As our nation approaches its 250th year, the shooting death of Charlie Kirk a public figure at a university, a place meant for argument, learning, and the clash of ideas, cuts to the core of who we are becoming as a people. If an advocate for public debate, religious beliefs and constitutional principles can be struck down in the middle of a campus conversation, it should stop us cold: not to pick political sides, but to confront the sickness that equates any disagreement with violence.

More and more, Americans are learning not to speak their minds—not because they lack conviction, but because they fear the consequences. Fear of being shamed. Fear of losing opportunities. Fear of being shouted down or even harmed. Meanwhile, those unwilling to allow for genuine exchanges of ideas dominate the public square, not by reason but by volume, talking over opponents, refusing dialogue, and reducing political debate to a spectacle of noise rather than a pursuit of greater understanding.

In this climate, we have lost something deeper than civility: we have lost the decorum that once mandated respect for another’s right to a differing opinion, and the insistence that both parties have an equal chance to speak. Debate used to mean listening long enough to grasp another’s point, then answering with clarity and brevity so that an equal exchange could be enjoyed by both sides. Without that shared discipline, disagreement no longer sharpens us; it only divides us further.

The test of a free society is not the safety of those who echo our views, but the resolve with which we protect the dignity and the speech of those we oppose. If we continue to erode the norms that allow for respectful exchange, we risk not only our liberty but also our ability to live together as one people.

Mourning the death of Charlie Kirk has been immediate, but the harder task is the work after grief: to rebuild civic norms, to insist on decorum, and to reclaim civic courage—the willingness to argue civilly, to listen, and to live together despite deep differences. If we cannot protect both the rights and the manners of open debate, then the liberty we celebrate at 250 years is in greater peril than any of us want to admit. RIP Charlie Kirk