Charlie Kirk Respectfully Took On Those Who Disagreed With Him And Inspired A Generation | Mary Katharine Ham

Charlie Kirk died doing something I greatly admire. He went into places where almost everyone disagreed with him and, with a smile on his face, took questions, listened, and gave civil, smart answers to whomever was willing to step up to the mic he offered. In so doing, he inspired a minority of conservatives and Christians on American campuses to become prouder and bolder. He created more of them by persuading some that his arguments had more merit than the ones they were almost exclusively exposed to on campus.

Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, throws hats to the public. (Photo by Michael Ho Wai Lee/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

What Charlie did was what college should be and has failed to be for a long time. That’s why campuses needed to import Charlie to make it happen. He was modeling a distinctly American thing and the attack on him was an attack on that quintessentially American value. 

What he did took preparation, an open mind, a belief many abandoned that young people can handle these conversations, and no small amount of bravery. More than we knew, it turns out. I admire someone who did it so often and so joyfully.

To paraphrase my friend Greg Lukianoff, founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, what we want on campus and in American society is maximum tolerance for differences of opinion and zero tolerance for violence. Too often, for the last couple of decades, academia has reversed the two. 

Our elite institutions have displayed minimal tolerance for different points of view and far too much tolerance for violence. This tendency traveled from academia with its proponents and landed in newsrooms, boardrooms, and school boards all over the country. 

Speech is not violence, but a lot of people in our elite and activist classes were taught that it is. The inability to distinguish between the two is rampant. Lukianoff’s FIRE surveyed college students and found a chilling result.

In it, 34 percent of college students believe violence is sometimes justified to silence a speaker on campus, up from 24 percent four years ago.

Conservative speakers have been subject to this sad reality for decades on liberal campuses. And it’s not just very high profile people like Ben Shapiro or Kirk being threatened with violence. It’s not just so-called "lightning rods," not that they deserve censorship either. There was an attempt to censor my friend Guy Benson at Brown University, wisely resisted by Brown, because of ridiculous claims he was "white supremacy" and "dangerous." When College Republicans bring us to speak, the security requirements put on them by administrations are often higher than when liberal speakers come to campus. This has the effect of making our speech literally less free than the dominating ideology on campus.

I grew up in a town where almost everyone I knew disagreed with me. I have long argued that debate isn’t just some stressful necessity in a free society, as it’s sometimes framed, but fun and enlightening. This was certainly true of Kirk’s debates, even (especially) when I disagreed with him. That was the point! Defending my views made me clearer on them. Confronting the beliefs of others, instead of cordoning myself off from them, sometimes convinced me to change my mind. "Prove Me Wrong" was the punchy motto of Kirk’s campus events, but underlying it is a humble and vital acknowledgment for thinking people: "I could be wrong." 

In the stifling conformity on most college campuses and some activist groups, truth has already been decided and deviation from it is considered tantamount to violence. That is building a too well-worn path to perpetrating violence in response to speech. 

The vast majority of Americans feel revulsion at any political violence. But there are also a disturbingly large number of people who have convinced themselves the speech of Charlie Kirk and others like him is an existential threat to them and the country.

Instagram/CharlieKirk1776

If the person who killed Charlie sought to stamp out Kirk’s ideology, instead he has solidified a generation of young people who looked to him for inspiration and leadership. And if that means more young people agree with his embrace of this raucous American form of debate and refuse to be silenced, good. I will play whatever small part I can to make sure I continue to speak in spaces where people disagree with me, with a smile on my face. I’d be lying if I said that doesn’t make me nervous. Colleges could be part of the solution by inviting more conservatives to campus and making sure their security is good and violence against them will be punished.

But Charlie wasn’t just selling political ideology. He loved Jesus, his country, and his family, and he told a generation that devoting themselves to something bigger, something counter-culturally traditional, was uplifting and beautiful. Our country, our freedoms, our families, our faith traditions are uplifting and beautiful. 

Today, a widow mourns her husband and two children mourn their father. Charlie was a man of faith and his wife knows the Lord. The promise of Jesus is that He will be near her and her kids even when it seems impossible, as it often does in our darkest hours. It is a promise He will keep. Cover them in prayer. It will matter.

Kirk’s ideas were never an existential threat. It turned out he faced an existential threat for expressing them. Now that he is gone, it is our duty to condemn those who would commit or justify murder for disagreement, to deal in ideas, to disagree boldly. It is very hard to honor the legacy of a happy warrior when I’m this angry about his death, but I will try to be tough, with a smile on my face.