Questions

I have questions. They go beyond easy answers. Beyond political motives. If they’re that hard to explain, what am I doing analyzing them here as if I can figure things out?

I don’t know. It’s just one more question.

My heart broke two days ago like that of many others when a good and kind man was murdered in public. I assumed people across the board would condemn this brutal act. Some did. Many did not. To my shock, many people on various platforms celebrated the death of a thirty-one-year old husband and father of two. Members of Congress decried a request for one minute of silence to pay respect, yelling in opposition and making fools of themselves.

Which is ironic. Charlie Kirk was murdered for upholding our First Amendment right to free speech, a right guaranteed to every one of us across every persuasion. Even the right for congressmen and women to vehemently object to a request to come together in silence. Instead, they opted to exercise their right to free speech over simple respect for a dead man.

Kindness sometimes leads a person to limit their rights in deference to someone else. Love does that, too.

The same thing happened in a gathering of the EU when a Swedish member of the European Parliament yielded the majority of his speaking time to request a moment of silence on behalf of Charlie Kirk and his family. As some members stood quietly, the majority of the cast of characters exploded in anger like out-of-control school children.

A man was brutally murdered and they refused to acknowledge it. How is that kind of behavior from public officials even human?

And yet. In countries like Spain and Germany and South Africa large gatherings of people lit candles and prayed together. They held photos of Charlie inscribed with condolences in their languages. I didn’t know his influence spread that far. Actually, it was worldwide as leaders across the globe and on every continent expressed their horror and disdain for the cowardly act of violence that took his life.

Like many, I learned he’d been shot via an email I read on my phone. He was still alive at that point and I prayed for his recovery, searching the internet and TV news programming for any updates. It looked bad and soon enough came the word I and others most dreaded.

I’ve spent the last several days trying to put my finger on why this has hit me so hard. I’ve been hit very hard a few times in my life. The most recent was when my beloved husband died more than four years ago. That’s a wound I will live with for the rest of my life. But this shock resonated differently. I finally realized the last time I felt this way was in 2001 when our country was attacked by terrorists we’d never heard of. The horror that spread across the U.S. when the towers fell, the Pentagon was hit, and the 4th plane went down in rural Pennsylvania was a jolt to our sense of security.

Barbara Walters hosted a television special soon after entitled, “Who Is Al-Qaeda And Why Do They Hate Us?” Because most of us in America had no idea who they were or why we were on their radar. We found out why they hated us. We’ve never forgotten. But that was an enemy from without. Now, within, we are falling apart. And yet it’s so difficult to identify why our country is so divided and how to repair the damage. You would think the way forward is through open debate and respect when viewpoints differ. But that requires actually listening to each other.

There’s a good reason that Abraham Lincoln, another martyred man, quoted someone else who was also hated for the things he said. “A house divided cannot stand,” Jesus warned.

We are a house divided.

Are those among us who champion free speech, no matter how vitriolic it is on either side of the aisle, hated for preserving this freedom? Was Charlie hated because he valued the exchange of ideas and invited people into open debate? Is free speech so dangerous that it must be controlled by a partisan government or else stand by while its proponents are put to death?

Someone wrote this week that, “Words are not violence. Violence is violence.” I agreed at first. But reading between the lines and searching the gray area between black and white, now I’m not sure. There are plenty of words currently being slung around that lead to hate and violence, most of them by an irresponsible media. Just ask any Cuban refugee what an authoritarian regime really is. Or an immigrant from China if the Chinese party-state is fascist.

If we’re going to use nouns, we need to know what they actually mean. And we need to be aware of the tremendous impact and influence social media has, particularly on young people. Perhaps this is one reason Charlie Kirk reached out to this demographic. Because he knew that words can tip the scales and lead to violence when there are no alternatives to hatred.

I’ve watched many of the debates and speeches Charlie gave in the last year and a half. Like Charlie, I’m a believer in Jesus Christ and conservative in my world view. And like him, I don’t hate people who see things differently than I do. If I learned anything from listening to Charlie, it was the importance of hearing others and respecting their right to believe as they do and say what they want. As long as it does not lead to violence.

I’m afraid for our country. In addition to knowing first hand his family’s grief and the theft of his life, this is why I feel so distraught by Charlie’s assassination. If it happened to him, it could happen to anyone. It strikes at the heart of the American experiment. Between the Bill of Rights and the modifications that followed, there are twenty-seven amendments to our Constitution, and the first one, the premier right listed by the founders of this remarkable country, is the right to free speech and assembly.

Plenty of people have died in the last two hundred fifty years to protect that right.

And now there’s one more.