The U.S. Senate has declared this day of the year, October 14, to be a national day of remembrance for Charlie Kirk. As much as I disagreed with nearly everything Kirk said, I can see a kind of logic in this.
Having Kirk stand as a symbol of the right to free speech is appropriate precisely because so many of his stated views were so horrifying: Black pilots being incompetent by definition, all black women being stupid, all Muslims being the enemy, Jews engineering a vast conspiracy to replace white people with “lesser” races, to name just a few of his opinions.
These were ugly and openly racist views by any definition, but that only serves to highlight the higher principle: It’s easy to defend free speech by kind and caring people. The real test comes when people express views that we find horrifying.
One of the best characteristics of the United States is its focus on everyone’s right to free speech, enshrined in our First Amendment. As Evelyn Beatrice Hall memorably put it, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
The fact that I find Kirk’s views to be so reprehensible makes it even more important to acknowledge that the proper response to speech is never violence, but rather other speech. The disturbed mind of young Tyler Robinson apparently couldn’t grasp this important principle, but we must.
That said, I suspect that the weird MAGA response of blaming liberals for his death is a defensive reaction. Kirk certainly had the right to believe that an “open carry” policy is worth the risk, but it is also true that this particular MAGA policy directly contributed to his death.
In an open carry state, a “good guy with a gun” — like many in that crowd in Utah that day — cannot do anything to stop a determined and disturbed killer like Tyler Robinson. Had Charlie Kirk been giving the same speech in the State of New York, which does not allow open carry, he would be alive today.
I suspect that much of the misplaced MAGA anger toward liberals in the wake of this tragedy comes largely from a defensive need to deny that obvious truth.