Kirk's killing, and the dread this will happen again

Utah's Republican governor, Spencer Cox, sent the right message in his remarks Wednesday soon after the shocking assassination in his home state of the influential conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. 

“Our nation is broken,” Cox said.

He cited the killing of Democratic Minnesota legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband, the two assassination attempts on President Donald Trump, and the arson of Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence.

"We just need every single person in this country to think about where we are and where we want to be. To ask ourselves, is this it? Is this what 250 years has wrought on us? I pray that that's not the case," he said.

Kirk had a loyal following for the culture war controversies he fueled as an online voice for his self-styled Christian nationalism. Critics derided him as a mere MAGA propagandist given his direct line to Trump.

Despite a style his detractors found grating and racially divisive, Kirk always made an effort to engage in direct debate and dialogue on campuses, this at a time when too many speakers are targeted for cancellation by students averse to hearing views that trigger them. It's always easier to speak and listen inside your echo chamber.

At the moment he was shot on the Utah Valley University campus in Orem, Kirk was engaged in a back-and-forth on transgender people and mass shootings. Authorities say the sniper was on a rooftop more than a hundred yards away.

The appropriate response from public officials, like that of Cox, is to offer condolences and prayers to the victim and family, with apolitical civility. But Trump cast the awful incident into a divisive narrative. Hours after the shooting, with an unknown suspect on the loose, Trump prematurely blamed “those on the radical left” for demonizing “wonderful Americans like Charlie” and generating the rhetoric responsible for “terrorism.”

Meanwhile, the State Department vowed to “undertake appropriate action” against “foreigners” in the United States who are “praising, rationalizing or making light” of Kirk’s death on social media. That sends a worrisome message. It does not honor Kirk’s embrace of free speech, but chills it.

The enemy here is our refusal to accept opinions other than our own. We have been conditioned to react and judge quickly instead of think and learn.

Kirk’s assassination sent a nasty chill through the realm of elected officials nationwide, most of whom expressed revulsion. We are haunted by the terror and the impending dread that this will happen again.

Kirk’s death occurred just on the cusp of solemn ceremonies to mark the 24th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, where on Thursday Trump's visit was moved indoors to a more secure location. 

We should not stop reflecting on the unity among New Yorkers and Americans we experienced amid that catastrophe — the better to resist political violence.

Kirk was silenced. But his murder shouldn’t destroy debate.