Brehm: The bravery of Charlie Kirk

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The assassination of Charlie Kirk has shaken our country to the core. And appropriately so.

It is a troubled time in American democracy indeed when one cannot engage in respectful political debate on a college campus, once the epicenter of free speech for the planet, without the risk of being fatally shot. The violent video of Kirk’s gruesome killing, which I do not recommend watching if you haven’t, is another horrible reminder of how dangerous being in the public arena has become.

Kirk was not naive to the risks he faced. His large security team rushed to the stage right after he was shot, evidence that he knew well of the dangers that lurked in the crowds he drew. And yet, he took the microphone on Wednesday anyway.

He could have kept himself safely inside a recording studio or at his home office writing and made the same living for his family (his college events were free). But no, he was willing to risk everything to stand up for free speech in this country, and risk and lose it he did. Kirk was a martyr for the fight against the suppression of free expression in this country, and his courage and sacrifice will be remembered for generations.

But what made Kirk’s brand of free speech so special was that it was truly free. He didn’t just preach to conservative echo chambers or MAGA crowds. No, he took his principles and ideas to hostile crowds at universities and debated them — respectfully — with liberal and conservative students alike. Perhaps more than anyone else in this country, he made a sincere effort to model what true civil and substantive political discourse in the public square should look like. Words, he believed, should resolve our differences.

Prayer is prudent, too, because we must be careful in the midst of trauma and fear and sorrow to react too quickly to “do something,” as understandable as that instinct is. Assembling answers to important questions must come before responding dramatically to any given event. Prayers encourage deliberation. And deliberation allows for a meaningful and thoughtful policy response vs. potentially ineffective emotional ones. Sometimes it is wise to have some slight space between our emotional reaction to tragedy and our active response to it.

But Kirk’s tragic killing is also not an isolated event, but one more step on a terrible path of political violence this country has been on for quite some time now. Just this past summer, Minnesota’s own Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman was killed in cold blood at her home. Last spring, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence was lit ablaze in an attempt to kill him and his family. And in 2024, President Donald Trump came inches from being gunned down by a would-be assassin. So, after all of this, we certainly can feel justified to shout and demand, “No more!”

While more is to be learned about Kirk’s assassination, we know the perpetrators of this kind of suspected political violence are typically deeply mentally ill individuals for whom American society must reassemble the institutional guardrails that once kept such deranged people safely confined.

And we must turn down the scorching temperature of our political discourse. Significantly and permanently. Both parties need to dump the cheap refrain that a loss in the next election means fascism and the end of America as we know it and do the kind of intellectually hard work Kirk did to promote and defend conservative or progressive ideas and leaders with facts and persuasion — and a smile. Inciting crazy political rage has been a tool too often used by the ruling elites of both parties in recent years, and it’s taken a toll on the fabric of our republic. Enough is enough.

This tragedy should also be a call to action for all of us. Assassins want to intimidate us from participating in the political process. These monsters want their violence to scare good people away from engaging in government. Decent men and women of all political persuasions should say “hell no” and protest these horrors by doubling down on civic engagement, which is lacking in America today. Kirk gave his life to that effort. Surely, we can all give a little more time to it.