The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has understandably prompted intense reactions from people across the political spectrum, some productive and some not. But perhaps the bravest and most noble reaction comes from Kirk’s widow, Erika.
Calling upon her Christian faith, Erika Kirk declared before a massive audience at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona that she forgives the killer.
“I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do,” she said. “The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.”
Whether someone has religious convictions or not, that is a show of strength rarely seen in the thin-skinned, perpetually hostile political climate of the last many years.
Erika Kirk has also committed to continuing her late husband’s mission as CEO of Turning Point USA. “[Y[es, campus events will continue and we will continue to hold debates and dialogue,” she said.
While the murderer of her husband wished to silence Charlie Kirk’s message, Kirk’s legacy of engaging with people he disagreed with in an open forum will hopefully live on.
It’s all a lesson instructive to both sides of the political spectrum.
American political rhetoric has become utterly hysterical, with both sides taking the old cliche that “the next election is the most important of our lifetime” to grandiose heights never before seen.
Instead of developing arguments or persuading people, both sides have retreated to their silos and erected their own media echo chambers. With so little exposure to the other side, it’s so much easier now to view people with different viewpoints as caricatured “enemies” rather than as people with different ways of seeing things.
That’s what made Charlie Kirk’s effort so effective and distinctive. He didn’t just talk to his own tribe, he talked through ideas and encouraged others to do the same. That’s why his death has impacted so many people.
We are hopeful that both sides use this tragedy to dial back the hysterics and commit to better rhetoric and more dialogue.
We can only hope that the left, which is still sorting itself out after its humiliating defeat in the 2024 elections, realizes that it cannot keep up the hysterics of the last decade. It is the left, after all, that championed cancel culture as a method of political intimidation, elevated the idea that words are violence and has taken to calling every Republican the next Hitler since forever.
Whether it’s the ongoing digital witch hunt against every single person who utters anything critical of Charlie Kirk or the recent federal jawboning of broadcasters to temporarily suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show, the right needs to go beyond mere vengeance and follow Kirk’s lead.
The right must not devolve into an inverse of the woke mobs of the last many years who terrorized Americans with threats of firings for saying mildly conservative things.
If you are confident in your ideas, you should not fear free speech.