"It seems to me that any ideology is bad because it is inevitably reductive and identifies other ideologies as evil, and itself with truth, whereas both truth and goodness are always transcendent."
This seems to me to be pretty well on the nose. Though perhaps this quote is even more so:
"Principles are what people have instead of God."
Now, obviously, people can hold all sorts of ideologies and still not be murderers. And some ideologies are infinitely better than others. No one, I would like to think, would compare American traditional liberal values (by this, I mean the values of our Founders) on par with Naziism or Communism or any of the other various totalitarian "isms" that exist. And certainly, even those who find sympathy with extremist ideologies might otherwise be peacable people in a generic sense. One can say and believe awful things without desiring to hurt people.
The problem enters when the ideology becomes what Fr. Alexander says in the first quote above -- reductive and oppositional to other ideologies, especially in an existential sense. If I think those who are on the "other side" are my enemies, and that they will destroy my freedom and well being, it's much easier to justify harming them. But even absent such justification, when a Christian is captured by ideology, that Christian has ceased to be of Christ, and has instead joined himself to the world. In that sense, I suppose this is also Part II of a previous post, Outrage Pornography. If, as Fr. Alexander says, truth and goodness are always transcendent (and I believe they are), that means truth and goodness are things of God, not things we can possess of ourselves. And that, in turn, means that, even for non-Christians, but especially for Christians, any truth or goodness we find will be located in Christ. The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats makes this clear. The pagan who feeds his neighbor feeds Christ. The Christian who wishes his neighbor dead murders Christ. We, as Christians, should always act accordingly.
And this brings me to the murder of Charlie Kirk. I am not a particular fan of Charlie's work. I am also not a particular detractor of his work. I know of him mainly through online reels, some heavily edited and sometimes grossly out of context, others more long form and instructive of his beliefs. So I am aware of him, and Turning Point, USA. But I was not his target audience, and I never spent much time delving into his material. But I do think there are a couple of defining things about him and his life's work that are interesting in light of his becoming a target of an assassin. The first is he is a Christian, unapologetic and outspoken in his faith. The second is he believed deeply in free speech. He invited those who disagree to go to the front of the line. He loved debate. He believed that the way to confront bad ideas is not with violence, imprisonment, or public shaming, but with good ideas. And even if you think his ideas were bad ideas, it would be nice if we could all follow his example and confront them with better ideas instead of a rifle.
Charlie Kirk was not a soldier. He was not violent. He literally talked for a living. He talked to young people and he talked about issues he cared about. He did not exclude others, and was complimentary of others when they made what he considered to be good points. He found value in public discourse, in the public square, and the robust exchange of ideas, all things that when I went to college in the 1990s were hallmarks of education. Sadly, this seems to be less the case now. I hope his murder, if nothing else good comes of it, will strengthen our national resolve to return to the days when we could disagree without being enemies. I question sometimes whether we can all inhabit the same country given the level of venom in our public discourse. This is not a partisan issue. We are the problem. We are truly getting the government we deserve.
To be clear, we do not know why Charlie was targeted. It is entirely possible it was just another deranged lunatic with no partisan or political purpose. It is equally possible it was someone with an ideological proclivity towards or against his views. We don't know, and until we do, I won't speculate. What we can deduce, however, is that this person had an ideology. It is unlikely that someone would target Charlie Kirk in particular for assassination, and go to the extraordinary trouble of scouting the site, smuggling a hunting rifle into the site, going to the top of the building, shooting him, and then making an escape, without being motivated by some ideology. We will find out shortly what that was. But I think it's fair to deduce that ideology of some sort was at the core of this act.
Obviously, we do not even know the identity of the murderer yet, so we don't know if this person was a Christian or something else. That's not important, because I am speaking to fellow Christians here. It is also important to note, we can succomb to ideology in different ways. The temptation to find joy in Charlie Kirk's death isn't materially different to me from the temptation to find a few examples of monstrous people rejoicing in his death and using them to paint political opposition as thinking likewise. Thankfully, most of what I have seen in the wake of his murder has been appropriate. Certainly from my friends. I am grateful for that -- it shows I have good friends. But the lunatics and the opportunists who use them to tar political opposition are out there. This is no less an embrace of ideology than any other. We should avoid it.
For some reason, we also haven't seen the snarky version of the "thoughts and prayers" objection I mentioned in my previous post. I'm not sure why, but I'm grateful for that too. Because Charlie Kirk, and his family and friends, need our prayers now. And we ought to pray for each other, to be delivered from ideology and restored to our Creator. It is the one good thing we can do in the wake of such an act. God grant him rest where the just repose and make his memory eternal.
