Of the millions of words Charlie Kirk contributed to American public discourse, the last two before he was murdered distilled his life’s work almost perfectly.

His t-shirt bore the word “freedom.” His final word, uttered a split second before an assassin’s bullet tore into his neck, was “violence.”

Kirk was precocious enough from his early 20s to grasp the relationship between the two. If people cannot debate differences of opinion in a civil and robust manner, violence has, throughout history and with alarming speed, shown itself to be the logical next step. “When people stop talking, really bad stuff starts,” he once reminded a blue-haired antagonist at a college campus debate.

The assassination of Kirk Thursday in front of thousands of students at a university campus in Utah, appar

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