Charlie Kirk

Can't We All Get Along? Yet Again.

That was Charlie. If I had to use a single word to capture him, it would be gracious. We could disagree about anything—and we did—but he would, without fail, engage civilly and explain his point of view. He did not do this, as many do, to make himself feel smart. He did it so he could share the other side of something he cared about. And he cared deeply.

That’s the spirit he took to the hundreds of campuses he visited. Not denunciation. Not shouting down. Never an insult. He sought to debate ideas, and did so in hostile territory. Charlie all but recreated the public town square on these campuses with a tent and an irrepressible smile in an era where many people of his generation can’t look up from their phones.

—Adam Rubenstein, The Free Press

I never met Charlie Kirk, never heard him speak, but I probably would have liked him. We might have had some cool arguments. We would have agreed on more than a few things—like the need for cultural stability and traditional order. He also practiced politics the right way, as Ezra Klein noted today, engaging his opponents in spirited debate. Nonetheless, it was strange to watch a platoon of Fox News hosts, who practice a more hortatory and intolerant political style, mourning him yesterday. Laura Ingraham even made a Rodney King appeal: Can’t we all, Democrats and Republicans, get together and stop all this?

Apparently not, according to Charlie Kirk. Here is what Perplexity dug up on his thoughts about gun control:

Kirk consistently argued that gun deaths in the United States were a “worthwhile cost” for maintaining the Second Amendment, suggesting it was “a prudent deal” to accept some fatalities every year to uphold the right to bear arms.

Kirk was a young man. Young men say ill-considered things. I know I did. So his position on gun control should not be his epitaph. But let’s consider an approach to this problem—an approach, because there isn’t a solution—that might require concessions from liberals and conservatives both. Actually, I wrote about the liberal concession yesterday: violent schizophrenics, like the Charlotte knife murderer, should not be allowed to roam our streets. They should be locked up in mental hospitals. There is a hierarchy of rights: The right of society to be protected against violent crazy people—from subway-track shovers to tortured trans school shooters—supersedes the right of crazy people, with a history of violence, to be at large in society. If they have a rap sheet, they should be presumed guilty until proven innocent. Kirk was wearing a t-shirt that said FREEDOM when he died, but real freedom entails limits and responsibilities.

The conservative concession is also obvious: gun control. No more assault weapons. A limit on handguns.No more concealed-carry. Every gun should be registered and locked. The Second Amendment was originally intended to allow communities to organize militias and arm them against outside threats. It’s time we got back to that originalist position.

Not that it would have saved Charlie Kirk. He was killed, apparently, by an old hunting rifle. Those would never be banned. Indeed, the abolition of guns is an American impossibility. There has been a violent strain running through our history from the start. This is something we have to deal with as a country…and the best way to deal with it was the Charlie Kirk did, by talking about our differences. And more: by trying to find a common ground.

Which brings me back to Laura Ingraham. She’s right. We’ve been yelling at each other for too long and too crazily. And she’s been a prime perpetrator. If she—and Fox—want to honor the spirit of Charlie Kirk, why not have some liberal (or even moderate) guests on? Same goes for MSNBC. When is Rachel Maddow going to have a show that explores the higher crime- and drug-addiction rates of single-parent families? And how about this: How about not interrupting your guests? (Within reason, we don’t want filibusters.) How about not yelling or scolding? How about devoting as much time to solving problems, finding solutions that require sacrifices from both sides of the political spectrum, as you do to stoking the inflammations of the base. That starts, of course, with the President of the United States…and those who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021. But it also includes the salon socialists swanning around college campuses threatening Jews—and the anti-racist bigots who somehow believe that black crime is an appropriate response to the legacy of white oppression.

It is time for Laura and Rachel and all the others to look in the mirror and stop pouring napalm on the fire. It isn’t just the extremists of left and right; it’s the media that make money by egging them on.