As dialogue dies, so goes democracy.

WRITER'S NOTE: At the time I wrote the following commentary, U.S. Capitol Police were responding to a bomb threat at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. At the same time, several Historic Black colleges received similar threats.

Charlie Kirk's death, like his life, is a controversial subject.

I am aware that Mr. Kirk made remarks attacking the character and threatening the safety of certain individuals. That's not the focus of my column today. I am strictly addressing the subject of dialogue.

Though many of Mr. Kirk's actions toward his perceived adversaries could be considered cruel, as the adage goes, "An eye for an eye will only make the world blind."

Likewise, it's either naïveté, virtue-signaling, or a combination of both to suggest that so-called "influencers" on the left have not waged similar attacks against individuals with whom they disagreed. As a former legislator and public figure who experienced many such assaults on my character and dignity, I speak from experience. So please, spare me your pearl clutching.

As journalist Ezra Klein pointed out in the hours after Mr. Kirk's assassination:

"In the last few years we've seen:

• The plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer

• The Storming of the Capitol and pipe bombs left at the RNC and DNC

• The break-in to kidnap Nancy Pelosi and the brutal attack on Paul Pelosi

• Multiple assassination attempts against Trump

• The assassination of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and the shooting of on State Senator John Hoffman and his wife

• Luigi Mangione's assassination of Brian Thompson

• The assassination of Charlie Kirk

Political violence is contagious. It is spreading. It is not confined to one side or belief system. It should terrify us all.

The foundation of a free society is the ability to participate in it without fear of violence. Political violence is always an attack against us all. You have to be so blind not to see that."

"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."

-Robert Frost

By J. Basil Dannebohm

On September 9th, 2001, I should have been celebrating my 20th birthday. Instead, I found myself bedridden with a debilitating tension headache. Though I was acquainted with the symptoms, it was a type of headache I rarely ever experienced. I visited my physician and told him, “Something feels terribly wrong. I feel as though something horrible is about to happen.”

The doctor assumed I was referring to my health when I spoke those ominous words.

I wasn’t.

I knew the severe discomfort was a warning about something bigger than me. I just didn’t know what it was.

Two days later, on September 11th, I woke up and my headache was gone. When I tuned into the news, however, I once again felt pain. This time, it was in my heart.

I’ve experienced other headaches that foretold impending tragedies -- days before a classmate passed away in a car accident, the murder of a group of college friends, the Las Vegas strip shooting of 2017, and the crash of American Eagle flight 5342 to name a few.

On the morning of September 10th, 2025, I not only had a headache, but a premonition. I shared it via text with a handful of trusted friends.

My message read in part:

“Civil war is inevitable. Want proof? Look no further than two slain Minnesota lawmakers. Only it won't just be the legislators who will be attacked. It's not an exaggeration; it's not a drill. Bad things are coming.”

Later that afternoon, conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was killed by an assassin’s bullet.

I’m not going to eulogize him. Though there are an infinitesimal number of conservative talking points with which I agree, the persona of Charlie Kirk didn’t instantiate any of them. His own words regarding gun control and empathy suggested he wouldn’t want mine anyway.

Ahead of Mr. Kirk’s visit to Utah Valley University, letters to local newspapers urged the school’s administration to cancel his visit. One individual wrote that students on college campuses shouldn’t be “exposed to rhetoric disguised as debate.”

An online petition calling on administrators to block his appearance stated that Kirk's "presence and the messages he delivers stand in contrast to the values of understanding, acceptance, and progress that many of us hold dear.”

In fact, Kirk’s slated college tour was precisely the type of thing that should be held sacred at institutions of higher education.

Universities should be safe havens for free thinking, dialogue, debate, and disagreement. Mr. Kirk’s entire platform for the appearance was based on that premise. Though his approach may have been toploftical and at times shocking, his constitutional, indeed his human right, to freedom of thought and speech should have neither been restricted nor cut short by an act of cowardice.

Such disregard for democracy cannot be welcome on college campuses, or anywhere else in our nation. Environments that restrict disagreement, whether intellectual, moral or political, are cultish and dangerously focused on absolute control.

Many rightfully express their outrage when books are banned. Likewise, they voice their objections when people are persecuted for who they love or how they identify. To say that someone shouldn’t be “exposed to rhetoric disguised as debate” is a feeble statement of pathetic hypocrisy and an affront to our constitutional rights. If our arguments are so weak that they cannot hold up to scrutiny through the millennia old concept of debate, they are not worthy of our passion.

Vengeance and violence in defense of our convictions, or as acts of retaliation against the beliefs held by another, are not only morally reprehensible, they have the potential to spark the dangerous flames of civil war in a nation which presently struggles as a powder keg of division. If we don’t extinguish such hatred forthwith, I fear the headaches of premonition that lie ahead for me.

Assassinations have no place in civilized society.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

Though I personally found Charlie’s rhetoric to be the moral antithesis of the gospel, I am not the Almighty. Nor am I a stellar example of Christianity. Therefore, I’m not qualified to speculate on his eternal reward. Like any decent person, I can only pray for the very thing I long for myself when that day comes: that his soul dwells in a place of everlasting peace.