It’s the means that matters
Charlie Kirk’s murder hit me hard — when it happened and then all through the aftermath we’ve experienced so far. It’s not because I agreed with most of his beliefs and goals. I didn’t. It’s because, in addition to the personal horror — a person killed in front of those who loved him — it was a political horror. Kirk understood, at least in some respects, that his desired ends could never justify any means that might weaken our democracy.
And that’s why silencing his political speech with a bullet WHILE he was debating someone wasn’t just criminal. It was baffling. Even if I agreed with some of the killer’s beliefs, his means were both utterly unjustifiable AND patently unlikely to produce the ends he desired. The backlash has proven this and has shown how easily we can all be knocked off course when we’re feeling threatened and disrespected.
Long ago, I read that it’s wrong to think of politics on a spectrum from left to right because the further you go in either direction, the more you have in common with your counterparts.
At the time, I thought this was ridiculous. What does the extreme right have in common with the extreme left? But now I get it: extremism is what they have in common.
And what is extremism and fundamentalism and radicalism all about? It’s the idea that your beliefs must be imposed on others at all costs, by any means. But that is anathema to our country’s foundations of liberty and pluralism and the idea that ballots do the talking, not bullets — and that no one’s speech should be silenced by violence.
This is a prayer for peace.