What was your first reaction when you learned that Charlie Kirk had been assassinated?

The Blood in the Water

When news broke that Charlie Kirk had been assassinated, the response online was instantaneous. Social media did not pause for grief, reflection, or even fact-checking. It erupted like a feeding frenzy, as if blood had spilled into the water and the piranhas could not help themselves.

Within hours, the commentaries multiplied: videos clipped out of context, memes recycled, accusations hurled in all directions. One group painted him as a Christian nationalist and fascist. Another countered with footage of him explicitly stating that America is not a theocracy and that no one should be forced into faith. Some called him antisemitic, while others insisted he was staunchly pro-Israel. Depending on which thirty-second clip you saw, he was pro-gay or anti-gay.

In that chaos, nuance evaporated. A man’s entire life and thought were reduced to soundbites—distorted, weaponized, and flung like darts at anyone who dared to hesitate before passing judgment. What should have been a moment to grieve the violent silencing of a fellow citizen became instead a spectacle of division.

And yet, the first truth we must face is this: Charlie Kirk was killed while exercising his freedom of speech. Whatever one thinks of his politics, his family deserved dignity, not digital bloodsport. His death should remind us of a principle deeper than any partisan affiliation: in a free society, no one should live—or die—in fear of speaking their mind.

“Just because I disagree with you, does not mean that I hate you. We need to relearn that in our society.”

Naming the Problem: Political Violence Rising

What we are witnessing in America is not an isolated tragedy. Charlie Kirk’s death is part of a darker tide — one in which violence has become the punctuation mark at the end of our political sentences.

He is not alone. Donald Trump has now survived two assassination attempts in the span of one campaign. Melissa Hortman, Speaker Emerita of the Minnesota House, and her husband were murdered in their home by a man with a hit list of Democratic officials. Senator John Hoffman and his family were riddled with bullets on that same night. Paul Pelosi, the husband of the former Speaker, was bludgeoned in his own home. The list of names grows longer with each passing year, and each new headline carries with it the bitter taste of inevitability.

And still, rather than drawing us together in collective horror, these events drive us deeper into suspicion and division. Some cheer. Others excuse. We look at the dead and do not see human beings, only symbols — trophies to be claimed or enemies to be erased.

The statistics confirm what our hearts already know. Nearly eight in ten Americans believe political violence has increased. More than half say it is now a major problem — the highest level of alarm in years. And yet, paradoxically, only about two percent of Americans actually endorse political murder. The violence is not who we are. But the perception that our enemies are ready to kill us fuels the fever, and the fever itself becomes contagious.

What is unraveling is not simply our politics, but our trust in one another, our belief that disagreement can coexist with decency, that opposition need not require dehumanization. It is as though the seams of the Republic are straining against a weight too heavy to bear.

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

Note

We cannot understand the rise of political violence without first reckoning with the forces of influence that shape us. In a culture where outrage is amplified and nuance is drowned out, we are constantly being nudged — sometimes subtly, sometimes with brute force — toward suspicion, fear, and hate. This is not accidental; it is how influence works in the age of algorithms and echo chambers. If we do not become aware of these forces, we become their instruments. I have written elsewhere about the ways propaganda, memes, and manipulative rhetoric condition us to despise one another — and it is vital that we resist. (See: Influence and Control Meta-Framework).

Words as Weapons: The Danger of Soundbites and Labels

When a nation loses the ability to listen, it begins to devour itself. The assassination of Charlie Kirk revealed not just the fragility of one man’s life but the fragility of our collective conscience. His message, like so many others, was far too nuanced to be captured in the short, jagged edges of a soundbite. And yet soundbites are all we seem to want.

In the days after his death, the internet became a hall of distorted mirrors. Depending on which clip one stumbled upon, Kirk was a fascist or a patriot, a Christian nationalist or an opponent of theocracy, antisemitic or deeply pro-Israel, anti-gay or pro-gay. Each label became a weapon, flung not to clarify but to divide, not to understand but to condemn.

This is the currency of our time: reductionism. We no longer see people in the fullness of their humanity but as caricatures drawn in the ink of outrage. To disagree is to destroy, to argue is to annihilate. The temptation to reduce a life into slogans and accusations is strong, and yet it hollows us out as a people.

