Thanks to the expansive freedoms afforded all persons1 in the United States by the First Amendment, Charlie Kirk had a right to freely say and believe all the things he freely said and believed during his too-short time on this planet. I don’t think almost anyone believes otherwise, but there has been some bad faith pushback from his defenders over the last couple of weeks that the left wants to “silence” or “punish” people who believe like Kirk. This is simply not true, perhaps aside from a few radical extremist nobodies. Freedom of speech is an amazing and good thing, and it covers all kinds of abhorrent speech.
Like any other human being, Charlie Kirk was a complicated and multifaceted figure, one who lived his life in a spotlight, and thus has had a disproportionately large number is his words captured in video, audio, and in writing. He said a lot of things in his life, some of them anodyne, some good, and some truly despicable. Now that he has died, its up to all of us to evaluate his public legacy and determine how he is remembered - and that process is a contentious and fraught one. Some believe Charlie should only be remembered for his finest moments, perhaps his most blatantly Christian moments. Some believe he should be remembered for his worst statements. Some fall somewhere in the middle.
Contrary to the hagiography being written of him, Charlie Kirk was not some world-historic debater. He made his bones debating unprepared college kids. Want to watch how he fares in a real debate, with opponents as well versed in the art of debate as he? Go watch his Cambridge Union debates. Here it is for you:
He’s not nearly so impressive when going against equal opponents, or when his PR can’t chop up the clips and only highlight his best moments. Kirk was not a master debater; he was a master manipulator and propogandist, someone who could throw so many claims so quickly it left unprepared opponents off guard and unable to fact check in real time. He was certainly charismatic, and could be funny and disarming, and yes, in one-on-one debate, he could be fair-minded from time to time. But he could also be a bully, and a liar, and you could count on him to say something terrible on the regular.
My opinion is that Kirk’s legacy is largely a terrible and damaging one. I believe he made a career out of denigrating others, lying about the world, defending injustice and those in power, and misusing the name of Jesus Christ to achieve all those ends. It is my opinion that Charlie Kirk was a racist, a misogynist, a Christian nationalist, and a reactionary.
I don’t believe he was an exemplar Christian, and I really struggle to understand what it is others see in him and his life that would mark him out as such. Is it the repeated invocations of the name “Jesus”? Is it the pro-life politics? What, as I asked last week, are the Christians fruits of Charlie Kirks’ life? How can you square his role as a public Christian with his words about women, about minorities, with his support for policies that harm the least and the last among us?
Further, none of those things is a rationale or justification for killing Charlie Kirk. His right to speak freely was violated, and beyond his own death, that bullet was an attack on us all, on our freedoms in this democracy. Charlie Kirk should still be alive today. Free speech shouldn’t only count for those whose speech we like (someone should teach that lesson to the President.) Free speech means we all get to speak, even if that speech is wrong, bad, or hateful.
We can acknowledge the tragedy and senselessness of his death, that he should not have been killed or harmed in anyway for his speech, and also acknowledge that his words and his legacy were harmful and bad. It is not an attack on him, or a denigration of his memory, to come to this conclusion. It can be both a tragedy that he died, and a tragedy the way he lived his life, as my friend Justin Barringer put it.
Airing the words Charlie Kirk said in his life is not an attack on Charlie per se. If you hear things Charlie said, and they offend you, then the problem is Charlie, not the person who highlighted his words.
You don’t have to be a leftist or liberal to feel this way. You can be a conservative or an evangelical, and not be required to defend the words of Charlie Kirk.
An abomination The “memorial service” for Kirk yesterday in Glendale was an abomination, a terrible twisting of Christianity to advance a politics of resentment, to stoke hate and anger, and to make a martyr of someone who is anything but. All Christians should be embarrassed and disgusted by the way the name of God was taken in vain yesterday, and used for ends completely foreign to the humble and compassionate way of Jesus. This was most explicitly embodied by the words of our President, when he claimed the authority to preempt the command of Jesus to love our enemies. There is no greater blasphemy. I was disgusted by what I saw, and by the many good Christians I know who watched it and somehow came away feeling like that - a political rally, fronted by the most powerful people in our country - was a good exhibit of our faith. It feels at this point like we are following two wholly different religions, not just different interpretations of the same one.
Persons, not just citizens
Jesus warned about "wolves in sheep's clothing."
I am not sure about 1., but the rest seems like it ought to be self-evident, even if it apparently isn't evident to many.