Charlie Kirk was hunted. He was stalked, smeared by mainstream channels, systematically censored under years-long shadowbans and cullied by centers of debate-turned-whipping posts. And he loved it. He indulged in agitation. His very brand rested on a sub-intellectual rationale that churned out misinformation and unsympathetic vitriol, mobilizing a youth that helped return Trump to power. Whether or not he truly loved speech — as he has always claimed to — or simply the chase which followed each shady tweet and racially-tinged ‘own,’ is not of concern anymore. A hatred of speech is the consequence of bad speech. But a hatred of life itself has consumed the minds of Americans. And if our dear Cornell can barely open its mouth to a deaf executive or instill the virtues of free society in its scholars, we will be the prey in the next poaching spree.
It's easy to enjoy the game from our haughty sideline. After all, Kirk was fresh meat for the picking: conservative, staunchly irreverent, a perfect, fearless mouthpiece for the lone demographic of white guys who feel demoralized by the liberal hellscape: How could we ever relate?
The internet discourse is no different: He loved the guns that killed him; He asked for it. One Sidechat leech bragged that they'd "survive that." Our peer-reviewed opinions may keep us safe for now, but our refusal to condemn, revise or outright nullify personal worldviews more than others tells us we are more than comfortable with the status quo than the danger of contradiction. But would we survive?
Would our positions, even if we had the wherewithal to voice them, grant us immunity from an America that increasingly fears speech more than death? We've been steeped in a stagnant Ithacan liberalism that gifts us a decent moral backing, familiar campus politics and sympathy for every person, every struggle. The bubble lasts but four years. Tolerance disintegrates faster in the real world, and cigarettes over Marx isn't so fun if you're recruited to Austin. Upon descent from the ivory pillars, our illusion of safety will crumble. A brutish national order, the quietude it has produced with divisions abound, will render us alone in thought, making us doubt that expression is still valuable.
Within months, a Ukrainian refugee was slashed in cold blood; $1 million went to Luigi Manigone, a particularly shitty, indefensible killer, and a state rep was decapitated for barely deviating from her party dialogue. Our nation is consumed by a lust for death. Charlie knew this. And this lust doesn't discriminate between reds and blues. Unequipped with developed convictions nor a sound framework for approaching opposing ideologies, we're destined to face the hunt, too.
If we can agree on one of Charlie's many disagreeable points, it is the last one: campus systems have become too fraught with groupthink and blind assent, students parroting their professors’ worldly theses, instead of daring to think for ourselves. His assassination seals that argument.
Yet our dilemma persists in the form of complacency. At this rate, Cornell is no longer graduating classes of speech bastions or thought leaders, much as she promises. It is a category of American Cornell has detested historically, from Rickford to the cruel Coulter. We’ve gone corporate. Our other norms have been corrupted further: Discussions under the pressure of screens, our NYT Mini streaks giving us false merit in the humanities. Cold stares populate social interactions, sometimes more so than the phone. We have become our founder’s worst fear: a collective erosion of “idle” minds, “like rust to iron.”
For the administration, which is likely floating some poorly attended spin-off of Ben Shapiro et. al. at Bailey Hall, will not be at the helm of addressing this expressive crisis, as has been proven time, and time and time again. If the voice of a University cannot stand to be heard by its government, who are we to expect that it can uphold that of our own? The hunters might be in the general public, far from provocation and unexposed to our easily deconstructed, perhaps near-destroyed, worldviews. This is fine and well. But they are as easily cultivated in our very midst. A mutual tolerance of speech, however bad, curbs the appetite of those hungry for a stake in the conversation from turning voracious.
Who is to say a more unstable, politically cloistered assailant will not grow out of the same campus whose speech policies turn increasingly narrow by the semester? We unknowingly let Patrick Dai spiral and spell terror within the Jewish community. Our campus watched on in dimwitted awe as ROTC cadets slayed, butchered and ultimately desecrated a wild bear. Hell, the hunter who took Kirk’s life looks a lot more like a college student than a learned anarchist.
We cannot hedge our bets on a top-down solution; it is up to us to call off the hunt before it takes more victims, more voices. Lest we push open avenues for discourse — even in its gnarliest, most provocative forms — and command each other to debates that may never come to resolution, the love of death will prevail, our future leadership (largely us) will grant commissions to the hard of hearing, and man will stoop from the tongue to the barrel in his most frivolous spats. Because speech is the last bastion against an America, a Cornell, whose affairs are policed by force, not ideas.
Charlie was no pleaser. His debates corrugated the delicate fabrics of our post-Obama reality. He arguably produced the next generation of conservative youth — from meathead to neo-Reaganist scholar. Yet amidst the chaos that comprised his brand and its many loose ends, this husband, father and servant fought for the love of speech itself. And that in and of itself is virtuous. He knew his hunters were not far behind. Alas, his larger debate was just won. If you couldn’t meet him under that tent, and so turned to violence, you’ve only confirmed what he lived for: that words endure longer than force.
The question now is whether we will honor that truth — or let the hunters claim us next.
Francis Xavier Jaso '28 is an Opinion Columnist and a Government and Economics student in the College of Arts & Sciences. His fortnightly column “A Contrarian’s Calamity” defies normative, dysfunctional campus discourse in the name of reason, hedonism, and most notably, satire. He can be reached at fjaso@cornellsun.com.
