Charlie Kirk

You may be thinking that it's been a while since you've seen an excerpt from me.

I’ve spent the last few months unpacking the human condition and recalibrating what this work is really about as I meet with various people. The answers have led me further from politics and deeper into human nature — and that’s where I’ve been, creating new workshops that address the real issues hiding beneath our inability to humanize one another.

I shared the journey in this real, honest, and raw 15-minute podcast "update" episode. 

But that was before the political scale tipped yet again, as Charlie Kirk was recently assassinated in cold blood. And just like that, politics reclaimed center stage in my work. Shortly afterward, I held an online “Dinner and Discussion” meetup to give our community an opportunity to process Charlie Kirk accross the divide. And despite varying opinions about his political positions, we all landed on the same shared concensus: we cannot live in a country where murder becomes the response to unpopular views. We simply cannot.

As a dialogue worker, I followed Charlie’s work closely, as I do with anyone actively reaching across the aisle in pursuit of conversation. I recognize this as a rare posture in a society that often stays confined to echo chambers. For that alone, Charlie caught my attention.

You may ask, “Peace, did you agree with his stances?” As a conservative thinker, several of them, I did. But we did not align on everything. My approach to dialogue has never been about elevating a political ideology for the sake of advancing a party, and in that way, Charlie and I differed in mission. There were indeed many times I nodded my head in agreement to his outlook and analysis. I also witnessed the moments where Charlie allowed disdain to influence his remarks, and it was those moments that fueled much of the controversy following his death.

Yet Charlie played by the rules. He used his words, not his fists. And he firmly stood by his statement: “When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence.” He was a husband and a father who did not deserve to have his life so horrendously taken.

I won’t begin to tell you how you should feel about Charlie's work. If you are living in one online world, you will likely hold a very different view than if you were living in another. As fair as I believe myself to be, my words are no match for the lens through which you already see.

What I can say it that whether you saw eye to eye with him or not, it is clear that this moment reveals not simply political division, but a deeper failure of humanity. And a society that cannot tolerate disagreement without violence has lost its way. Finding it again will require far more than politics. It will require an internal reckoning.