January of 2015 in Paris terrorists sneaked into the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and slaughtered eight of its staff, including the editor. The reason was simply because the killers didn’t like the cartoons printed therein. Afterward, in a massive reaction French people gathered on the street named after Voltaire and vented their anger in a single voice: We are Charlie!
What is coming out of France today isn’t all that encouraging in regard to individual rights (and worse in England), but the spirit among people who hold to the tenet of free speech and lively dialogue are still alive. And considering the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk, it seems more than appropriate, more than necessary to echo the cry of those people crowded on a street named after Voltaire, the one who said, “I don’t agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” In one voice then, along with those inflamed by earlier deaths for similar madness in Paris, along with Charlie Kirk: We are Charlie!
Charlie Kirk made his debut amid the first real hit of academic gangsterism against conservative speakers like Anne Coulter, Milo, P.J. O’Rourke, et al. Charlie stepped right up. And the curious part was that he saw his appearances as grace and not works, a curious distinction. Having attended a rally where he appeared, it was obvious he could sling scripture with the best of preachers. His religious attitude was almost uncomfortable because it sounded like a tent meeting, but then this was in rural Yakima and fit the audience.
His campus appearances would then seem to qualify more as works than grace. One could conjure Daniel in the lions’ den, confronting whole generations of fixed minds primed with fetish hatreds as fouled with ignorance and self-loathing as that infecting the two shooting up a magazine staff for kidding with their deity.
But there was also grace in Charlie’s appearances. His was a generous amount of grace allowable to any citizen of a civilized polity for holding peaceful and respectful dialogue. Yet the shouts and threats coming from an audience unable to hold civilized thought, charged with bizarre and foreign values, were anything but respectful— up to that one final retort from the dumb muzzle of a rifle.
Maintaining an attitude of reason and calm to teach under those conditions might be the grace Charlie was thinking, the grace under pressure Hemingway wrote about. It was definitely a grace he’ll be remembered for. And it stands as a lesson for any who come after who wish to join in and say: We are Charlie!
JoCo