C.S. Lewis warned us of this long ago in The Screwtape Letters. The devilish mentor counseled his apprentice to distract humanity not with obvious evils, but with endless obsessions — politics, gossip, the faults of strangers. Keep them angry, keep them fixated, keep them despising “the system” so that they never recognize the brokenness within themselves. It was advice meant for demons, but it reads now like prophecy.

We have become so enamored with spotting evil “out there” that we have forgotten the work of rooting out the evil within. In our rush to judge, we abandon reflection. In our haste to condemn, we forget compassion. And in doing so, we play the part of Screwtape’s willing apprentices, trading our humanity for the empty satisfaction of being “right.”

“Be sure that the patient remains completely fixated on politics… it serves as an excellent distraction from advancing in personal virtue.” – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (paraphrased)

Diagnosing Our Contribution: A Mirror We Dare Not Avoid

It is easy to shake our heads at the violence of others, to condemn the extremists with their guns, their hammers, their plots. But the harder task — the one that makes our hearts tremble — is to ask how we ourselves have helped to till the soil in which this poison grows.

We may not have pulled a trigger or raised a fist, but perhaps we have done something quieter, subtler, and no less corrosive. Have we shared outrage before truth? Have we nodded along to caricatures of “those people” without ever pausing to ask if they were fair? Have we excused harshness from our own side while condemning it in our opponents?

The truth is that violence does not appear out of thin air. It is fertilized by words, memes, insinuations, and silence. Each repost without verification, each insult that strips away the humanity of another, each tribal cheer when “our side” scores a point — these are the tinder. The match is struck later, but the fire feeds on what we have already laid down.

And silence is no refuge. To remain quiet when a friend spews conspiracy or a colleague jokes about violence is to allow the toxin to circulate unchecked. To look away because “it’s not my problem” is to consent, if only by omission, to the slow unraveling of our common life.

Even our technologies conspire against us. Algorithms reward our outrage, keeping us scrolling, fuming, nodding with the like-minded. The machine profits from our anger, and we are only too willing to play along. Screwtape could hardly have designed a better snare.

If we are honest, we must admit: the line between the guilty and the innocent does not run neatly between parties or ideologies. It cuts through each of us. And until we reckon with that truth, the spiral will continue.

“The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Instruments of Our Own Demise

History whispers a truth we do not want to hear: civilizations are rarely conquered from without until they have already rotted from within. The weapons that bring them down are often forged in their own workshops, crafted by their own hands.

We are treading that perilous road. Every time we dehumanize a neighbor for the sake of a fleeting sense of superiority, we weaken the very bonds that hold our Republic together. Every time we choose rage over reason, mockery over mercy, partisanship over principle, we are chiseling away at the foundation of our freedoms.

If we do not learn to change, we will not need foreign tyrants to undo us. We will be the instruments of our own demise. Like Rome, like so many empires before us, our downfall will not come with a single battle but with a thousand small surrenders: a surrender to contempt, to apathy, to the intoxication of hatred disguised as righteousness.

We cannot say we were not warned. The Scriptures told us that those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind. The poets and philosophers told us that unchecked anger becomes tyranny. The memory of our own Civil War told us what happens when we cease to see our countrymen as kin. And yet here we stand, repeating the same ancient errors with the arrogance of believing we are immune to history’s lessons.

If America falls, it will not be because we lost the art of war. It will be because we lost the art of neighborliness.

“If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” – Abraham Lincoln

Relearning Civility

If our words can help unravel a nation, then they can also help to mend it. The question is whether we still have the courage to speak, listen, and live differently.

First, we must correct the warped lenses through which we see one another. Polls tell us that only two percent of Americans support political murder, yet many believe that nearly a third of their opponents would condone it. This distortion is not only false; it is deadly. When we imagine our neighbor is plotting our destruction, fear festers into hatred, and hatred prepares the way for violence. We must be taught — and we must teach each other — that our fellow citizens are not monsters waiting to pounce.

Second, we need to rediscover the slow, patient work of community. For too long, we have allowed ourselves to be shaped by distant algorithms rather than by shared tables, neighborhood conversations, and the common burdens of daily life. It is in small circles of trust that suspicion is disarmed and humanity is restored.

