I cannot claim to know conservative activist Charlie Kirk or his politics well. When I saw the headline that he had been shot, I thought, “The name seems familiar but I’m not sure who that is”. So I checked for a picture, and sure enough, I knew him. I remembered him from Youtube shorts where he engaged in generally polite and respectful debates with people. And it wasn’t always videos that tried to vilify your opponent or make them look stupid. Sometimes, you could see the other side making valid points and being just as respectful of the debate. For me, this was a breath of fresh air from the culture war that plagues our society today. A symbol of what dissent in a democratic free society should look like: respectful debate. His death and the celebration of it is an attack of one of the fundamental pillars of a free society: free speech.
Free speech is the foundation of a free society, and it is under attack from all angles. From the UK’s draconian laws to the EU’s Chat Control legislation, to the rise of cancel culture in the U.S., and now, violence—free speech is at risk. The possibility of dissent, even in the most repressive times, has led to the many freedoms we enjoy today: democracy, women’s suffrage, and civil rights movements, to name a few.
At the heart of the growing culture war is a fear that we as a society can no longer disagree without severe consequences. Cyberbullying, cancel culture, and the vilification of those who remotely disagree with us all point to a society where toleration is becoming the exception rather than the rule. This is dangerous territory.
“I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
― Voltaire
What about his politics? What of the harm they have caused?
I don’t care. And you shouldn’t either.
Before writing this article, I didn’t do a deep dive into Kirk’s politics to determine whether or not his death was worthy of condemnation. Quite frankly, it doesn’t matter. If a person has engaged in relatively peaceful discourse, nothing justifies violence against that person. We cannot normalise violence as a means of showing disapprobation or shutting someone up no matter how controversial their views might be. That is not the society we want to live in.
We don’t want a society in which our neighbours are tight-lipped over what they truly think. We don’t want a society where people are fearful of engaging in discussion. This will only lead to a society where we understand one another less and are skeptical of the next person because we cannot even figure out what is going on in their heads.
No matter where on or off the political spectrum you stand, this should concern you. Because you want to be free to make your own decisions and voice them out without fear of dying for them. You want more people like Charlie Kirk to boldly go around sharing their politics, engaging in productive discussions. They might persuade you on some issues or they might not convince you at all. Either way, you understand them better. You know what their main arguments are and how to counter them. Most importantly, you can view the other side as human beings with different views. Not evil villains that you should hate.
Kirk’s death is an escalation of the culture war. A society in which people are afraid to end up like Kirk is a society where free speech is dead. Maybe we are currently so comfortable with the freedom of speech we have that we take it for granted. But we must not forget that people fought for it, and we should defend it with all our might.
We need people to embrace peaceful and respectful discourse as a means of political expression. We also need to condemn actions that threaten this principle. The future of the free society may very well depend on it.
This piece solely expresses the opinion of the author and not necessarily the magazine as a whole. SpeakFreely is committed to facilitating a broad dialogue for liberty, representing a variety of opinions. Support freedom and independent journalism by donating today.
