Why has the murder of Charlie Kirk resonated so powerfully through the culture? Is it because he was cut down so brutally in his prime? That he left behind a wife and two very young children? That no one deserves to die that way? Certainly for all of those reasons. But I am convinced there is something more, and it has to do with the fact that he died with a microphone in his hand—not a gun or a knife or a grenade, but a microphone.
Charlie Kirk’s method, which he practiced on college campuses all over the country, was to invite into a public dialogue people who disagreed with him. You can watch him at work on thousands of videos on YouTube. You’ll notice that he doesn’t duck hard questions and that he engages his interlocutors respectfully, even when he’s articulating a position radically contrary to theirs. Just a few months ago, I texted him with a word of congratulation after I saw him manage, with grace and a smile, an army of woke college kids who, to put it mildly, were pretty obnoxious to him.
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