Turning Point

Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10th this year. He was a conservative activist, the founder of the conservative organization Turning Point USA. He went around debating people about hot-button issues, especially on college campuses. The shooter appears to be a pro-trans activist who was angered by Kirk’s right-wing stance about transgenderism.

What does this mean for America?

1. Reactions

What should concern us is not simply that there was a violent extremist who decided to murder someone he disagreed with. That guy is in jail and will probably never be able to kill again; anyway, one person (who doesn’t work in government) can only do so much damage.

What should concern us now is the reaction to the murder. Left-wing social media videos quickly leapt to celebrate the murder without compunction. This really has to be seen; in the following video, watch from 5:04-8:10:

Most of those individuals seem genuinely thrilled, with no sense of shame and no concern that maybe they shouldn’t reveal this about themselves.

That is why I have come to write this explanation of why the murder was bad.

2. The Case Against Murder

2.1. Charlie Kirk as a human being

Charlie Kirk was a human being. Killing human beings is normally wrong. In this case, he was 31, so the murder deprived a human being of perhaps 50 years of life, along with all the goods that he could ever have experienced in that time. His wife was left without a husband, his children without a father. If you have trouble empathizing with him because of his political views, just think about a family member of yours who has conservative views (virtually everyone has one or more such person in their life). Imagine that someone murdered your family member because he was putting forth his political views. Your family member’s views, and his reasons for holding them, are probably pretty similar to Kirk’s, or at least not dramatically superior.

2.2. The propagandistic impact

Still, you might think (as I guess the above video-makers thought) that Charlie Kirk was being so harmful through his activism that the reasons for silencing him outweighed the general wrongness of murder.

One problem is that it is not at all clear what the overall impact of Kirk’s assassination will be on public perception of the issues on which Kirk spoke. It is unclear, in particular, how the cause of