“But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.” — Matthew 12:36

Charlie Kirk, Free Speech, And The Hard Work Of Civil Discourse

Charlie Kirk’s assassination was a moral horror. Full stop. I mourn a life cut short, a wife widowed, and children left without a father. Violence is never an answer to speech, and the moment we normalize it, we all lose. In the fog of grief and rage, though, I want to say something that might sound unfashionable in our era of instant verdicts: Kirk did some things right, and he said some things plainly wrong. If we’re going to honor truth and preserve a culture of argument over violence, we need to be capable of saying both…while keeping Matthew 12:36 in view for ourselves, not only for our opponents.

What Kirk Got Right

Kirk showed up. He debated. He engaged hostile rooms and stayed for Q&A. That takes courage in today’s climate, and it models a kind of democratic muscle memory we badly need. As Ezra Klein argued in the New York Times, you can dislike much of what he believed and still recognize that he practiced politics “the right way” in at least this respect: persuasion over force, argument over ostracism. Showing up is not everything, but it is not nothing. Our republic depends on people who will stand and speak instead of sneer and silence. This interview with Bill Maher is a perfect example of what Kik did right:

“But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.” — Matthew 12:36

What We Must Call Out

To praise a virtue is not to whitewash a vice. Some of Kirk’s rhetoric was reckless and needlessly divisive. Consider his widely circulated line about airline safety and diversity efforts: “If I see a black pilot, I’m gonna be like ‘boy, I hope he is qualified.’” (full context here) That isn’t merely controversial, it’s offensively ignorant. It smears an entire class of professionals who meet rigorous, uniform standards, and it invites suspicion when there is no valid doubt that is justified, as far as I can see. In an industry built on checklists, training hours, and recurrent proficiency checks, casting doubt on a pilot on sight is the opposite of truth-telling; it’s sowing distrust. Worse, it tells young black aviators that no amount of excellence will pierce the cloud of your suspicion. There are more examples, but I wanted to focus on the travel-related example here.

Words matter. They shape what we notice, how we treat each other, and what we permit ourselves to believe. Matthew 12:36 is not a cudgel for “the other side.” It is a mirror for all of us. When any of us—Kirk, his critics, or me—reach for cheap applause lines that flatten human beings into propaganda, we will answer for it. The standard does not bend simply because we think our policy goals are noble.

“But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.” — Matthew 12:36

Free Speech Without Favors

Kirk was a fierce proponent of free speech and railed against “cancel culture.” Here’s the irony of this moment: in the days since his murder, some of his loudest political allies have seized on the tragedy to demand firings, blacklists, and government pressure against speech they consider offensive. That is not a defense of free speech, it is a perversion of it. Jimmy Kimmel’s comments about the reaction to Kirk’s death were crass, and I won’t defend their tone. But the remedy for bad speech is better speech, not network suspensions under the shadow of political muscle. If Kimmel deserves suspension, let it be for poor ratings, not for uttering words we dislike.

When government officials or their appointees even hint that regulators should punish speech or lean on companies to do it, they cross a bright line. You cannot save free speech by using state power to punish speech. That lesson should be obvious to everyone who loved Kirk’s style of showing up and arguing. It should be obvious to those who cheered his death online, too. The cure for our cultural sickness will not be firings, blacklists, or federal threats; it will be the steady, patient practice of civil discourse.

“But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.” — Matthew 12:36

Where We Go From Here

We can hold two thoughts at once: political murder is evil, and some of Kirk’s public claims, like casting suspicion on black pilots, were shameful. We can admire his willingness to engage and reject his careless words. We can defend robust free speech while opposing state-backed efforts to silence dissenters (including critics of Kirk). In other words, we can do the hard work of citizenship.

I find myself where Ezra Klein landed: on the side of argument over annihilation, of persuasion over punishment. Not because I agree with Kirk on policy: we agreed on many things and disagreed on many more things, but because a politics that requires perfect agreement before we agree to talk is a politics marching toward the abyss. If we care about truth and neighbor-love, Matthew 12:36 tells us to start with our own tongues. Then keep showing up. Keep listening. Keep arguing. And refuse to trade the hard value of conversation for the cheap thrill of retribution.

Requiescat in pace, Charlie. May God have mercy on us all—and may we carefully measure our words.

image: Gage Skidmore