Have you heard this joke? A man gets to heaven and meets God. He asks “Who really shot JFK?” God replies “It was the lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald.” The man then mutters to himself: “This goes higher up than I thought!” We’re all prisoners of our time and influences. So important to know why we think what we do in the context of our time and communities—not just what we think.

I have been struggling with your posts for a while. My children have benefited from your point of view in their education, so I’ve remained an observer for most of your political opinions. Your expressions and statements about what took place this week leave me feeling that you really don’t get the impact of words, and how much one side has had an onslaught of violent rhetoric for a while now. Currently our family is searching for a university that my Christian, white son can attend to truly learn - and not be beaten down in the liberal arts classes he will likely major in while there. This exercise is providing very FEW to choose from - we have a HUGE problem at colleges in this country. Free speech is not given to both sides, and we just witnessed the most extreme form of that play out this week.

Last year I read through a giant anthology of major Christian writers in the west from the early church onward, and it was a little bit life-changing for me. I was struck over and over again how each one got something wrong! They got something appallingly and chaotically wrong, and differently wrong from writers in other centuries! And it was always something that they never noticed and never thought about! These were major influential saints and pastors in their time. My very strong takeaway was that genuine Christians get stuff wrong. A person has to proceed with humility because I am also wrong about something and, like the Pope in your example, probably won't know the full nature of my wrongness in this life. American Christians are also getting things wrong. You can just be pretty confident about that. I hope that helps--as a recovering perfectionist I find it really encouraging. Having to be right about everything is an awfully heavy burden to carry.

How do you disagree peacefully with someone who literally has you in their crosshairs?

As long as college students keep being taught that “words are violence” and that Trump supporters are Nazis or (liberals are evil), there will continue to be shootings. We aren’t arguing policies anymore in this country, it’s two totally different worldviews.

Doubt there will be giggling about perma war, dishonest weights and measures, child sacrifice, and body mutilation in the name of care.

I read an article on the Atlantic where it compared the views of abortion and gun rights- to liberals the issues represent liberty (over one’s body) and murder (guns) to MAGA they represent the opposite- murder (abortion) and Liberty (gun rights). Yet I don’t know anyone on either side who believes in universal abortion rights (up to the 9th month) or universal gun rights (like people with mental health issues buying all manner of guns.) I think people can all agree on limits of both issues.

My freshman daughter was in a class at UVU when the shot happened. It has been quite an exhausting week for our family.

I am determined to do my part to make it so. It is exhausting and lonely work.

“We woke up to what this fight really is.” Interpretation: "Many are now awake to what we face: an idealogy that insists on shutting down debate, choosing instead an echo chamber, and so committed to that twisted ideal that they will assassinate those who pursue debate and present different ideals." And I agree with Freitas that many, many people have mistakenly thought disagreements and debates are good, and supported by most Americans, when in fact we now see there is a large contingent of people committed to violently shutting down voices with whom they do not agree. THAT is the shock. That is the realization: that this is a fight against such callousness, such willingness to shut down, to censor, to even kill those who don't affirm one's beliefs. The thousands of voices celebrating Charlie Kirk's assassination make it clear this is no unimportant worldview. It is a fight - to once again commit to discourse, even and especially difficult discourse.

Charlie Kirk was a bit more like Lewis in your story than the politicians. Why can I say this? First, he was unerringly polite. Yes, he wasn’t a pushover, but no one drove him to curse, swear, or rave. He didn’t flinch from an audience set against him. He was dragged over coals at Ivy Leagues, was cussed at and mocked, lost debates, won debates, gave advice, and was ridiculed to his face. But at the end he got up, brushed off, and knew he had value. Wow. If we could teach all kids to know they have value like that, and to respect the value of others- that would be incredible. But back to my point: why was he not the politician? No one can find any dirt on him: not even one quote with hate or violence has popped up. So why wouldn’t he be a politician? Because Kirk questioned everything, and that included what we say he shouldn’t question. A true researcher learns as much as he or she can then asks questions, and if they aren’t political, they can ask the “wrong” questions. Kirk asked about everything. A trans kid came to him for insight when he was confused. Kirk listened genuinely. Wow! And when the kid wanted Charlie’s opinion, Charlie said “I think that living with your natural design will give you more peace.” That is a sentence that would get a psychologist in trouble most places. It felt like the child in “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” He shouldn’t have listened according to right extremists, and he shouldn’t tell this kid to be his biological gender according to left extremists. But Kirk didn’t judge, throw nasty comments in, or push religion. He listened and offered a deep insight that might just resound with many trans… if it weren’t so politically inappropriate! But it gets worse (or better?) Kirk has been questioning Israel, the Gaza Strip, and atrocities that are going on that are ties to political maneuvering there. Do you think Ben Shapiro liked it when challenged him on these questions? Do you think Trump would agree? Yet that was Charlie’s clique- or so we believe. But no- Charlie Kirk didn’t stop asking questions- nothing was too sacred to challenge or be challenged by those speaking with him. So you know what we need? We need thousands of college kids from every political background to put up tables at every college campus in this nation and write a statement, ANY statement, on a whiteboard, followed by “change my mind.” Then try it out. Discuss ideas. It’s been a while since we did much of that outside of class. And if that is what Charlie Kirk is remembered for- teaching us to speak about ideas again- now THAT would be incredible.

