I sent this to the journal.
by Aaron Buck Burnett | Program Director | KKOB
Let me say this as plainly as I can: we are in real trouble.
On Wednesday, Charlie Kirk was assassinated during a Q&A session at a university campus in Utah. Let that sink in. A political commentator was murdered—not in a war zone, not during a riot—but while speaking into a microphone and answering questions from people who disagreed with him.
He wasn’t inciting violence. He wasn’t calling for blood. He was doing exactly what we say we want in this country: Talking. Debating. Showing up in person to engage, face-to-face, with folks who don’t see the world the way he does.
And for that, someone killed him.
This isn’t about whether you liked Charlie Kirk. That’s irrelevant. Agree with him, disagree with him—hell, think he’s dead wrong on every issue. Fine. That’s your right. But when we get to the point where people are gunned down for the crime of having an opinion, we’ve crossed a line we may not come back from.
We’ve become a culture where disagreement is treated as violence and actual violence is justified as some kind of moral response. People walk around like they’re righteous vigilantes because someone dared to challenge their worldview. We’ve allowed emotional fragility to masquerade as courage and confusion to parade as justice.
What happened to us?
This country was built on the idea that we can argue, protest, debate, and even offend each other without fearing for our lives. We have the First Amendment for a reason. You don’t get to kill someone because they said something you didn’t like. That’s not activism—that’s terrorism.
Take the people who cheer this kind of thing—and yes, there are some—and drop them in Syria, or Russia, or China. In those countries, they don’t even need a reason. You say the wrong thing about the government, you vanish. You criticize the wrong leader, you wind up in a prison cell or a body bag. Over there, people dream of having the freedoms we’re squandering here.
And yet, here we are—a nation so spoiled by liberty that some now see free speech as a threat, and silencing others by force as noble.
Charlie Kirk showed up. He brought his voice, not a weapon. He opened the floor to questions. He didn’t demand silence or compliance. He didn’t shout down the opposition. He leaned in, welcomed the challenge, and gave people a shot at changing his mind. He died doing what more of us should be doing—talking across the aisle instead of screaming across it.
What happened Wednesday isn’t just a tragedy. It’s a warning.
We’ve reached a place where many Americans now view their political opponents not as wrong, but as evil. Not as misinformed, but as dangerous. And once you convince yourself that the person across from you is dangerous—then anything becomes justified, including murder.
This isn’t how democracies survive. This is how they collapse. Not with a bang, but with a slow cultural rot. With censorship disguised as safety. With cowardice disguised as conviction. With bullets replacing ballots. If we don’t turn this ship around—and soon—we’re going to find ourselves in a country that no longer resembles anything close to the America we inherited. And worse, our kids won’t know the difference. They’ll grow up thinking this is normal—that if someone disagrees with you, you destroy them. Not in the comment section. Not on a ballot. But in real life. That should scare the hell out of all of us.
We need to re-learn how to live with disagreement. We need to stop idolizing outrage and start rebuilding mutual respect, even when—especially when—we don’t see eye to eye. Because without that? We’re not a country. We’re just a powder keg with a flag on it.
Charlie Kirk should still be alive today. Not because he was right about everything, but because this is still supposed to be a country where you don’t get executed for speaking your mind. If we’ve lost that…We’ve lost the whole damn thing.
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