two nations, divided not only by politics but by culture, lifestyle, psychology, and epistemology.”
— Matthew Continetti, Director of Domestic Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute
I agree with Continetti.
However, the details are just too much. Cognitive dissonance. You can get the performative outrage, finger-pointing and “whataboutisms” from Fox or MSNBC. I’ll await the trial.
I want to understand the context and what to do next.
What Next?
The New York Times’ Ezra Klein offered some solace in his story headlined: “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics The Right Way.” He was both humble and magnanimous. But the rest of the response was mind-numbing in its inveterate hate.
So I’ve turned to The Free Press, a highly successful independent media organization that seems to be the most grounded in its coverage of the aftermath.
In the days after the assassination, The Free Press ran a series of essays from prominent thinkers and writers, each offering their perspective on the state of the country and how best to move forward. They include Yuval Levin, Coleman Hughes, Abigail Shrier, Tyler Cowen, Sam Harris, Greg Lukianoff and Peter Savodnik.
Here are synopses, in their own words, of what each had to say …
Yuval Levin: “Have An Argument”
(Yuval Levin is an Israeli-American political analyst, academic, and journalist.)
Breaking through our divisions and lowering the temperature of our politics, therefore doesn’t call for less disagreement and argument but for more. And it will require us to make those arguments concrete, and not just symbolic—to define substantive, tractable policy goals and then submit ourselves to the structured negotiating processes of our political system and our civic life to achieve them.
“Our political adversaries will still be here tomorrow …”
Our politics does not consist of friends and enemies. It consists of fellow citizens who share a common future and disagree about how best to shape it. Those disagreements are serious.
But no resolution to them could be absolute or permanent. Our political adversaries will still be here tomorrow; they will be part of any future we build. Any politics not premised on that reality will be dangerously delusional and can only point us down.
Coleman Hughes: “Demand Nonviolence”
(Coleman Hughes is an author, writer and visiting professor at the University of Texas-Austin)
In speech after speech, Dr. (Martin Luther) King didn’t just make the case against violence—he made the case for nonviolence. One of his main arguments was that the public assumes that your movement means telegraphing its ends. If your means are violent, people will assume that your ends are violent too, no matter what you say to convince them otherwise.
By contrast, if your means are peaceful, they will assume that your ends are also peaceful, and they will be much more open to persuasion. This is what Dr. King’s instinct told him; all these years later, we now have data that bears out his observation. The political scientist Erica Chenoweth, for instance, has found that in the second half of the twentieth century, nonviolent resistance movements had twice the success rate of violent resistance movements.
It will thus always be the case that the argument for nonviolence has to be made forcefully and frequently. And it must be made not only by appealing to the virtue of self-restraint and not inflicting harm on someone else, though that is important. It must also be made by appealing to self-interest. If you want your political movement to succeed, you are better off adopting a nonviolent approach.
Abigail Shriver: “Parent Your Kids”
(Abigail Shriver is an author and former columnist for the Wall Street Journal)
The single most important job of any parent—to raise good people—is one so many of us are failing.
In a single generation, the job of transmitting our system of beliefs to our kids has become exponentially more difficult. Our kids are consuming more, and worse, messages than any generation in living memory—emanating from every corner of the culture.
Our kids feast on a noxious social media diet, silently in their bedrooms, on devices we purchased for them.
Influencers incite hatred and seed rage. Online social “communities” fester with bitterness, hopelessness, and envy.
Loneliness, the inevitable result of overconsumption of digital content and the breakdown in mating and dating, encourages young people to find a group—any group—where they can experience a sense of belonging.
Gently as I can, I remind them that they are the parents—the kids’ authority. Inhabit that role with confidence, or someone else will. Talk to your kids. Start when they’re very young. Tell them what you believe. Take them to a church or synagogue that reflects your beliefs (don’t assume; be certain). And then, yes, make them go.
Tyler Cowen: “Stop Blaming ‘Them’”
(Tyler Cowen is an American economist, columnist, and podcaster. He is a professor at George Mason University, where he holds the Holbert L. Harris chair in the economics department.)
Stop saying “they did this,” when it is individuals who act and choose.
