Andrew L. Urban
If you practiced what the sane among you are now preaching, America, you would not kill Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin. The death penalty would continue the violence that comes from the primitive ‘eye for an eye’ mindset. It is not the right, moral response amid condemnations of violence. Do what Charlie would surely prefer: ask Tyler to prove him wrong. Help 22 year old Tyler Robinson to find a positive purpose in his life. And find a way Tyler could, eventually, make some sort of positive contribution to the wider American community.
Make Charlie Kirk’s death a door to something positive, not nihilistic.
No doubt there would be ghastly, ghoulish clips of the death penalty being administered in all its hideous, inhumane manifestation. If you have ever seen this once, you’ll know how it diminishes mankind. Do not let that happen. It would feed the ugliness in the hearts of those who rejoice in his death. Do not feed it. Turn instead to Charlie’s own faith, which teaches forgiveness. That is what differentiates people and civilises humanity.
Fight the destructive deadly negativity of Tyler’s mindset, America, but don’t let it drag you under as a society.
It has always baffled me how the American right disapproves of abortion (as a moral aberration) yet accepts the continuation of the death penalty in 27 of its states. This is a moral selectivity that cannot be rationally reconciled.
I’ve always thought it a moral summersault to argue that the State has the right to kill under certain circumstances, but citizens do not, under any circumstances.
Killing Tyler would counter Erika Kirk’s noble speech (Friday, Sept. 12, US time) notable for its positivity, absent any rancour or revenge, promising to continue Charlie’s determination to make Americans better able to differ without violence.
It would be a terrible irony if Charlie Kirk’s call sign of ‘Prove me wrong’ was to be refashioned – in the violence of Tyler’s death – as ‘give me revenge’.