Third, we must demand more from our media and social platforms. Outrage is profitable, but at what cost? When “enragement equals engagement,” we are nothing more than commodities in someone else’s business model. We need platforms that elevate truth and nuance rather than distort them. And we need the discipline to resist being played as pawns in their endless cycle of provocation.

Finally, we must remember that civility is not weakness. To tolerate a neighbor is not to agree with them; it is to preserve the space in which freedom can breathe. Civility is the guardrail that prevents disagreement from cascading into destruction. Without it, liberty will suffocate in the very moment it is most loudly proclaimed.

“The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.” – Mark Updegrove

Freedom with Responsibility

Freedom of speech is the heartbeat of our Republic. It is the fragile breath that allows citizens to contend with ideas, to test convictions, to sharpen one another without fear of the blade. But freedom without responsibility quickly curdles into license, and license is the seedbed of chaos.

We forget this at our peril. Words are not harmless sparks in the void; they are tinder. They can ignite courage, but they can just as easily ignite hatred. When our speech devalues human life, when our rhetoric reduces neighbors into enemies, we are wielding the tools of our own undoing.

To live in a free society is to accept the weight of tolerating difference. Not endorsing, not even agreeing — but tolerating, for the sake of the greater good. Without this tolerance, freedom collapses into a tyranny of whichever faction can shout the loudest or strike the hardest.

It is not the enemies at our gates who most threaten our liberties. It is the contempt in our voices, the tribalism in our hearts, and the violence we excuse when wielded by “our side.” If we do not master ourselves, we will not remain masters of our freedom.

“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.” – Abraham Lincoln

Choosing Unity Over Division

We stand at a crossroads. One path is easy: continue feeding the cycle of contempt, amplify every slight, rejoice in every loss suffered by “the other side.” That road requires no discipline, no humility, no love. But it leads only to ruin.

The harder path is the one our forebears prayed we would choose — to see in each citizen not an enemy to be defeated but a neighbor to be endured, respected, and, when possible, cherished. It is to say with resolve: I will not excuse violence, no matter who wields it. I will not surrender to the seduction of outrage. I will not forget that disagreement is not hatred, that dissent is not treason, that freedom cannot survive without restraint.

“For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” – Hosea 8:7

We must relearn the discipline of humility: I might be wrong. We must model principled dissent: to argue fiercely while refusing to despise. We must interrupt lies and resist silence when silence becomes complicity. And above all, we must remember that freedom is not guaranteed. It lives or dies on the choices we make every day in the words we speak and the way we treat one another.

If we ignore this, history will record that America did not fall because of her enemies abroad but because her children devoured one another at home.

But if we choose differently, if even a remnant will choose the narrow way of humility, tolerance, and truth, then perhaps there is still time. Perhaps our Republic may yet be healed, not by the silencing of disagreement but by its restoration to its rightful place — as the sound of freedom, not the prelude to violence.

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” – Romans 12:21

Reflection

• Where have my words, silences, or assumptions contributed to division rather than healing?
• Am I willing to see the humanity in those I most strongly oppose, and what would it cost me to do so?

A Prayer for Our Nation

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” – President Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865)

A Lament for America

O Lord, how lonely sits our nation, once full of confidence,

now weighed down with anger and suspicion.

Our gates are broken by hatred,

our streets echo with the cries of the divided.

We confess that we have sown the wind,

and we tremble at the whirlwind now rising.

We confess that our words have wounded,

our silence has permitted,

our pride has blinded us to our neighbor’s worth.

Remember us, O God, not for our sins alone,

but for the promise still beating faintly in our chest.

Restore to us a spirit of humility,

that we may turn from violence and cherish life.

Teach us again to walk with malice toward none

and charity for all.

Bind up the wounds of our people.

Renew in us the courage to love mercy,

to seek justice,

and to walk humbly with You.

Amen.

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Excerpt

Political violence is tearing at the fabric of America. From the assassination of Charlie Kirk to attacks across the political spectrum, we are reaping a whirlwind of division. This post is a lament and a plea: to reject hatred, relearn civility, and choose unity over ruin.

References

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