As I read some of these negative comments I am saddened to see how low our society has sunk. This is not an ideological issue, it is not a religious issue and it definitely is not a political issue.
This is a legal issue. It is called Capital Murder. You may put any kind of spin on it that an emotionally immature mind needs to try and make it something else, but it is simply capital murder and there is never any justification that warrants taking the life of another in a cowardly, premeditated way.
For those who celebrate this, if the day ever comes when it is one of your loved ones that is senselessly taken, will you face it with the same nonchalance or will you be screaming from the rooftops that you demand justice.
Hypocrisy is one of the foulest of human behaviors and it’s prevelance today is absolutely heartbreaking.
Thank you for sharing this. I agree — at the most basic level, the murder of Charlie Kirk was a crime, an act of capital murder, and there is never justification for such a cowardly act. Naming that clearly matters.
What saddens me, as you note, is how quickly people rush to spin or qualify even the most fundamental truth: that a human life taken unjustly is a tragedy, full stop. To celebrate it — or to treat compassion as conditional on whether we approved of someone’s politics — only deepens the cycle of dehumanization that makes more violence possible.
That’s why I’ve tried to emphasize that empathy is not an endorsement. To grieve a loss of life is not to sanctify someone’s views. It is to hold fast to the irreducible dignity of every person — including our opponents. Without that starting point, justice itself loses its moral foundation.
You had no empathy for Melissa Hortman or Gabby Giffords.
Your tears and empathy for Kirk are nothing but endorsement and an attempt to demonize the left for what was in fact a far-right wing shooting. The shooter was raised in a Republican, Christian home and was associated with Groypers.
James, I hear your frustration, but I think you’re making an unfair assumption. You can’t know the full range of my empathy based on a single post. I mourn every instance of political violence — Melissa Hortman, Gabby Giffords, Paul Pelosi, Charlie Kirk. Each is a tragedy because each is a human life.
My point is simple: empathy is not an endorsement. To grieve a murder is not to bless the victim’s politics. When we start requiring ideological disclaimers before extending compassion, we’ve surrendered to the very dehumanization that fuels the violence we all want to prevent.
On the one hand, that's a fair response. I can't read your mind.
On the other hand, if I were to scroll through your feed, would I see a similar post about Melissa Hortman? Her death actually was an assassination as she was an elected official while Kirk was just a talking head of one of the worst sorts.
Saying you feel for her death now doesn't count for much if you didn't post about it then.
But more than that, there's what you say and think, and there's the media and discursive environment in which you say it. The right wing has been using words -exactly like yours- since moments after Kirk's murder to endorse Kirk's message and simultaneously demonize the "left," even before anything was known about the shooter (who was probably farther right than Kirk himself).
If you just repeat the message without addressing the right's crass exploitation of this murder to spread disinformation and hate toward the "left," then it's hard not to see you as participating in that.
When I saw video of Kirk's shooting, I felt pity for him. It was painful to see. I do get that.
But that man was still vile and hateful in many ways and was apparently a victim of his own policy positions. He had no serious concern for the murders of schoolchildren in mass shootings -- he even said they were worth it.
Our pity for the man doesn't take away our disgust with some of the things he said.
I picked up your book about civility. I'm pretty sure as an audible book and I really really really appreciate your angle on that topic. Also, I am committed to picking up an ember or a spark from Charlie Kirk's torch and I'm going to carry it forward and I was asking myself how am I gonna do this? I live in a midnight blue part of Washington state on an island where people routinely assume when they make nasty statements about how they wish the president was dead or how they're happy that Charlie Kirk was murdered. They say it with the full assumption that everyone in the range of hearing is in complete agreement with them. I also Personally know dozens and dozens of people who are good Americans, who are conservative and real Christians who absolutely walk on ice and keep their mouth shut and say nothing because the silence of being a bystander is the only thing that protects them from the vicious bullies in our community. So I decided that the spark I'm going to pick up is the concept of turning point, everything about what Charlie Kirk did is Lars what I do when I engaged with my community on social media. I'm one of the very few people in the Island who will actually speak up honestly and respectfully, and not be bothered by the haters,and I'm interested in talking to you about the idea of creating a turning point movement for people in their 40s and 50s on up.
