My son saw the video of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. What happens now?

Brett Freeman

In our own house, this has become painfully personal. I didn’t move quickly enough to stop my son, 11, from seeing the video of Kirk’s assassination. It was graphic, awful, and seared into my own mind — and now it’s in his as well. I can’t help but wonder how that will shape him. We all carry our politics and our views of America out of our own upbringings. How will this moment influence his?”

When news broke of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, my first thoughts weren’t about politics. They were about my kids.

Without any prompting from me, for many months now, they had been watching Kirk’s videos on YouTube. It struck me that someone I had never met, a national figure, had found his way into my family’s living room, shaping what my children were curious about.

That influence reached right into a neighboring community as well. At Somers High School, two brave young women, Millie McCormack and Lianna Martone, both juniors, recently launched a chapter of Turning Point USA, the organization founded by Kirk. They did so with the simple aim of creating a place where dialogue could happen honestly — where conservative voices wouldn’t be buried or shouted down. Whether or not you agreed with their politics, you had to respect their courage. It is not easy to go against the grain at that age.

For me as publisher, this is a difficult column to write. I work hard to make sure our newspapers aren’t viewed as partisan. I completely delegate the news pages to our editors, but the opinion section is my domain. This section should be a place where we stick to issues, not personalities. I try to hold myself to that same standard. I’ve never thought it appropriate to use this space to share unvarnished personal feelings about President Trump, Biden or any other figure. I have my leanings — I’ve never hidden them — but I’ve always believed my role here is different.

Recently, I’ve wrestled with some submissions. I've rejected a few not because of their ideas, but because of their tone. It's no secret that I lean right in my Publisher’s Memo, and I don’t want to come across as silencing views from the left. But I also don’t want this paper to be a megaphone for ad hominem attacks. Debate the issues, yes. But don’t call people Nazis, racists or Hitler simply because you disagree with their views.

I enforced that standard during the Biden Administration, too, when letters came in with personal insults aimed at him or his supporters.

Why? Because language matters. We don’t live in a fascist country. In a fascist country, you couldn’t accuse the leadership of fascism. But here, people do it all the time. And I worry that people don’t think through what it means to casually label someone as “Hitler.” If a politician is “Hitler,” then doesn’t that invite the logic that he should be stopped at all costs? Who wouldn’t go back in time and try to kill Hitler? Words carry consequences.

In the hours since Kirk’s death, I’ve also been struck by some of the reactions I’ve seen on Facebook. Many people rightly condemn political violence, but then add qualifiers — suggesting that Kirk somehow deserves less sympathy because of his views on guns and other topics. That is not who we should be. The measure of a free and decent society is whether we recognize the humanity of those we disagree with most. If we start carving out exceptions, we lose the very foundation of democracy itself.

In our own house, this has become painfully personal. I didn’t move quickly enough to stop my son, 11, from seeing the video of Kirk’s assassination. It was graphic, awful, and seared into my own mind — and now it’s in his as well. I can’t help but wonder how that will shape him. We all carry our politics and our views of America out of our own upbringings. How will this moment influence his?

My daughter, meanwhile, is distraught to be part of a group Snapchat — a platform I admittedly don’t understand well — where one boy actually praised the assassination. That kind of casual cruelty among teenagers, treated like just another shocking comment online, is chilling. It makes me wonder what kind of political culture our children are inheriting if violence is celebrated, even in passing, by their peers.

It’s strange, really, how quickly everything gets framed as left versus right. I suppose it’s only natural to pick teams, but the truth is more complicated. Growing up, I thought of myself as a liberal, because at the time, liberalism — at least in the classical sense — meant the free exchange of ideas. That tradition of open dialogue is what drew many “classical liberals” to figures like Charlie Kirk. It wasn’t necessarily that they agreed with every one of his policy views, but they respected the fact that he was willing to stand up against mainstream campus culture and insist that all sides be heard.

And for perspective, much of Kirk’s politics would not have been out of step with the Democratic Party of the 1990s. His views on border security, free speech and even certain social issues were once considered centrist or bipartisan. That tells us less about Kirk than it does about how dramatically the goalposts have shifted in our political conversation.

As parents, we raise our kids to be brave, to stand up, to speak their minds. And then we send them off to college. I’ll admit that step gives me real apprehension. I’ve seen the vitriol on campuses — against Jews, against conservatives, against anyone who dares to dissent from the loudest voices. For years now, universities have canceled events with conservative speakers, not because the ideas were unworthy, but because of threats of violence. In that context, Kirk’s assassination feels less like an unthinkable outlier and more like the culmination of a troubling trend.

Kirk's “Change My Mind” series, held on college campuses, invited those who disagreed with him to approach a microphone across the table and debate. He gave them the front of the line. He was respectful, even when challenged aggressively. He told his own supporters to tone it down when they booed those with opposing views. Whether you loved or loathed his politics, that model — debate conducted face to face, with decency — is one we could all learn from.

In fact, Kirk's approach was a modern echo of the town square during America’s founding era. When we think of the 1700s, we imagine citizens gathering to argue passionately, publicly, about what kind of country they wanted to build. Kirk’s table on the quad was not so different. Like his ideas or abhor them, his eloquence and articulation were in the legacy of Thomas Paine, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and other thinkers who sharpened our democracy through words.

That’s why his death feels not just tragic but symbolic. Charlie Kirk’s martyrdom will, in time, solidify his status as one of the best of America. He modeled courage in the arena of ideas. He invited disagreement instead of shutting it down. He put dialogue above violence.

And that’s why this assassination is not just an attack on one man, but on our shared ability to disagree without bloodshed. Political violence is unacceptable. Always. No matter where it comes from, no matter who it targets.

This is a tragedy, plain and simple. The way we respond to it will say a lot about whether we still believe in democracy, dialogue and decency. The truest measure of a democracy is not how we treat our allies, but how we treat those we disagree with most.