Charlie Kirk has just been assassinated today. This atmosphere of political violence and agitation has to stop. It’s killing people. It’s killing our soul.
Charlie Kirk was a person that believed in his cause. I didn’t always agree with the cause—that’s immaterial. But his engagement got him killed. That shouldn’t happen.
He dedicated his life to politics, to getting young people interested in political debate and dialogue. He went to college campuses with his Turning Point USA organization. Again, not necessarily my political affiliation, but that is immaterial. That doesn’t matter.
We need people recruiting young people for politics. We need people who are engaged in the fate of our nation and the world. We need to show that we are willing to invest ourselves, our time, our energy, our money in the community, in the wider community. That’s what politics is about.
We’ve had too many acts of political violence just in the last 15 years or so. We had the shooting of Gabby Giffords, of Steve Scalise, kidnap attempts of Gretchen Whitmer, Nancy Pelosi’s husband attacked, Donald Trump attacked, Governor Shapiro’s house attacked, and many others. And now Charlie Kirk.
I don’t even know what really to say. I don’t know where this is supposed to lead. Wherever this may lead, it needs to stop. This is where this has to lead—it has to stop. This act of violence must give us pause.
He is a person that dedicated his life to helping others serve this country. Whether you agree or disagree with their political aims doesn’t matter. Political aims change throughout life. Reality teaches us this lesson every day. You may start out at this point, end there. Doesn’t matter.
All you need is to have people willing to solve problems, willing to engage with others, willing to have dialogue, willing to even have animated discussions, willing to elevate the quality of the debate. That was what Charlie Kirk tried to do from his own point of view. And that’s what got him killed.
We cannot have the politics of purity, the politics of “my side, your side,” friends versus enemies. This is not what we are. This is not what we should be. Let me say it like that because sometimes this is what we are—we shouldn’t be.
We’ve had periods of political violence in this country that should not be. That’s what autocratic countries do to the people they don’t like. This isn’t what democracy should be like. This isn’t what a republic should be like. However we call the experiment we’re living under—this democratic republic—we should reward people for being active politically.
I’ve always told my students: vote and think about going into politics. And I don’t care which side you’re on. And I mean this. Everybody pursuing public service chooses a life of sacrifice, a life of annoyance, of aggravation, of stress, of punishment, self-punishment for the sake of others.
Yeah, some people of course can get rich when they are politicians, but there are easier ways. Anybody interested in the betterment of their country should be celebrated and not assassinated.
This is shocking. This is horrible. This cannot continue. Do what you have to do to make this stop. Please contribute to the betterment of humankind and not to whatever this is. Thank you.
[This was originally posted to YouTube as a video. This post is a slightly abbreviated transcript, preserving the oral style of the video.]
Erratic Attempts 