Thank you for your note, and for picking up The Soul of Civility! I’m grateful to know the ideas in the book encouraged you, especially in a season when our public life feels so fractured.
I hear the pain in your words about living in a place where expressing your convictions comes at real personal cost. That experience of feeling silenced or isolated is not unique to one side of the political spectrum — I’ve seen it across communities and ideologies — but it is always corrosive. Your decision to speak with honesty and respect, even when it’s difficult, is a form of courage and a gift to those around you.
I also appreciate your instinct to pick up “a spark” and carry it forward. For me, the spark we most need right now is not about one figure or organization, but about rekindling the possibility of genuine conversation across difference. That means creating spaces where people of every age can engage with conviction, but also with curiosity and respect.
I’d be glad to hear more about how you’re imagining this idea of a movement for those in midlife and beyond. One of my deep hopes is that people will take the principles of civility and adapt them to their own communities, in ways I could never orchestrate on my own.
Thank you again for reaching out, for your courage, and for your commitment to bringing more light than heat into our common life.
Empathy without judgment is just sentimentality in disguise. > After a man broke into the home of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) in 2022 and struck her husband in the head with a hammer, Kirk urged his listeners to post bail for the attacker. He called George Floyd a “scumbag” and described passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 as “a huge mistake." - “Reject feminism,” Kirk urged Taylor Swift, in a video that has garnered 7.5 million views on TikTok. “Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.” - Kirk has built a career on confusing cruelty for courage and covering it with a smile.
Thank you for laying out these examples. They raise a hard but important question: Does empathy require agreement with, or even approval of, everything a person has said or done? I don’t think so.
If our capacity for compassion depends on someone passing a moral or ideological purity test first, then what we are really practicing is conditional empathy — which quickly becomes no empathy at all. That is what allows us to excuse violence when it happens to those we dislike.
The harder and higher calling is to separate the deed from the dignity: to condemn words and actions we believe harmful, while still insisting that the human being behind them is not disposable. Without that discipline, we risk mirroring the very cruelty we condemn.
So perhaps the real question is: Can we hold two truths at once — that rhetoric can wound and divide, and that every life still retains its worth? If we can’t, then civility and justice both begin to unravel.
Alexandra, to “separate the deed from the dignity” is one thing; to act as if the deed tells us nothing about the dignity is another. When someone urges bail for a hammer-wielding attacker or calls civil rights “a mistake,” those aren’t slips of the tongue—they’re calculated signals of contempt.
Kirk’s death has only crystallized his status as a mobilizing force. Unconditional empathy risks complicity. If cruelty is dressed up as courage, our compassion shouldn’t be to nod politely but to insist that words wound and lives are at stake. Otherwise, empathy becomes indulgence.
Thank you for defending civility even when it is under assault. We are all tempted to act as if civility is something to be celebrated if it means asking our opponents to keep quiet. Your work, and these events, help us to see that civility demands sacrifice. Civility makes sense only if there is something more important than my own physical and emotional comfort. If I truly believe in truth and justice, then disagreement is an opportunity to learn, teach, or achieve reconciliation. Will I sacrifice my ego and serenity for these goods, or vice versa? The choice is difficult for all of us but we must support each other in making the right one.
Thank you for this thoughtful reflection. You’ve captured something essential: civility isn’t comfort, it’s sacrifice — the willingness to risk our pride and even our serenity for the sake of truth, justice, and reconciliation.
I would add one more dimension: civility also requires imagination. To extend respect in the heat of disagreement is not only a sacrifice of ego, but an act of vision — the choice to see in another person not just an opponent, but a fellow human being who might one day be a partner in truth. That imaginative leap is often the hinge between dialogue and dehumanization.
You’re right: it’s never easy. But if we can keep encouraging one another to make that sacrifice and to practice that imagination, we create the conditions for trust to grow again.
As I read some of these negative comments I am saddened to see how low our society has sunk. This is not an ideological issue, it is not a religious issue and it definitely is not a political issue.
