Some thoughts on the Charlie Kirk assassination

This Charlie Kirk situation has affected me emotionally more than it really should. I didn't follow him and didn't have a good feel for what he was all about. He came up on my youtube feed every now and then, but in all I might've watched two shorts with him in them over the years.

What I did know about Charlie, just from looking at the thumb nails of the videos, is that he was a kind of Steven Crowder-like person. He would set up a tent in some public space and encourage people to debate with him. From the little I saw of him, that's what he was mainly about.

His murder bothers me for a number of reasons. First, I just found out how young he was. He was only 31 years old. He had a wife and two kids. It's a real tragedy. Second, it bothers me for the reasons he was probably killed. He held a lot of controversial views, he expressed those views in public, and he engaged in public debate. I can understand why somebody might get upset about another person's views, but the fact that he wanted to talk about it with people who disagreed with him strikes me as being a good thing. Open debate and dialogue is healthier than everybody retreating into their own political bubbles and seeing outsiders as enemies. Why are there so many people in this country that just want to shut people up who they disagree with?

I find it incredibly disturbing that anybody would want to silence another person from publicly expressing their point of view by murdering them. But what I find especially disturbing is the number of people who approve of it. There are people on line who are cheering it on. They are gloating about it. One person said they watched the video multiple times because it gave them joy. That is disgusting.

It makes me wonder how many people I actually know who approve of it. That further makes me wonder how many people I know who would approve of my murder on the basis of things I believe.

I probably agree with Charlie Kirk on a lot of stuff. I've learned a few things about him just over the last few days. He's Catholic, and I'm protestant, so we agree on most things Christian, but we also disagree on a few things. We're both politically conservative, so we probably agree for the most part on things like abortion, gun control, and maybe economics. He was a big Trump supporter, and I'm definitely not, so we probably have some differences there. I don't know how much we agreed or disagreed, but I suspect we agreed more than we disagreed on most things. We definitely both agreed on the value of free speech and open debate and dialogue.

The Charlie Kirk incident really brings to light the divide between the left and the right in this country. It has really gotten out of hand. It goes beyond mere polarization. Now people openly approve of killing people who disagree with them. Depending on how pervasive this point of view is, it could be the end of debate and dialogue between the left and the right. If the left and right cannot deal with their differences through dialogue, what is there left to do? It's a scary thought. It reminds me of the horrors of the French Revolution, but I was reading this post by Ed Feser yesterday where he pointed out a similar thing that happened in ancient Greece.

One thing I find ironic is that some people on the left oppose capital punishment but approve of Charlie Kirk's assassination. They don't think somebody should be executed even if they committed murder. But at the same time, they think it's okay to execute somebody for holding certain beliefs or for expressing them publicly.

I've expressed a lot of unpopular beliefs on my blog. I saw a video clip yesterday or the day before of a girl telling her dad that she thought Charlie Kirk's murder was justified because he believed a woman who was raped should be forced to give birth. She acted like it was the most obvious thing in the world that killing him was appropriate merely because of his belief in the wrongness of abortion in the case of rape. I've written many posts on abortion on my blog, and this blog is public. Am I in danger of being murdered, too?

I don't remember if I ever explicitly addressed abortion in the case of rape, but if you follow the logic of my argument, the conclusion is that abortion is wrong in all stages of development unless it's a medical emergency. Rape is extremely traumatic, but we cannot be justified in taking a human life merely to alleviate emotional trauma. While I don't think abortion in the case of rape is morally justified, I do think it serves as a mitigating circumstance, which means it's not as bad as having an abortion merely for convenience. So there's my view. I suppose, in that girls' eyes, I deserve to die, too.

I found out yesterday, I think, that the killer, Tyler Robinson, was in a relationship with a trans-gendered person (a man who thinks he's a woman). From what I understand, Tyler invoked his right to remain silent. He hasn't spoken to the police, so we don't know if transgenderism was the particular reason for the murder. It might've been, though, because of some things he wrote on the shell casings of his ammunition.

I don't know whether I agree with Charlie Kirk's position on LGBT issues or not. I suspect we agree on a lot, though. We probably both agree that homosexual romantic relationships are immoral. We probably agree that you shouldn't pretend like men are women and women are men, regarless of how they see themselves. But as far as public policy goes, I don't know what his views were.

I think it's unfair to expect women to have to box or wrestle with men just because those men think they are women, but I really don't care what goes on in sports. I don't understand why the government has anything to do with it except maybe when it comes to the Olympics. Why should it be a public policy issue? Let people who play sports decide amongst themselves how they want to do it. It seems to me the solution to transgenderism in sports is to segregate sports by sex rather than perceived gender.

I don't think the government has an interest in same sex marriages except when it comes to adoptions. The only reason government is in the marriage business at all is because marriages are the foundation of families, and families are the foundation of societies. Since opposite sex couples are the only kinds of couples that create families, they are the only kinds of marriages the government should have any interest in licensing or incentivising. Let people marry or cohabitate with whoever they want, but there's no reason for the government to be involved in the kinds of relationships that, by their very nature, can't produce children.

I always try to be fair-minded and not to paint groups of people with too broad a brush. But I have to confess that seeing so many people on line cheer Charlie Kirk's assassination tempts me to paint the left with a broad brush. It appears, if you're not careful, that many on the left simply don't value human life. They support the death of unborn children, and they support the death of people who want to protect the unborn. It seems like the only lives they value are the lives of killers since they oppose capital punishment. For these reasons, it is tempting to want to agree with some conservatives who call the left a "culture of death."

But I know, objectively, that that isn't fair. First of all, many on the left don't think people on the right value human life. The right supports gun rights in spite of guns being the go-to weapons for mass killings in schools. The right also generally supports capital punishment. In the past, some people on the right have assassinated or attempted to assassinate abortion doctors. So to be fair, both sides have some basis, be it ever so flimsy, for accusing the other side of not placing any value on human life.

Second, the people on the left who are cheering Charlie Kirk's murder are probably just a loud minority. Most people on the left are just as horrified by Charlie Kirk's murder as those on the right. There are many people on the left who do support free speech, even when they disagree with what is said. I was encouraged by what Bernie Sanders said in response to Charlie Kirk's murder. I wish more people on the left could be like him.

I sincerely hope that Charlie Kirk's assassination doesn't end debate and dialogue between the left and right. If one side is afraid of expressing their views, and the other side isn't interested in hearing the other side anyway, then it may very well be the end of all discussion. That would be a real travesty. If we can't settle our differences through dialogue, then the only thing left is power, suppression, and violence. This is a real life example of the danger of forgetting history.

EDIT - 9/20/2025: I may have been wrong about Charlie being Catholic. I saw that somewhere. I don't remember where. But yesterday, I saw somebody say they wondered if he would have become Catholic. So now I don't know if he was Catholic or not.