One claim I have seen on social media since Wednesday — and for that matter, from our president — is that “the left” murdered Charlie Kirk. I would instead consider the individual who has been charged with the murder, Tyler Robinson. “The left,” if you do wish to regard that notion collectively, has said and done many objectionable things along the way, but it did not pull the trigger.
Suggesting otherwise isn’t just to argue a falsehood. It’s also a bad tactic. Blaming a group of people for a murder they did not commit is hardly going to persuade those individuals to adopt more sensible political positions.
Greg Lukianoff: “Bury the ‘Words Are Violence’ Cliché”
(Greg Lukianoff is the president and CEO of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. THEFIre.org)
Upholding that distinction is the North Star of everything I do as president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). For years, I’ve warned that equating words with violence erases the bright line liberal societies drew after centuries of bloodshed. The law draws this line with precision. Advocacy, even vile advocacy, remains protected unless it is intended and likely to produce imminent lawless action.
Our culture has been teaching young people to scorn that everyday civic courage and to treat contested speech as a kind of physical harm. On that Utah campus, we received the final proof that “words are like bullets” is a poisonous and cruel metaphor.
Our culture has been teaching young people to scorn that everyday civic courage and to treat contested speech as a kind of physical harm. On that Utah campus, we received the final proof that “words are like bullets” is a poisonous and cruel metaphor.
So what do we do? First, bury the “words are violence” cliché. I have pointed out before that it was always self-serving nonsense, a way to claim moral high ground while reaching for the duct tape. But after Utah, it is grotesque. Anyone trying to argue that speech is violence should be treated with sneers, jeers, condemnation, and a recommendation that if they really want to live in a society in which there is no bright line distinction between speech and violence, they should try living in the thirteenth century.
Peter Savodnik: “Be a Leader”
Peter Savodnik is senior editor at The Free Press. Previously, he wrote for Vanity Fair, as well as GQ, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian and Wired.
(On which politicians spoke best …)
But it was (Utah governor Spencer) Cox, a Republican, and (Bernie) Sanders, the Democratic Socialist senator from Massachusetts, who stood out. Cox because he seemed so authentic, even vulnerable. Sanders, because he refused to go along with the pat, cookie-cutter press release, determined, as he was, to make an important point about pluralism and liberalism and all that. There was something refreshing about a grown man speaking to the adults of this country in a serious and substantive way.
Both the Republican governor and the progressive senator pointed toward a better politics — one that, ironically, tragically, Kirk, who did more perhaps than anyone else in this country to help elect Donald Trump, could not envision.
“To my young friends out there,” Cox said as he was winding up, “you are inheriting a country where politics feels like rage. It feels like rage is the only option. But through those words, we have a reminder that we can choose a different path.”
Sam Harris: “Log Off”
Sam Harris is an American author, philosopher and, neuroscientist.
Since deleting my Twitter account nearly three years ago, I’ve generally ignored social media. However, in the last 48 hours, I’ve spent enough time studying the response to Kirk’s death to be further convinced that platforms like X and TikTok are destroying our culture. No metaphor does the problem justice. I’ve compared social media to a dangerous psychological experiment, a hallucination machine, a funhouse mirror, a digital sewer—but nothing captures the ludicrous insults, moral injuries, and delusions that millions of us avidly produce and consume online.
“I’ve compared social media to a dangerous psychological experiment, a hallucination machine, a funhouse mirror, a digital sewer …”
—Sam Harris
If the medium is the message, the message is mass psychosis—and it will send us careening from one political emergency to the next. The fact that some of the most deranging and divisive content is being created (or amplified) by foreign adversaries — and that we have literally built and monetized their capacity to do this — beggars belief. We are poisoning ourselves and inviting others to poison us.
There is no “party of murder” in this country.
Get off social media.
Read good books and real journalism.
Find your friends.
And enjoy your life.
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Jim Geschke was inducted into the prestigious Marquis “Who’s Who” registry in 2021.
I wish Mark Zuckerberg had not invented FaceBook, the beginning of social media. He thought that the platform would bring people together, a kind of Kumbaya. The spread of this into Instagram and TikTok has shown us what finding out what our "neighbors" think is not a good thing.