Only Classical Liberalism Can Prevent Tragedies Like the Killing of Charlie Kirk

Many in the United States and around the world have been shocked by the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the founder and director of Turning Point, USA, when he was at a university in Utah while peacefully debating with students on the political and social issues of the day. The fact that the actual shooting was captured on videos that enable the horror to be fully seen has made this event even more disturbing to a wide variety of viewers.

This tragic event has led many across the political spectrum to call for the de-demonization of those with whom one may strongly disagree over government policies and the ideological beliefs behind them. It has been emphasized that a free, democratic society may not be sustainable in the longer run if it is so divided that discourse between opposing views can lead to violence and destruction.

This is all no doubt true. Resort to force more often than not reflects an intolerance to even hearing or debating those holding contrary ideas. This can reflect either an arrogant presumption of knowing the “truth” and all contrary ideas have no place in society, or a difficulty in or fear that one cannot defend one’s own position through reason and persuasion, so better simply to silence the voice one cannot successfully argue against.

Political divisiveness in America
A Pew Research Center survey from 2022 stated that Republicans and Democrats viewed each other in starkly negative terms. Around 83 percent of Democrats viewed Republicans as closed-minded, while 69 percent of Republicans viewed Democrats as closed-minded. At the same time, 72 percent of Republicans considered Democrats to be dishonest, and 64 percent of Democrats felt that way about Republicans. About 52 percent of both Republicans and Democrats considered the other to be unintelligent. And 72 percent of Republicans thought that Democrats are immoral, while 63 percent of Democrats viewed Republicans as immoral. These numbers from 2022 were all significantly higher in each of these categories compared to when the same questions were asked in 2016.

In a more recent survey from July 2025, the Pew Research Center found that almost 80 percent of Republicans said that arguing with Democrats was almost impossible because Democrats cannot agree with them about “the facts” surrounding policy issues, At the same time, 83 percent of Democrats considered Republicans unwilling to accept “the facts” as Democrats see them over policy disagreements.

Even more disturbing is the result of a survey from 2024 that pointed out that 23 percent of Democrats and 18 percent of Republicans said it might be acceptable to use violence to silence speech someone did not like. However, among those between the age of 18 and 26, 42 percent said that violence may be used to silence views they found to be objectionable; it made no difference in this percentage whether or not these young people had or had not attended college. This does not bode well for the future if so many in that age group think that using force to shut up someone whose views and values they disagree with is a legitimate means of settling an argument.

At another level, however, it should be asked: Why has political discourse reached such an extreme and heated state that violence has become a more acceptable tool for some to “solve” differences over ideas? I would suggest that part of the reason is due to the fact that politics and government increasingly intrude into, influence, and determine so much more of people’s lives. The very nature of the modern democratic political process is that whichever majority of voters are triumphant in elections determines the course of political and social life in greater and greater detail for all in society, including all those who voted against the winning candidates.

Peaceful diversity of values and views in a free society
Suppose that you have a neighbor who is an avid enthusiast of astrology. They are convinced that what astrological “sign” you were born under and that using the movements and alignments of the stars to construct a horoscope chart enables you to anticipate the shape of things to come in your life; therefore, you need to follow its indications to find success in some areas of daily life and to avoid pitfalls in others.

You may consider them irrational, unscientific, and unintelligent about how they should make their choices and direct their lives. You might think them a fool easily manipulated by charlatans and con artists. You may be concerned and bothered when this neighbor tries to persuade others to follow astrology and the astrological signs. But if this neighbor merely talks, explains, and argues with others in your community, your only ethical recourse is to reason, argue, and persuade both him and those others he is talking to as to why he is wrong and misguided in thinking that horoscopes can reveal the mysteries of the future.

In a free society devoted to individual rights and freedom of speech, what you cannot do is resort to private or political force to prohibit and prevent your neighbor from believing in and guiding their own life by their belief in astrology or from trying to convince others of the power of astrological readings. If you are of a certain religion, you might consider your neighbor’s proselytizing for astrology to be blasphemous and the practicing of astrology to be a “mortal sin.” But, again, in the free, liberal society, your strongly held opinion may not be used as a rationale for silencing or imprisoning or killing your neighbor.

Likewise, no matter how firmly your neighbor may believe in astrology and its power for guiding people’s lives for the better and that not following the directions and alignments of the stars on horoscope charts means folly and disaster for all the others in society, he may not use private or political coercion to make or command others to live their lives according to the power of the astrological signs. Your neighbor may firmly believe that far too many people do not see and understand the “hidden signs” of life and its destinies that only astrology offers. No matter how strongly he believes that the astrological truth can set humanity free, in the open liberal society he must live with his frustration that many others will not be “liberated” by not following discoverable “laws” hidden in the stars.

Using government to impose views creates “enemies”
However, if your neighbor gets it into their head that to “save” humanity from error, sin, or disaster, government must be assigned the task, the role, the responsibility to make all in society conform to his view of things, the private and the voluntary now become the political and the coercive. He may want to turn government into an agency of monopolization of thought and action against everyone in the society, rather than an institution to secure each person’s liberty to follow his own path peacefully and in voluntary association and agreement with others.

What should the critic and opponent of astrology do? If he is a (classical) liberal, his response should be to explain, argue, and attempt to persuade those listening to his astrology neighbor that his astrological ideas are wrong, misguided, irrational, and harmful to a reasonable and rational understanding of the world. In addition, and equally important, this person should warn others in the community that if the proponent of astrology were to have his way, he would threaten the foundations of a free society, that is, everyone’s individual and personal liberty to accept or not accept. He wants to impose the closed in place of the open society. The fundamental issue is: the free versus the coerced society.

