The statements that I wholeheartedly disagreed with almost everything Charlie Kirk stood for, AND that I am deeply saddened and appalled that he was gunned down, murdered, are not contradictory. In fact, put together, these two statements make another statement: They say that violence is not an answer to disagreement in a civil society.
Violence is uncivil.
When societies accept violence as a natural consequence to disagreements, they lose site of what it means to be a free society. They permit further violence as a solution to disagreement. They invite and incite tyranny, control, and loss of freedoms. They go down a path to being less civil, and more dangerous. And they lead to a society more greatly restricted in both rights and freedoms as citizens.
I’ve said before, “We need a society that allows disagreement. We need to be civil about how we protest. Because there is no civil society where violence and damaging property works one-way… only the way upset people think it should. Societies that tolerate inappropriate protest are inviting responses that are less and less civil. And nobody wins.”
Nobody wins, civility is lost, and rationalizations or justifications of any kind promote the worst kind of tolerance… tolerance to violence.
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Related:
• Intolerance for bad faith actors
I shared these statements in comments over the past couple days:
“I see the irony, I abhor the violence. What people who celebrate this death miss is that they disagreed with him in life and yet agree with him in death. To rationalize, justify, or accept his murder as ok in any way is to accept his premise that there are acceptable losses to gun deaths. He was wrong in life, don’t agree with him in death.”
“What’s really sad is that to in any way celebrate this is to acknowledge his views, and accept that there are acceptable losses to gun violence. You can disagree vehemently with the man and still recognize that we can not live in a free, open, democratic, and safe society and have this happen.”