We Need More Courageous Voices

Astonishing. That’s the word my sister used for it and I haven’t found a better fit. I am astonished that such a thing occurred at Utah Valley University. At any university, really. In any place where people peacefully gather to listen, learn, and share.

When Charlie Kirk came to the University of South Carolina, my students said the vibe on campus shifted. People recognized, some for the first time, that they were feeling the same way. They saw faces they knew in the crowd nodding along, agreeing with some common-sense points being made. They saw hope and agency being restored to young people.

Charlie Kirk listened. And the people he listened to felt heard. And the people who witnessed the listening understood. They might not agree, but they understood.

I listened to the Tucker Carlson interview with Charlie Kirk and found common ground with both of them. It’s not a secret that Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA was a movement that reached, educated, and mobilized thousands of young people. Some heralded it as the future of the Republican Party and others saw it as a threat. Charlie Kirk had unpopular opinions. He questioned the legitimacy of transgender ideology and accused the Baby Boomers of the greatest generational theft in our nation’s history.

And people nodded along. They wondered, why should boys decide they want to be girls and then compete in girls sports?

People questioned the narratives that had pervaded and persisted and contradicted what they thought to be right and true. People wondered, before hearing Charlie Kirk, “Am I crazy for thinking this?” and then someone said it out loud and they realized they weren’t crazy, their voice had been missing from the national conversation.

The First Amendment protects free speech from the actions our government would take, not the actions of individuals hearing what we have to say. It does not protect against the consequences for that speech. In some cases the consequences are low-stakes like being derided, disliked, or disrespected. In other cases, the stakes are much higher. Exercising our right to free speech should never be a death sentence. Hearing someone else’s ideas or opinions does not directly threaten our own ideas and opinions. And we have dozens of ways to protect ourselves from the things we don’t want to hear: don’t go to the rally, don’t listen to the news, don’t stream the podcast, or walk away. Just walk away.

I won’t pretend to know what Charlie Kirk wanted or was trying to do. I’ll say only that sharing ideas, debating perspectives, contradicting and challenging one another’s beliefs, is how we all learn and grow. Free speech is a right because it doesn’t cost anyone else to let us exercise it. It doesn’t require anyone else’s labor for us to express our thoughts. These days anyone can start a Substack and call themselves an author, or a podcast and call themselves a broadcaster. If you’re honest and authentic, you might even build an audience. And that audience might relate to your story or your faith or your politics.

It takes courage to contradict the popular narrative. It takes courage to look things in the eye and call them what they are. In his courage, Charlie Kirk found and united a lot of young people who were feeling and thinking in similar ways.

It’s cowardice to gun down a young man, a husband and father, an advocate and change maker, an individual that didn’t ask you to agree with him. He just spoke what he believed. And he had the right to do so.

May Charlie Kirk rest in peace and may the rest of us find the courage to have hard conversations about the future of our nation. Because this latest act of heinous political violence is telling us something Charlie Kirk already knew: We are at a turning point.

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