Political Violence is the Ultimate Act of Cowardice

Politically motivated attacks

On September 10, 2025, the politically conservative activist and speaker, Charlie Kirk, was fatally wounded by a sniper while speaking at Utah Valley University. Kirk, only 31 years old, was a husband and a father of two young children. His murder was carried out at a public event, in broad daylight, in front of an audience of college students.

While I am not particularly conservative politically, and I never followed Charlie Kirk, this act is especially polarizing. It follows the targeted, politically motivated murders of Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, in June 2025, both prominent Democrats. That assassination sent the message that serving in elected office now carries risks that extend beyond rhetorical attacks.

Three years earlier, in 2022, Nancy Pelosi’s husband, also a Democrat, was savagely attacked with a hammer during a home break-in—an event that blurred the line between fringe rhetoric and real-world violence. Each of these people, among others not mentioned here, met with violence not for private grievances, but because of the public, political beliefs they represented. That pattern should alarm every American, regardless of party or ideology.

And now, the senseless assassination of Kirk. His death may serve to silence his lone voice, but the overall impact will amplify the simmering toxic cycles of fear and hatred metastasizing across present-day America. That simmering is now an open flame, stoked by those eager to celebrate or weaponize tragedy.

One glance at the sentiments expressed online after Kirk’s murder makes this painfully clear: the glee, mockery, and thinly veiled justifications for his death reveal not only a coarsening of our civic discourse, but also the inevitability of escalation. Each act of political violence, instead of quelling animosity, hardens division into hostility, and hostility into vengeance, and sometimes that vengeance manifests itself into violence.

Along with this increasing divide, the assassination will more than likely galvanize his conservative party and followers, who may now view themselves as living under siege in a hostile and violent culture. Kirk’s death, in this context, risks transforming him from a controversial provocateur into a revered martyr—a symbol of perceived persecution at the hands of ideological enemies. His name may be invoked not merely in grief but as a rallying cry, fueling campaigns, movements, and perhaps even further retaliatory violence.

In this way, the act meant to silence him instead secures his place as a potent symbol in the partisan battlefield, deepening the entrenchment of two Americas that no longer recognize themselves in one another.

We are not changing anything with violence

What did killing Kirk accomplish, ultimately? He had an enormous following, so enormous that many credit him with garnering the votes necessary for Trump’s election victory, especially the votes of younger people. They are still here. They are America's future. And they still share the beliefs he embraced.

Kirk and his supporters may not think the way you or I do, or maybe they do, but murdering him without challenging those ideas does not bring about any form of change. It robs us all of the very mechanism that can change perspectives: a dialogue. A functioning democracy enables civil debate of opposing ideas. Killing those who don't participate in an echo chamber reflecting your ideas is the ultimate act of a coward.

What would work? What might bring about positive change? Engaging in persuasive disagreement in a balanced dialogue. This is uncomfortable and arduous work, but when it is successful, minds can be challenged and changed.

What would never work? Resorting to bloodshed. Then there is no possibility of progress; there is only the possibility of increasing a narrative that the “other side” is out to create instability through violence.

Gloating over the public murder of someone who does not represent your ideas erodes the democratic order, accelerating the very decline it pretends to resist. Americans need to reject violence in every manifestation and return to the democratic ideals that hold the foundation of this country: compromise, persuasion, and civic respect.