Charlie Kirk was married, and had two children; presumably his family loved him and will miss him. I know nothing about how he treated them or behaved in his personal relationships, but in public he was frankly a horrible person.
But that does not mean that it was OK to murder him.
He was a public speaker, a writer of opinion pieces and a political organizer.
He did not have a formal position in the government or in any organization that claimed to be a government, and as far as I know he never had. To the best of my knowledge, he never did anything other than speak or write.
He spoke and wrote many things that I think are terrible, foolish ideas about the world and how it should operate, true.
I disagree with almost everything of his that I’ve ever seen, in fact.
But that does not mean that it was OK to murder him.
I have said several times on this site that it appears that the United States’ second civil war has already begun; ironically, it started with the State attacking the population, which is the reverse of how these things usually go.
And I’ve said here that the United States has fallen to a coup, with the legitimately-elected government vastly over-stepping its powers and abusing its position to dismantle all the things that gave this country any value.
And in that conflict, Charlie Kirk and I would certainly not be on the same side.
But that does not mean that it was OK to murder him.
He didn’t run around on the streets wearing a mask and toting an automatic rifle, dragging people into rental vans to be shipped off to foreign prisons because they had darker skin and tattoos.
He didn’t incite a mob to attack Congress in an attempt to illegally retain power after losing an election.
He didn’t give preferential government treatment to people and organizations that gave him bribes.
He didn’t plot with an invader to raze a country to the ground, sell off everything portable and turn the rest into a tacky seaside resort for the idle rich.
He didn’t even pal around with Jeffrey Epstein.
Sure, he wrote and spoke in support of people who did do all of these things.
But that does not mean that it was OK to murder him.
See, even if the United States were further along with this nonsense and actively engaged in the shooting phase of a civil war, Charlie Kirk would not have been a justifiable target for political violence. How you treat political opponents should be based on the things they actually do, not on the things they say.
And as far as I know Charlie Kirk never did anything other than speak and write.
He spoke and wrote horrible things, of course.
But it’s not OK to murder people for that.
This is a longstanding principle of any free or democratic society; here in the Unites States it’s been part of our Constitution since the very beginning, as it’s the principle underlying the actual 1st Amendment.
The legitimate response to billy clubs may be bricks and bottles, and the legitimate response to bullets may be more bullets.
But the legitimate response to speech is more speech.
404 Media points out that Kirk did in fact do more than speak and write, and I’d forgotten about it: his organization ran harrassment-targeting web sites aimed at university staff and school boards. The line between speech and incitement/actively enabling can be quite thin and debatable.
https://www.404media.co/charlie-kirk-was-not-practicing-politics-the-right-way/