What would not be acceptable and would be equally dangerous is if the critic of astrology concluded that the only way to win against his neighbor was to use the same methods of political power and coercion as the neighbor wants and is trying to apply. That is, the use of governmental force to shut down the astrologist, prevent others from hearing his arguments, limiting his ability to proselytize on the power of the horoscope; in general, trying to coercively prevent others from openly deciding upon the neighbor’s astrological world view.

At this point, politics becomes a life and death struggle in pursuit of political power. Either your worldview or your neighbor’s dominates, dictates, and determines everything for everyone. You consider astrology to be a pseudo-science, a primitive and irrational understanding of how the real world works. Or, again, if you are religious, astrology is a pagan faith in the eyes of your God that may be the work of the Devil. Your neighbor considers your science or faith to be “false conscientious” preventing you from being freed to a “high level” of understanding of the mysteries of the universe.

Each views the other as the harbinger of doom, the agent of “evil,” of the worst and most dangerous in human thought and action. Since the end-goal is political power to impose one set of values versus some other on all, everything must be done to thwart the success of the person who is now seen and designated as “the enemy.” The more such a person succeeds in persuading and winning over the undecided in society, the closer comes the danger that the “wrong side” will prevail.

The life and death struggle for political power
One side or the other may believe that they cannot win against the “enemy” through reason and persuasion alone. There emerges the demonization of “the enemy,” the rhetorical condemnation of them by associating them with all that is usually viewed as despicable. There is a loosening of the normal prohibitions against lies, violence, and even murder if it assures that the “right side” prevails against “evil.”

This is what we seem to be approaching today in America. For more than a hundred years, the personal, private, and voluntary have been taken over more and more by government. Whether it be Social Security, health care, welfare redistribution, or regulation of business, we have seen democratic politics, special-interest group politicking, and ideological elites extending the reins of political power over the personal affairs of everyday civic and economic life.

But worse than the economic realm, in spite of how central it is to everyone’s everyday life and well-being, the pursuit of political power entered the area of religious beliefs, conceptions of sex and gender, the privacy of intimacy and personal identity, and the educational indoctrination of and control over children in place of the historically accepted trusteeship of parents over their young. Forms of this have been going on for decades, but in the last ten years or so, the battle for defining and imposing those definitions and ideas on everyone in society and especially through the educational system of government schooling from kindergarten through college has intensified.

This has become a life and death struggle over what it means to be a human being and to have a “good society.” In my astrology example, the astrologists are those on “the left” who are determined to remake how the world is understood and remolded in terms of a modified Marxism that makes race and gender rather than “social class” the essential characteristics and dividing lines between people. It includes the old socialist dislike and condemnation of capitalism in barely redesigned forms of control, command, and planning. It wants to reduce the individual to a collectivist category the fate of which will be determined in the arena of power politics. Old socialist wine in a hardly new type of collectivist bottle.

Again, in my example, the anti-astrologists are the American conservatives. While speaking about freedom and the private realm and sector, and rhetorically appealing to the American constitutional tradition concerning the role of government, they, in fact, also want to use the government to impose their conception of the good society, from censorship concerning sexual and other matters, to drug use, to infringing on the peaceful movement of people to where they would prefer to live and work. They rarely call for the rolling back and repealing of the welfare state or the end to U.S. interventionism in other parts of the world.

Conservatives have hailed President Trump’s cutting off of grants and research monies to institutions of higher learning due to the Woke agendas followed at many of these colleges and universities. But they have not called for an ending of such spending as a matter of principle of separating schooling from the state. They just want that money to be used as a tool to make those same colleges and universities implement a conservative agenda of curriculum and hiring. That is, the same use of the government as their opponents on “the left,” only to remake institutions of higher learning in their own image rather than the Woke one.

It is either my image of the world or yours. It is my agenda imposed on all, or yours. It is my version of the interventionist-welfare state, or yours with its more direct use of central-planning tools. Preventing government power from falling into the hands of “the enemy,” ends in a tragic event like that that took the life of Charlie Kirk. Because everything is at stake once everything is politics.

Classical liberalism is the only way out
The only way out of this political dead end is an abandonment of the statist premises that government is to be used to direct and remake society, regardless of the image of the good society desired. It requires a turn toward the classical liberal idea and ideal that each individual should be at liberty to guide and direct his own life, according to his own values and desires in peaceful and voluntary association with others inside and outside of the marketplace. We need to de-politicize the human relationship. We must recognize and respect the freedom, dignity, and autonomy of each and every human being to live for himself in his own way, with all human associations based on consent and not coercion.

Almost a hundred years ago, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises pointed out in his book on Liberalism (1927) the importance of tolerance and the danger of turning to political and private force to solve social disputes and disagreements:

Liberalism demands tolerance as a matter of principle, not from opportunism. It demands toleration even of obviously nonsensical teachings, absurd forms of heterodoxy, and childish silly superstitions. It demands toleration for doctrines and opinions that it deems detrimental and ruinous to society and even for movements that it indefatigably combats. For what impels liberalism to demand and accord toleration is not consideration for the content of the doctrine to be tolerated, but the knowledge that only tolerance can create and preserve the condition of social peace without which humanity must relapse into the barbarism and penury of centuries long past….

The propensity of our contemporaries to demand authoritarian prohibition as soon as something does not please them and their readiness to submit to such prohibitions even when what is prohibited is quite agreeable to them shows how deeply ingrained the spirit of servility still remains within them. It will require many long years of self-education until the subject can turn himself into the citizen. A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police.

Growing disregard for toleration of ideas of all kinds as a matter of principle, and a willingness to use police power to have one’s way in personal, social, and economic affairs over the peaceful preferences of others, has created the conditions out of which the assassination of Charlie Kirk is the latest tragic manifestation.

This piece originally was posted by the Future of Freedom Foundation.