As has become well-known by now, on Wednesday conservative activist and Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk, 31, was murdered during the fall kickoff of “The American Comeback Tour” held on the campus of Utah Valley University. Kirk was a fixture on college campuses throughout the United States, promoting debate and dialogue across the ideological spectrum, and he was killed doing the very thing he committed much of his life to—defending the sacrosanct right to free speech.
His murder, however, is not an aberration, but the latest incident of political violence in the United States, which has found itself in the throes of political polarization, amplified by sensationalism across political lines.
As it happens, Matthew Santucci, a colleague of mine who works in the Acton Institute’s Rome office, penned an article last July following the attempted assassination of then-candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Penn. His words are prescient and worth pondering below.
What begins as rhetorical sparring can precipitously devolve into animosity, setting the stage for a never-ending cycle of violence. In an ecosystem of dehumanized politics, political leaders, and by extension their supporters, become abstracted to the point of being mere symbols. Human dignity, then, is no longer viewed as an innate characteristic but is conditioned on political affiliation.
Violence, when employed against a political adversary, is not only viewed with indifference but becomes morally justifiable in democratic societies to protect against perceived threats to its treasured institutions. …
The prevalence, and near justification, of political violence reveals a striking gap between the common values we purport to uphold and our willingness to depart from them to reach political ends. We need to rediscover a human politics, one that respects the innate dignity of the human. It is this absolute moral criterion that allows for the full expression of authentic freedom. Anything less than that is not only cynical but tantamount to self-destruction.
The ubiquity and legitimization of violence not only stresses our democratic institutions and civil society but undermines free speech—which is tantamount to freedom.
Now is not the time for politicization. Instead, it is not only imperative but also our duty to create a moment for clear and principled moral thinking that, pray God, may have a salutary and positive political result. May we all be united in prayer for the repose of Kirk’s soul and in supporting his wife and two young children.
