The tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk is definitely a turning point (no pun intended) for the state of politics today. It seems that polarisation has now come to a point where civil and respectful debate and dialogue are now no longer possible.
But should we be surprised? After all, we are talking about a political side which celebrates people who kill healthcare insurance executives and burn down buildings every time a police officer defends themselves. This same political side also spent years using everything they could to shut down their opponents, whether it was deplatforming, debanking or using weaponised lawfare. And, when that didn’t work, they used the media to demonise their political opponents as facists and Nazis, and threatened to boycott any business which shared the same values as their opponents.
Violence has now become the norm. We’ve seen enough people confused about their gender shooting up Christian schools to know that in this nihilistic and confused world, violence is considered a healthy expression of emotions. Political violence even more so has become acceptable. We only have to see the reactions to the assassination attempts on a presidential candidate as proof of this. This fetish of celebrating the killing of political opponents has now become mainstream. Violence against Christians is nothing new – you only need to look at the number of martyrs. Even in the modern world, what happened to Hatun Tash and Mar Mari Emmanuel proves that the Devil has not stopped his war on Christians.
Charlie Kirk will be remembered as the man who advocated for civil dialogue, to be able to compete in the marketplace of ideas and to debate and challenge opinions and views that we may disagree with. After all, not only is this a necessary part of the democratic process but as a way of fleshing out solutions to society’s ills. Every great civilisation, from the Romans to the Greeks, could not exist without it. In fact, debating was one of the many things taught in the art of oratory or public speaking that anyone who wished to enter the political arena needed to learn.
One of the things that struck me about Charlie was his faith: his faith that God would help him in his mission to preach the truth and the ability for God to change people’s hearts. What also struck me was how he viewed progressives: he didn’t see them as evil people but misguided people blinded by delusion who needed to be shown the light of the truth.
I’m sure I’m not the only one to fear that the tradition of civil dialogue died with Charlie. There are different ways this could go, but I hope this inspires a movement to continue that tradition.
