On Charlie Kirk and Free Speech

 On September 10th, 2025 Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a lone gunman from a safe vantage point.

Permit me to enumerate at least some of the reasons this is morally abhorrent.

Political assassination , even the attempt, is the pinnacle of moral cowardice. How much courage does it take to hide on a rooftop and pull a trigger, then run away? How does one person have the right to make moral and final judgements on another? It is purely and simply cowardice at the grandest possible scale.

Free speech is a guaranteed right of every person in this nation.  A right I have stated may times I would die to protect as hundreds of thousands of people already have. Anybody and everybody has the right to express their opinion openly and without threat of physical retribution. Dissent is part of the process. Disagreement and reasoned discourse -persuasion- is the way it works. To remove a conversation from the arena cheats the whole society. Cheating means you don't believe you can win, so you don't even try. Again, cowardice.

The logical corollary to free speech, the right to state your opinion openly and without threat, is the choice not to listen. You have every right to say whatever you want. I have every right not to hear you. On April 14, 1984, the Ku Klux Klan marched up Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas to the State Capital. They procured a permit from the city to do so and followed all the legal niceties that were required for them to march, as was their constitutional right. The editor of the Austin American-Statesman at the time (who was Jewish) wrote an op-ed piece defending their right to march. He also encouraged everyone NOT to attend. He postulated that if the Klan marched up an empty avenue, if they could not upset anyone, they would not further invest their time and money in marching on the state capital. As a resident of Austin at the time, I am proud to say that this advise was largely followed. The Klan marched up an avenue lined by Austin police and maybe a dozen rabble-rousers from other groups attempting to get publicity. While the Klan was afforded their rights, the citizens of Texas exercised their corollary rights of not paying attention. The Klan has never made that march since then.

Charlie Kirk made his living, supported his family and his community by exercising his right to speak. I most vehemently disagreed with his suppositions, but would not dream of denying his right to have and speak them in the public sphere. I chose to exercise my corollary rights. I did not hear him. As with the Klan in Austin, if enough people exercise the right not to listen, Charlie would have been out of a job. The other avenue open to every citizen was to engage Charlie in reasoned discourse - argue with him- and persuade his audience that, if enacted in policy, his opinions had consequences that would be unpopular if not catastrophic. 

Persuasion, not violence, is the American way. Reason and logic are the sole tools of every social endeavor. Violence can only achieve chaos. Political violence must be anathema to the society writ large. You don't have to agree, you don't have to listen, but you must allow the freedom to speak. If you take away Charlie's right to speak, you ultimately remove your own.