When debate leads to death

Las Vegas Review-Journal, Las Vegas Review-Journal on Sep 22, 2025

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Americans long ago decided to trade bullets for ballots. But this exchange isn’t the norm around the world — and isn’t inevitable here either.

The shooting of Charlie Kirk is more than just a horrible tragedy for his family and friends. It was an attack on civil discourse itself. That’s a grave threat to the country’s constitutional order.

Kirk, as was his habit, was sitting and discussing religious and political issues with those who cared to listen. A university campus should have been an ideal spot for this type of back-and-forth. Institutes of higher education are supposed to guide students in developing their intellect and critical thinking skills through robust discussion and debate.

He invited those who disagreed with him to the front of the line. Kirk had plenty of opinions, but he was also a willing listener. His viral moments weren’t epic rants, but well-articulated explanations of his positions. If Socrates had been on Instagram, these are the types of discussions he might have had with his pupils.

The Founding Fathers frequently talked about the importance of freedom of speech. In 1722, Benjamin Franklin wrote that there is “no such Thing as public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech; which is the Right of every Man.”

He continued, “This sacred Privilege is so essential to free Governments, that the Security of Property, and the Freedom of Speech always go together; and in those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own, he can scarce call any Thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech.”

As Americans, it can be easy to take the marketplace of ideas for granted. But it’s far from the historical norm. In August, a Colombian senator and presidential contender died after being shot at a rally in June. Last year, the mayor of the Mexican city of Chilpancingo was beheaded shortly after taking office. At least three dozen office seekers in Mexico were killed from June 2023 to May 2024.

In some countries, the violence is worse. There are civil wars in Sudan, Myanmar and the Central African Republic. In other countries, the people don’t have a voice. A door-knocking survey in Afghanistan found that support for allowing girls to learn exceeded 90 percent, the United Nations reported. But it doesn’t matter because the Taliban doesn’t allow girls to enroll in secondary school. The opinion of the populace doesn’t matter when its leaders can use violence to silence dissenters.

Kirk worried about this in a tragically prophetic way.

“The left is creating a pressure cooker with so many of their rank-and-file paramilitary troops,” Kirk said on his show earlier this year. “That very well might result in one of us getting shot or killed. God forbid that happens. We are getting death threats every single day here on ‘The Charlie Kirk Show.’ ”

According to prosecutors, the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, wrote in a text message that he shot Kirk because “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”

It should be a major societal concern that Robinson believed the appropriate response to an opinion with which he disagreed was death, not debate.

Public figures on the right aren’t the only ones facing violence. Dangerous extremism is a bipartisan problem. In June, former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband were shot to death. She belonged to Minnesota’s version of the Democratic Party. In 2022, a man broke into the home for former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He wanted to hold her hostage and question her about “Russiagate.” Ms. Pelosi wasn’t there, and he ended up attacking her husband.

While committing political violence in the United States remains quite rare, support for it isn’t. A recent YouGov poll found 26 percent of liberals aged 18- to 44-year-olds believe that political violence can sometimes be justified. Among conservatives in that age group, it’s 7 percent. Both numbers must move closer to zero.

Over the next few days, this editorial series will detail what caused the downfall of civil discourse and what you can do to restore it in your sphere of influence.

We must all play a part in re-establishing the public square and ensuring that political violence remains verboten.