0:00 0:00 1x

This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here .

The killing of Charlie Kirk is a national tragedy.

It is hard to overestimate the enormity of what happened Wednesday on the campus of Utah Valley University, where a civil debate about politics taking place under sunny skies turned into a bloody horror show with what are certain to be lasting national consequences.

The immediate aftermath of the right-wing activist’s death has evoked some of the dread and instability of late-1960s America, when the assassinations of political figures such as Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led to national introspection and angst about just exactly who we believed ourselves to be.

A violent death like this diminishes us a

See Full Page