I remember our first drive home from Pittsburgh following 9/11 mainly because a man was waving a large American Flag on the bridge near the West Alexander exit along Interstate 70. I didn’t know who he was, what political party he belonged to, or why he decided to stand on that overpass and wave the massive Flag, but the ignorance didn’t stop me from shedding confused tears.
It was four days after 19 murderers perpetrated the most horrific terrorist attack on the continental United States, crashing four commercial airliners and killing nearly 3,000 on September 11, 2001, and we were returning to our hometown to be with our families and feel that sense of unconditional security that only your parents and siblings can offer. It was a vulnerability we felt that, as 30-something Americans at the time, we had never experienced like our citizenry did on and following December 7, 1941.
As a country, we united on September 12, 2001, to fight our enemies in the Middle East and, thankfully, to support our warriors when they came home physically unharmed but changed forever by the war they fought. I’m sure the 3,000 college kids who had to run away from the Charlie Kirk event yesterday in Utah were impacted, too, but not because an American was defending American freedoms. Quite the opposite, actually.
The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk was a silencing of an American with political opinions, and it’s not the first time such a tragedy has taken place in our country. Civil rights legends Malcom X (1965) and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1968) were murdered for fighting for civil rights, and Harvey Milk was assassinated after he became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California.
Kirk was a conservative Republican who made his living by staging political events at college and university campuses throughout the country. He was a supporter of President Donald Trump, founded the Turning Point USA organization, and spoke often about his version of the American Dream.
Some people agreed with Kirk, and some people did not, but the 31-year-old was a conservative movement all by himself. Because he was so effective, a single “kill shot” ended the life of a husband, a father of two, and of a son.
Today, we will remember the people who were killed 24 years ago because of the hatred caused by difference, and we will honor those who fought for us and died because they responded to the attack zones or because they were deployed and died while defending our freedoms, but what do we do about Kirk’s assassination? How do we react to the loss of a life caused by this gross political division in our country? By the hatred caused by difference?
Will we pause? Will we pray together? Will we finally look to the other side of the aisle and say collectively, “Enough”?
We haven’t yet. So, are we at that turning point now?
