I was wandering an Aldi while making an Instacart run when Chris, one of my co-hosts on Henshin Power V3, sent me and my other co-host, Jake, a text in a group chat that said Charlie Kirk had been shot by a sniper. I briefly checked internet news for confirmation and immediately turned on the TuneIn Radio app to listen to local news and talk radio station WOWO for live updates. I listened in real time as the story unfolded, with some reports claiming Kirk was alive but in critical condition, until about an hour later when he was decalred dead at the young age of 31.

He had a family. A wife and two kids, ages 1 and 3.

Thousands of other people—including his wife—at the event saw it happen. And many, many more on a livestream.

I’m not here to talk about Charlie Kirk himself. I was aware of him and his organization, Turning Point USA, and had seen some of his videos, but I wasn’t one of his subscribers or fans.

What I am here to discuss is this assassination’s broader implications and effects.

Let me say this upfront: I’m a conservative. I believe in the principles outlined in the U.S. Constitution. The most important of these, which is why it’s listed at the top of the document, is the First Amendment. It says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. (Emphasis mine)

Regardless of what you thought of Charlie Kirk, one thing everyone can agree on is he was shot and killed for articulating his beliefs.

That’s not how actual discourse works.

Murder is murder.

The counter for speech you disagree with—including “hate speech”—isn’t violence. It’s more speech.

The Founding Fathers knew the people needed to talk back to their government and hash out ideas in the public square in order to sift out the bad ones and discover the good ones. The First Amendment acknowledges that citizens have the ability to, as liberals are fond of saying, speak truth to power. Free and open discourse is the bedrock of the American politic.

At least it was.

We live in a time where speech is equated to violence and anyone who disagrees with someone is labeled things like “fascist” and “Nazi” to the point where those words, once double-edged swords of meaning, are now the blunt knives of ignorance. All many people know is these terms are all but synonyms for “evil,” and if the people who don’t think like them are evil, evil must be met with force.

Deadly force, if necessary.

But speech isn’t violence.

Violence is violence.

Replying to an argument with a fist, club, bullet, or (insert weapon here) is simply the most extreme version of the ad hominem fallacy. This is the surest sign that someone has lost the argument and has no counterpoints. And when one resorts to violence, they’re asking for violence in return. Martin Luther King Jr. said:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

If violence can be justified by one side, it can be justified by the other. Both sides will attack and kill one another in an endless loop like a bad song forever playing on repeat.

Some are reveling in the murder of Charlie Kirk. Some have even published lists of other targets.

This is a recipe for Civil War II.

If that happens, someone somewhere will have a bullet with your name on it, regardless of how “moral” or “correct” your views are. And someday, that bullet might find its way to you when an enemy whose name you never knew finds you on the street as others cheer for your death. As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory:

A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much about his digestion: to ignore the subject may be fatal cowardice for the one as for the other. But if either comes to regard it as the natural food of the mind–if either forgets that we think of such things only in order to be able to think of something else–then what was undertaken for the sake of health has become itself a new and deadly disease.

But the cycle can be broken.

Maybe I’m a naive optimist, but I don’t believe we’ve reached the American equivalent of the fall of the Roman Republic. Why? I’m a student of history. I didn’t live through the 1960s, but I know from my studies that it was a tumultuous time full of clashing ideologies and many high-profile assassinations, including President Kennedy’s. But the country survived. Scarred but alive.

We can get back to countering words with words in passionate debate again. In fact, we already have. Over the weekend, thousands gathered at Charlie Kirk’s hometown of Arlington Heights, a suburb of Chicago, for a vigil in his honor. They sang “Amazing Grace” and “God Bless America” and chanted “USA! USA! USA!” There was no violence. In fact, in the week since Kirk’s assassination, there hasn’t been any retaliatory attacks. It’s a far cry from 2020’s “Summer of Love,” as a point of comparison. This can and should be our model going forward.

I mentioned the fear of another Civil War. Even it does come to that, there is hope. America survived the first one. That era of history is even called Reconstruction. It was long and hard, but the country recovered. Ironically, it took President Lincoln’s assassination to help foster that. What was intended for evil—as retaliation for the defeat of the Confederacy—became a catalyst for good. Such is the will of God.

Solomon, who I believe is the author of Ecclesiastes, wrote, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9 ESV). That’s true of human nature. Hatred and violence are nothing new. But as we saw with the Arlington Heights crowd, so are temperance and love. It only takes one domino to stand up to keep the rest from falling.

Be that domino.