I admire your optimism and your call for civility. But it's hard for me to see all disagreements as mere opinions. Some things are simply dangerous. Believing women are lesser than men, urging guards to beat up protesters, defying judges and calling them corrupt whenever they rule against you -these are not viewpoints, they are attacks on rights and institutions. Should we also call slavery just another opinion? Or the rise of Hitler? Or laws that strip people of their civil rights? Can the insurrection on January 6th be seen a good or bad, depending on one's opinion? Steven Bannon is already talking about “ways” for Trump to serve another term, and I honestly believe Trump will not leave in 2028 unless he's made to (this is my opinion, we will see what happens), and this worries me enormously. I agree with you that humility matters, and I’d love to think we could laugh at our mistakes someday the same way Pope Gregory did in Dante's world. But there are moments in history, and I believe this is one, where failing to confront threats head-on could be catastrophic. I value your response.

Thank you for this. I also read the post by said VA representative and was saddened and disturbed - both that it existed at all, that a leader would write such words and that it received applause via likes and shares. Sigh. I love what you wrote - it reminded me of a favorite adage I live by “Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves for they shall never cease to be amused” 🙂 I will join you in hoping for that seemingly utopian vision along with I hope, a fair amount of our fellow countrypeople 😉

Perhaps it’s my Jewish faith that always made me so confused about the dichotomy we see in the othering. Judaism doesn’t attempt to convert people. There are good Jews and good Christians and good Muslims and good atheists and each of them is on the path that Gd (or not Gd in the case of atheists) put them on. I don’t need to convince you that my way is right. Your way, as long as peaceful is valid to you. But it does seem like, unfortunately in a lot of other people‘s mindsets if you’re not one of me if you’re not doing what I do if you don’t believe what I believe, you are inherently either evil or in trouble and I must save you. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but two rights can both be right.

If one side loses (and it doesn't matter which side), we ALL lose. There will be no winners. At that point, freedom of speech will no longer exist. We either all rise or we all fall.

Ezra Klein, someone on the opposite side of the political spectrum from Charlie Kirk, wrote this today: "You can dislike much of what Kirk believed and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion. When the left thought its hold on the hearts and minds of college students was nearly absolute, Kirk showed up again and again to break it. Slowly, then all at once, he did. College-age voters shifted sharply right in the 2024 election. 'That was not all Kirk’s doing, but he was central in laying the groundwork for it. I did not know Kirk, and I am not the right person to eulogize him. But I envied what he built. A taste for disagreement is a virtue in a democracy. Liberalism could use more of his moxie and fearlessness. In the inaugural episode of his podcast, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California hosted Kirk, admitting that his son was a huge fan. What a testament to Kirk’s project. "On social media, I’ve seen mostly decent reactions to Kirk’s murder. There is grief and shock from both the left and the right. But I’ve seen two forms of reaction that are misguided, however comprehensible the rage or horror that provoked them. One is a move on the left to wrap Kirk’s death around his views — after all, he defended the Second Amendment, even admitting it meant accepting innocent deaths. Another is on the right, to turn his murder into a justification for an all-out war, a Reichstag fire for our time. "But as the list above reveals, there is no world in which political violence escalates but is contained to just your foes. Even if that were possible, it would still be a world of horrors, a society that had collapsed into the most irreversible form of unfreedom. "Political violence is a virus. It is contagious. We have been through periods in this country when it was endemic. In the 1960s there were the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy and Medgar Evers. In the 1970s, Gov. George Wallace was shot by a would-be assassin but survived, and Gerald Ford faced two assassination attempts in one month. In 1981 Ronald Reagan survived after John Hinckley Jr.’s bullet ricocheted off his rib and punctured his lung. These assassins and would-be assassins had different motives, different politics and different levels of mental stability. When political violence becomes imaginable, either as a tool of politics or a ladder for fame, it begins to infect hosts heedlessly. "American politics has sides. There is no use pretending it doesn’t. But both sides are meant to be on the same side of a larger project — we are all, or most of us, anyway, trying to maintain the viability of the American experiment. We can live with losing an election because we believe in the promise of the next election; we can live with losing an argument because we believe that there will be another argument. Political violence imperils that. "Kirk and I were on different sides of most political arguments. We were on the same side on the continued possibility of American politics. It is supposed to be an argument, not a war; it is supposed to be won with words, not ended with bullets. I wanted Kirk to be safe for his sake, but I also wanted him to be safe for mine and for the sake of our larger shared project. We are all safe, or none of us are." Ezra Klein joined Opinion in 2021. Previously, he was the founder, editor in chief and then editor at large of Vox; the host of the podcast “The Ezra Klein Show”; and the author of “Why We’re Polarized.”

