CREATORS
September 16, 2025
Violence is never the answer. Charlie Kirk's death is
tragic, but unfortunately not unprecedented in this country. During the final
decades of the nineteenth century and the infancy of the twentieth, three
American presidents were murdered.
From 1963 to 1968, a president, a candidate for president
and two civil rights leaders were slain. Not unlike those prior assassinations,
the reaction to Kirk's death is both sympathetic and callous.
In the wake of Kirk's death, U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn,
R-Tenn., called for the immediate firing of multiple people in her state.
"This person should be ashamed of her post. She should be removed from her
position," Blackburn wrote on X about an assistant dean at Middle
Tennessee State University, reported NPR.
Screenshots shared by Blackburn from the assistant dean's
Facebook posts included: "Looks like ol' Charlie spoke his fate into
existence. Hate begets hate. ZERO sympathy." The assistant dean was fired,
according to USA Today.
Fifty-seven years ago, in the state Blackburn represents,
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
Elizabeth Bumiller wrote in The New York Times about Kirk
and King. She suggested "Beyond an ability to inspire passion in others,
Dr. King and Mr. Kirk had almost nothing in common," with the exception
that they were both influential political leaders never elected to office.
U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., posted on X that he planned
to "use Congressional authority and every influence with big tech
platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that
belittled (Kirk's) assassination."
"I'm also going after their business licenses and
permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be
kicked from every school, and their driver's licenses should be revoked,"
he wrote.
Imagine if Congress had censored comments after King's death
or threatened the careers of people exercising their First Amendment rights, a
right that Kirk celebrated on college campuses across the country. After all,
Kirk was free to say that King was "awful" and "not a good
person" and to describe the Civil Rights Act as a "huge
mistake."
The rhetoric after King's death was caustic. U.S Senator
Strom Thurmond from South Carolina blamed King for his own violent death. He
dismissed King as an "outside agitator" who was "bent on
stirring people up, making everyone dissatisfied."
Thurmond attributed the assassination to the very movement
King led, writing to his constituents, "We are now witnessing the
whirlwind sowed years ago when some preachers and teachers began telling people
that each man could be his own judge in his own case."
Former President Ronald Reagan, who was governor of
California at the time of King's death, said it was "a great tragedy that
began when we began compromising with law and order and people started choosing
which laws they'd break". This view suggested that the civil disobedience
central to King's activism created a general disrespect for law that eventually
led to violence and King's death.
Georgia's Governor Lester Maddox called King an "enemy
of our country". He refused to attend King's funeral ceremony or close
state government offices for the day. He even considered personally raising the
flags outside the Capitol that were at half-staff.
On the evening of King's assassination, Senator Robert F.
Kennedy, then a candidate for president — two months later himself a victim of
assassination — told a crowd in Indianapolis that "it is perhaps well to
ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in."
Elizabeth Bumiller interviewed Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of
the Episcopal Diocese of Washington for her Times article. "Public grief
is necessary and this is a time for those who loved and admired Charlie Kirk to
grieve and to grieve publicly." She continued, "For those who were
hurt or aggrieved by his positions, I think this is a time for us to be
gracious, and allow grief to be expressed."
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett,
Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by
McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him
on Twitter @MatthewTMangino
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