This is a legal issue. It is called Capital Murder. You may put any kind of spin on it that an emotionally immature mind needs to try and make it something else, but it is simply capital murder and there is never any justification that warrants taking the life of another in a cowardly, premeditated way.
For those who celebrate this, if the day ever comes when it is one of your loved ones that is senselessly taken, will you face it with the same nonchalance or will you be screaming from the rooftops that you demand justice.
Hypocrisy is one of the foulest of human behaviors and it’s prevelance today is absolutely heartbreaking.
Thank you for sharing this. I agree — at the most basic level, the murder of Charlie Kirk was a crime, an act of capital murder, and there is never justification for such a cowardly act. Naming that clearly matters.
What saddens me, as you note, is how quickly people rush to spin or qualify even the most fundamental truth: that a human life taken unjustly is a tragedy, full stop. To celebrate it — or to treat compassion as conditional on whether we approved of someone’s politics — only deepens the cycle of dehumanization that makes more violence possible.
That’s why I’ve tried to emphasize that empathy is not an endorsement. To grieve a loss of life is not to sanctify someone’s views. It is to hold fast to the irreducible dignity of every person — including our opponents. Without that starting point, justice itself loses its moral foundation.
I'm not buying this nonsense.
You had no empathy for Melissa Hortman or Gabby Giffords.
Your tears and empathy for Kirk are nothing but endorsement and an attempt to demonize the left for what was in fact a far-right wing shooting. The shooter was raised in a Republican, Christian home and was associated with Groypers.
James, I hear your frustration, but I think you’re making an unfair assumption. You can’t know the full range of my empathy based on a single post. I mourn every instance of political violence — Melissa Hortman, Gabby Giffords, Paul Pelosi, Charlie Kirk. Each is a tragedy because each is a human life.
My point is simple: empathy is not an endorsement. To grieve a murder is not to bless the victim’s politics. When we start requiring ideological disclaimers before extending compassion, we’ve surrendered to the very dehumanization that fuels the violence we all want to prevent.
On the one hand, that's a fair response. I can't read your mind.
On the other hand, if I were to scroll through your feed, would I see a similar post about Melissa Hortman? Her death actually was an assassination as she was an elected official while Kirk was just a talking head of one of the worst sorts.
Saying you feel for her death now doesn't count for much if you didn't post about it then.
But more than that, there's what you say and think, and there's the media and discursive environment in which you say it. The right wing has been using words -exactly like yours- since moments after Kirk's murder to endorse Kirk's message and simultaneously demonize the "left," even before anything was known about the shooter (who was probably farther right than Kirk himself).
If you just repeat the message without addressing the right's crass exploitation of this murder to spread disinformation and hate toward the "left," then it's hard not to see you as participating in that.
When I saw video of Kirk's shooting, I felt pity for him. It was painful to see. I do get that.
But that man was still vile and hateful in many ways and was apparently a victim of his own policy positions. He had no serious concern for the murders of schoolchildren in mass shootings -- he even said they were worth it.
Our pity for the man doesn't take away our disgust with some of the things he said.
Alexandra,
I picked up your book about civility. I'm pretty sure as an audible book and I really really really appreciate your angle on that topic. Also, I am committed to picking up an ember or a spark from Charlie Kirk's torch and I'm going to carry it forward and I was asking myself how am I gonna do this? I live in a midnight blue part of Washington state on an island where people routinely assume when they make nasty statements about how they wish the president was dead or how they're happy that Charlie Kirk was murdered. They say it with the full assumption that everyone in the range of hearing is in complete agreement with them. I also Personally know dozens and dozens of people who are good Americans, who are conservative and real Christians who absolutely walk on ice and keep their mouth shut and say nothing because the silence of being a bystander is the only thing that protects them from the vicious bullies in our community. So I decided that the spark I'm going to pick up is the concept of turning point, everything about what Charlie Kirk did is Lars what I do when I engaged with my community on social media. I'm one of the very few people in the Island who will actually speak up honestly and respectfully, and not be bothered by the haters,and I'm interested in talking to you about the idea of creating a turning point movement for people in their 40s and 50s on up.