I love that this whole conversation is framed as liberals vs conservatives when it turns out the shooter is ultra-right-wing and went after Kirk because he wasn’t right wing enough.

I did not see your last post (as I am trying to not be overwhelmed by social media right now) but I am so sorry that someone said that to you. I could go on a rant but I will just quote CS Lewis “If I, being what I am, can call myself a Christian…” something along the lines of do I dare say you aren’t. I suppose I only remember the first part because that’s the part God reminds me of when I get on my high horse.

I’ve been wishing i had the words, and I don’t, but you’ve said what I wish I could say.

As I told a couple of tired friends last night, my soul has been finding peace in the music of Rich Mullins, Jon Foreman, and Jon Guerra. Weary in the broken world, longing for the peace of Christ, comforted that my true citizenship is in heaven. "Nobody tells you When you get born here How much you're gonna love it and how You'll never belong here So I'll call you my country But I'll be lonely for my home I wish that I could take you there with me..." - Rich Mullins, "Land of my Sojourn" "And I found strength but it wasn't what I thought And I found peace in the places I forgot And I found riches ain't the things that I had bought Yeah I found out the day I lost myself was the day that I found God" -Jon Foreman/Switchfoot, "The Day I Found God" Jon Guerra, "The Kingdom of Heaven": youtu.be/HZ30SiVW92c?si=qkhB7x3Wv_bpq3hU

Absolutely, it takes a little more time to think this way, than to react to a trite political statement but it’s much more accurate and less polarizing. Oversimplifying and generalizing seem to lead to polarization.

Does Nick Freitas realize the suspect's upbringing and worldview don't seem to be different from his own? At least...according to what we have learned so far

I would like to think that for my son and new host-son (foreign exchange student), that the concept of 𝑬 𝑷𝒍𝒖𝒓𝒊𝒃𝒖𝒔 𝑼𝒏𝒖𝒎 is still alive -- maybe in resuscitation -- but alive, and it needs a healthy does of what makes us 𝑼𝒏𝒖𝒎. Articles abound from left, left of center, center right, right on the shooting of Charlie Kirk, and I find the one by Ezra Klein (certainly not on the "Right") says much of what is in the thought bubble hovering over my head. "There is grief and shock from both the left and the right. But I’ve seen two forms of reaction that are misguided, however comprehensible the rage or horror that provoked them. One is a move on the left to wrap Kirk’s death around his views — after all, he defended the Second Amendment, even admitting it meant accepting innocent deaths. Another is on the right, to turn his murder into a justification for an all-out war, a Reichstag fire for our time. But as the list above reveals, there is no world in which political violence escalates but is contained to just your foes. Even if that were possible, it would still be a world of horrors, a society that had collapsed into the most irreversible form of unfreedom." (P.S. of course, another publication counters Klein's title, I'll leave y'all to find that one, but the one by Klein, I am gifting here.) www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/opinion/charlie-kirk-assassination-fear-politics.html?unlocked_article...

The spectrum of ideas and nuanced beliefs seem to be vanishingly rare in public discourse. I would love for our nation to have balanced news reporting again and multiple viable parties that have to be able to cooperate. I think both of these would bring us into more rational discussions.

How about, stay with me, deconstructing the entire Christian thing and realize a whole bunch of us identify with none of these options.