The Price We Pay...

There will be a lot written and said about the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk for years to come. This particular gun crime has all the elements of drama and conflicting narratives that will keep all sides of our media and the political world happily obsessed for a very long time.

A number of friends, knowing my personal political history have reached out asking for my thoughts on the shooting. I will confess those thoughts are complicated. But ok, since you asked.

Let’s get the few things clear up front…

Firstly, I am, as everyone should be, horrified by the shooting death of Charlie Kirk. Just as everyone should be equally horrified by the 330,587 firearm deaths in the United States so far this year. Including the 302 deaths in 309 mass shootings that have occurred in the US since January.

I have written many times that America does not have a “gun problem” it as much as it has a Gun Fetish. As a culture, guns get America’s d*ck hard. In the United States, we glorify guns (and gun violence) in media, entertainment and popular culture to such an extent, it makes the rest of the world look at us and wonder how we haven’t yet managed collectively to kill ourselves off in an orgy of horny crossfire.

Our political discourse is overflowing with such metaphors. A politician is a “straight shooter” , One party will have a particular issue “in the crosshairs”. A political scandal will have a “smoking gun”. People we disagree with are “targeted”. And in perhaps the most Freudian slip of all, one party will use the “nuclear option” against the opposition.

Secondly, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed because of his political, sociocultural and racial beliefs. He is as much a victim of political assassination as Malcom X or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. How I, or anyone else may feel about Kirk’s beliefs is irrelevant to this forensic fact. This was a crime of political violence to silence / punish someone because of their views and is equally as unacceptable as any other such crime in American history.

Thirdly, we should be shocked but not surprised by this. To be clear, nothing Charlie Kirk has ever said or done warranted being murdered. Just as James H. Barrett., John Bayard Britton, MD., David Gunn, MD., Shannon Lowney, Jennifer Markovsky, Leanne Nichols, Robert Sanderson., Barnett Slepian, MD or George Tiller, MD did not deserve to die for providing legal and safe reproductive medical care to women.

Yet Kirk had publicly called for the arrest , and capital murder prosecution of any health care professional who provides such care.

Likewise Former Minnesota Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, did nothing to cause their murder. Gunned down in their home last June, in a politically motivated killing,

Yet in the wake of the Kirks death, it is hard to ignore his rationalization of gun deaths in America as an acceptable price to pay for his preferred ideology. Including his interpretation of the 2nd Amendment’s right to bear arms as unquestionable, entirely un-regulatable and utterly sacrosanct. Kirk in his words two years ago:

“I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”

The fact this this statement was one of more less provocative and controversial ones made by Kirk over the course of his career is unavoidable context when looking what at happened in Utah.

Charlie Kirk spent his professional life rhetorically attacking and often encouraging violence against those he disagreed with. I could fill page after page with quotes and examples of this but I have neither the time nor inclination. If you are curious you can find some of what I’m talking about here: https://www.theguardian.com/.../charlie-kirk-quotes-beliefs

It can be said, that Charlie Kirk died the way he wanted the rest of us to live. Where violence is an acceptable price to pay, if it serves to further your ideology over those you disagree with.

Back in College I was the editorial editor of one of the two student newspapers on campus. Our particular publication had a decidedly conservative slant. In 1990 the newspaper sponsored an event in the large concourse of the student union building to mark the 200th Anniversary of the Bill of Rights.

Speakers included student organization leaders, staff from the paper including myself, and Mark Belling a local Wisconsin conservative talk radio host known for his right-wing views and who, like Kirk had a long history of provocative and incendiary statements.

The event was protested by a collection of more left-learning student groups and individuals, and quickly devolved into violence with protesters throwing hard objects like ice, small rocks, and coins at the stage.

During my prepared remarks, (on the importance of the First Amendment protecting all points of view) , my eyeglasses were knocked off my face and broken and my face sustained a minor cut by the objects being thrown. It got to the point that Belling and the other speakers had to exit the area for their own safety.

The great irony being had my physical attackers actually heard my remarks they would have largely agreed with everything I was saying. But the climate of political division that had developed in the context of the first gulf war, played right into the idea that even listening to someone you disagree with was unacceptable, and instead they must be silenced.

In the weeks that followed. I and other people at the event received multiple death threats. At the time I treated it cavalierly. Even joking about it as something of a “badge of honor”, that my words and ideas would generate such an outsized response.

I confess, I would not feel that way today.

So yes, political violence does have a very real chilling effect. On all parts of our national social and political spectrum. In his inaugural address in 1989, President George HW Bush lamented that America seemed to be in a place where; “not each other’s ideas are challenged, but each other’s motives.”

The legacy and lesson of the shooting of Charlie Kirk may well be that America has become what President Bush feared. A place where ideological difference is the ultimate justification. You can demonize any and all opposing views and those who hold them as the “enemy” and in doing so, make them less worthy of the rights to the pursuit of happiness, liberty or even life.

The absence of Charlie Kirk’s voice from our national discourse is, in my opinion not a loss for America. But how that voice came to be removed absolutely is. It has made our nation weaker, more dangerous and far less free.