The Assassination of Charlie Kirk

Charlie Kirk’s murder was not just a murder. It was an assassination. That’s the crucial point.

We often forget the philosophical underpinnings of criminal law. Rightly understood, we view crimes as being committed not against individuals, but against society itself. Thus, when someone is murdered, the offense is not against the victim and his family, but against everyone. All of us. It is an offense against nature, heaven, and man.

Assassination goes a step further. In addition to all of the above, assassination is, like terrorism, an attack on our body politic. An attack on how we choose to live together. On our system of government. Which in America’s case, means an attack not just against all of us, but against liberal democracy itself.

So the assassination of Charlie Kirk is not just a human tragedy for his family. It is not just an affront to society. It is an attack on our civic compact. It should be confronted as such, with no qualifications or equivocations.

It is also not the first such attack.

Twelve weeks ago Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated in their home by a man with a list of seventy other targets.

Sixteen weeks ago Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were assassinated outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.

Ten months ago UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was assassinated on the street in Manhattan.

And one could list other examples of near-assassinations from recent years—like the brutal beating of the husband of the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and the shots fired at an ex-president campaigning to return to office.

It is important to understand that these acts all emerged from a culture of political violence that has been waxing for nearly a decade.

By this, I do not mean that there was no political violence before the past decade. Steve Scalise. Gabby Giffords. Ronald Reagan. The Weathermen. The Black Panthers. JFK and RFK and MLK. The Jim Crow South.

The difference is that until recently, elected high officials condemned political violence as a matter of course. Their condemnations were not always sincere, but they were nearly universal. They understood that political violence is a wildfire. It spreads. And if it breaks containment, it cannot be controlled. Once unleashed, it burns everyone.

We don’t have to rehearse the litany of how we got here; we can leave that to another day. But we all know what we know. Things have changed and it’s not hard to pinpoint the moment when the normalization of political violence re-emerged among our political elites. To pretend otherwise would be to hide our heads in the sand—to deny the plain political reality of the moment.

But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Times change; people change.

If we are lucky, then our leaders will understand that Charlie Kirk’s assassination was not just evil but profoundly dangerous for all of us. And if they understand this danger, maybe they will seek unity rather than division.

Pray for Charlie Kirk. For his wife and his two young children. For his extended family and his friends, his colleagues and fellow parishioners, that they would all find comfort and peace.Pray for our leaders, that they would be wise, prudent, and charitable in the coming days. When you see people being neither wise, prudent, nor charitable—and you will—pray that they are given grace and offer them yours as a down payment. Pray equally for those you love most and for those you like least.

And while you’re at it, pray for America. I have a feeling we’re going to need it.