March,
Thank you for your note, and for picking up The Soul of Civility! I’m grateful to know the ideas in the book encouraged you, especially in a season when our public life feels so fractured.
I hear the pain in your words about living in a place where expressing your convictions comes at real personal cost. That experience of feeling silenced or isolated is not unique to one side of the political spectrum — I’ve seen it across communities and ideologies — but it is always corrosive. Your decision to speak with honesty and respect, even when it’s difficult, is a form of courage and a gift to those around you.
I also appreciate your instinct to pick up “a spark” and carry it forward. For me, the spark we most need right now is not about one figure or organization, but about rekindling the possibility of genuine conversation across difference. That means creating spaces where people of every age can engage with conviction, but also with curiosity and respect.
I’d be glad to hear more about how you’re imagining this idea of a movement for those in midlife and beyond. One of my deep hopes is that people will take the principles of civility and adapt them to their own communities, in ways I could never orchestrate on my own.
Thank you again for reaching out, for your courage, and for your commitment to bringing more light than heat into our common life.
With appreciation,
Alexandra
Empathy without judgment is just sentimentality in disguise. > After a man broke into the home of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) in 2022 and struck her husband in the head with a hammer, Kirk urged his listeners to post bail for the attacker. He called George Floyd a “scumbag” and described passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 as “a huge mistake." - “Reject feminism,” Kirk urged Taylor Swift, in a video that has garnered 7.5 million views on TikTok. “Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.” - Kirk has built a career on confusing cruelty for courage and covering it with a smile.
Thank you for laying out these examples. They raise a hard but important question: Does empathy require agreement with, or even approval of, everything a person has said or done? I don’t think so.
If our capacity for compassion depends on someone passing a moral or ideological purity test first, then what we are really practicing is conditional empathy — which quickly becomes no empathy at all. That is what allows us to excuse violence when it happens to those we dislike.
The harder and higher calling is to separate the deed from the dignity: to condemn words and actions we believe harmful, while still insisting that the human being behind them is not disposable. Without that discipline, we risk mirroring the very cruelty we condemn.
So perhaps the real question is: Can we hold two truths at once — that rhetoric can wound and divide, and that every life still retains its worth? If we can’t, then civility and justice both begin to unravel.
Alexandra, to “separate the deed from the dignity” is one thing; to act as if the deed tells us nothing about the dignity is another. When someone urges bail for a hammer-wielding attacker or calls civil rights “a mistake,” those aren’t slips of the tongue—they’re calculated signals of contempt.
Kirk’s death has only crystallized his status as a mobilizing force. Unconditional empathy risks complicity. If cruelty is dressed up as courage, our compassion shouldn’t be to nod politely but to insist that words wound and lives are at stake. Otherwise, empathy becomes indulgence.
Thank you for defending civility even when it is under assault. We are all tempted to act as if civility is something to be celebrated if it means asking our opponents to keep quiet. Your work, and these events, help us to see that civility demands sacrifice. Civility makes sense only if there is something more important than my own physical and emotional comfort. If I truly believe in truth and justice, then disagreement is an opportunity to learn, teach, or achieve reconciliation. Will I sacrifice my ego and serenity for these goods, or vice versa? The choice is difficult for all of us but we must support each other in making the right one.
Thank you for this thoughtful reflection. You’ve captured something essential: civility isn’t comfort, it’s sacrifice — the willingness to risk our pride and even our serenity for the sake of truth, justice, and reconciliation.
I would add one more dimension: civility also requires imagination. To extend respect in the heat of disagreement is not only a sacrifice of ego, but an act of vision — the choice to see in another person not just an opponent, but a fellow human being who might one day be a partner in truth. That imaginative leap is often the hinge between dialogue and dehumanization.
You’re right: it’s never easy. But if we can keep encouraging one another to make that sacrifice and to practice that imagination, we create the conditions for trust to grow again.
Well said.
Unfollowed. All this talk over somebody who literally had no respect for anyone who wasn’t white and/or male.