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Let’s be 100% clear from the outset: Charlie Kirk should be alive and well today. There is no room in our society for political violence. And accepting the murder of a controversial and extreme voice, even a hateful one, because of the out-of-control rhetoric in our culture is wrong. “What do you expect—harsh words are going to lead to harsh actions” is not an acceptable stance, not in my mind at least.
But let’s not make the man, the man who otherwise would be planning his next strategic college visit, into a hero. I’ve read headlines trumpeting “We need more Charlie Kirk’s in our society.” The reasoning behind this kind of talk is that Kirk was different than most of his right-wing brethren. He did not preach exclusively to the already converted. He was willing to go into the lion’s den, and was was willing to take on left-wing extremists and defend his positions—to the death, as it turns out.
So, yes, Kirk was not a coward. But he was never a person who sought out reason. He was never a man who sought out compromise, or searched for common ground with people on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Charlie Kirk was the ultimate egotist, a cocky man who believed that he was the smartest person in any room, and he had the egotist’s conviction that he could take on all comers and emerge victorious. In effect, Kirk sought nothing more or less than to proselytize, to convert the enemy—because he felt absolutely sure that he was right and they were wrong.
Hero? Not quite.
My image of a hero is a person, of whichever side of the political spectrum and however strong in his or her beliefs, who actually wants to listen to others, not to debate in order to prove them wrong. Heroes don’t see the world as a zero-sum game where we win and they lose. Heroes believe that someone who disagrees with them might actually be in possession of a small kernel of truth, some subtlety of position, that just might re-shape their own thoughts and convictions.
Heroes are hard to come by, and I know that I come out on the wrong side of the hero bar. I’m hardly an extremist and only moderately left of center, but I know I don’t have the capacity to seek out those with whom I disagree nor to listen to them with an open mind.
Charlie Kirk was not someone we should aspire to imitate nor even admire. I never liked you, Charlie Kirk, when you were alive, and I’m not a fan now.
You were neither a hero nor a saint, not deserving of high praise or medals of honor—nonetheless, you should be alive and well today.
He thought the Civil Rights acts should never have been passed. He disapproved of the separation of church and state (although he was no admirer of Saudi Arabia or Iran). He insisted that there was no scientific consensus on climate change, and, although he did go to college campuses presumably to debate, he never took his opponents’ words seriously, talking over them and repeating his talking points. One is sorry to see any young person killed so violently. But, as Ed Krupat writes, Kirk was no hero or saint.