Editor’s Note: This commentary was written by Eden Prairie resident Muthu Meenakshisundaram, a fourth-year student at the University of Minnesota-Morris studying philosophy, politics and economics (PPE).On Wednesday, Sept. 10, conservative political activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated in front of 3,000 college students who stood in 91-degree heat to discuss politics with him.
Posts on popular leftist social media accounts like @mattxiv and @so.informed on Instagram quickly filled up with gleeful comments saying that Kirk deserved to die at gunpoint for his ideas about gun rights, insinuating that he was in hell, sarcastically ignoring his death, and much, much more.
What drives such reactions? Maybe a growing sentiment that a person’s moral worth depends on their political beliefs. If he supported evil, then why care if something evil happened to him? Or maybe it is about political success. Kirk was an effective political communicator who brought millions of young Americans into the conservative movement. Just as troops at war celebrate the death of an enemy commander, progressive troops in the war that has become American politics cheer on the death of Charlie Kirk.
Whatever the cause, most on the left — including President Barack Obama, Senator Bernie Sanders, New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, and many other commenters on those same social media posts — seemed to condemn such heinous celebrations. While maintaining their disagreement with his ideas, many liberals mourned Kirk’s death because they saw him as a human being with equal dignity and moral worth. But even this view misses something important about how we mourn Kirk — something that might be the key to easing our nation’s political turmoil.
We should mourn Charlie Kirk for his virtues.
I saw a clip of Kirk yesterday, at an event just like the one at which he died. He sits, outdoors, under a tent, wearing a black T-shirt and holding a microphone. Across from him is another microphone on a stand. A short, green-haired student walks up to the microphone, introduces themselves as a transgender male, and asks Kirk about his views on transgender hormone therapy for children. Kirk’s first response is to ask the student if they are comfortable sharing their story with him.
Kirk does two things here that we seldom see in political debate. Instead of responding at once to what the student seemed to believe, Kirk inquires about why they believe it. Such understanding is essential for healing political divisiveness. And instead of storming ahead with his questions, Kirk asks the student whether they are comfortable to proceed.
For the rest of the conversation, Kirk remains earnest and respectful as he tells the student that they ought to work to become comfortable with the body in which they were born. That statement alone is enough to inflame many on the left who equate it with evil of the highest order. But the student does not react that way. They nod along patiently.
I do not know what the student was thinking at that moment. But if you watch the video you will see neither rage nor suspicion in their eyes. You will see curiosity. That is what happens when we explore our political disagreements with energy, sincerity, and respect.
While I understand that Kirk may not have always engaged his interlocutors in this admirable way, we can learn from Kirk at his best.
If each of us took our most tightly held political beliefs and, like Kirk did every day of his life, talked about them openly and energetically with those who disagreed with us, our political culture wouldn’t be so vicious. Not only that, we might actually solve political issues.
Take gun control as an example. The biggest obstacles to gun control legislation are citizens who disagree with it. If you yearn for stricter gun control laws in our nation, go find someone who disagrees and try to change their mind. That’s the only way to make change in a republic like ours. And it’s what Kirk would’ve done, too.