Utah Valley University was transformed into a scene of horror on Wednesday. A shot rang out during a question-and-answer session featuring Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA. Witnesses say the bullet struck him in the neck. He was rushed to the hospital in critical condition and later died.This is not an isolated episode of civic unrest. It is the culmination of years of contempt from the Left for anyone who dares to disagree with them. From cancelled lectures to masked mobs breaking windows, the march of radical progressivism has been away from dialogue and toward coercion. This time, the weapon was not a shouted slogan or a social media purge, but a firearm.Kirk had been participating in his American Comeback Tour, a campaign aimed at inspiring young people to think for themselves. Instead of being allowed to present his case, he was met with gunfire. That ought to trouble even the most hardened partisan. For if one side can only tolerate its opponents in silence — or worse, six feet under — then democratic society itself begins to unravel..We have seen the signs before. When Jordan Peterson was prevented from speaking on Canadian campuses, the justification from his opponents was that his words were “harmful.” When J.K. Rowling questioned aspects of gender ideology, she was threatened with death. When Alberta Premier Danielle Smith proposed modest reforms to parents’ rights over their children in schools, Leftist activists attempted to paint her as beyond the pale rather than engage with her arguments.In each case, the pattern is clear. The Left prefers denunciation to debate, censorship to persuasion, and now, apparently, murder to dissent. One does not need to agree with Kirk — or with anyone else who has faced intimidation — to grasp the enormity of this shift.The mainstream media is unlikely to frame this event honestly. When a lone lunatic attacked Paul Pelosi in San Francisco, the narrative immediately became a sermon about the menace of “right-wing extremism.” When Antifa mobs burned American cities, the media coverage softened their crimes as “mostly peaceful.” The ideological filter is as predictable as it is corrosive..One might compare the present moment with the repeated attempts to silence US Supreme Court justices. Crowds gathered outside their homes, implicitly threatening their families, while commentators winked at the spectacle. When activists feel emboldened to menace the judiciary, the legislature, and now popular conservative speakers, we are no longer discussing isolated incidents. We are describing a culture of sanctioned hostility.There will be calls for restraint, for conservatives to mute their language so as not to “provoke” further incidents. That is precisely the wrong lesson. If violence is rewarded with self-censorship, it will only breed more of the same. The proper response is to insist on speaking more, not less, and to demand that public institutions — from universities to media outlets — defend, rather than smother, free expression.It is not simply Kirk who has been attacked. It is the idea that one may stand before an audience and speak without fear of reprisal. It is the principle that disagreement is not a crime. It is the foundation of a civil society..The West has always prided itself on debate rather than decree, ballots rather than bullets. Yet at Utah Valley University, we saw a grim inversion of that tradition. If we allow political violence to metastasize, we will wake one day to discover that the exchange of ideas has been replaced with intimidation and silence.Kirk’s life has been cut short, leaving a wife and two young children. Kirk fought for free speech and conservative values. His death cannot be in vain. For if our universities become shooting galleries instead of forums for ideas, then the free society we inherited is already in mortal danger.
