And a few who are older. 

You do not remember September 11, 2001. You don’t live with the horror of watching people jump to their deaths to escape the burning inside the towers. Nor do you live with the trauma of what a few violent fundamentalist Muslims did that day. 

This is unfortunate because all too many of you, especially the ones dismissing the acts of violence against Charlie Kirk and Iryna Zarutska, would probably side with the people who, as American citizens were burning alive, danced in the street and celebrated. 

No, you don’t remember. Some of you don’t even care. 

But you should. You should care about and remember what happened this week, both now and 24 years ago if you have any character, virtue, or soul. Another piece of what the Constitution set in motion died and continues to die with every minute of spin, every mocking post, and every moment of lionizing. 

The shooter who murdered Charlie Kirk, allegedly at the time of this writing, one Tyler Robinson, is a traitor. That person, whether or not it ends up being Tyler Robinson, betrayed the fabric and foundation of our nation by playing God and destroying the life of someone who thought having opinions and expressing them in public was part and parcel of living in a free and just society. 

You can debate whether that opinion was genuine or a front, but that is not for us to judge. Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else can see into the heart and mind of another human being. The fact remains that a man was murdered for having opinions. 

His opinions may not be in alignment with yours, and he was not always right. But he had a right to have those opinions and express them, however wrong. He did not have a right to be murdered in front of his wife and children. His wife did not deserve widowhood; his children did not deserve to lose their father before they could even properly remember him. 

No one deserves that fate. 

It doesn’t matter if you agreed or disagreed with Charlie Kirk. 

You can both disagree with someone and bitterly mourn their death. You can be of a different race, creed, or culture, and still think public transportation should be safe for everyone to use and that opinions can and ought to be expressed without fear of reprisal. 

What you cannot do, and must never do, is stand idly by and allow the toxic cycle of violent rhetoric, name-calling, vilification, and lionizing to go on unchallenged and unabated. 

You can hate our Founding Fathers for their inaction on the subject of slavery all you want, but it’s their ideas about what it means to live in a liberated society that ultimately gives you the ability to express your opinions today. It’s their legacy that eventually put an end to slavery, to women’s subjugation, and to the Jim Crow laws. 

The one thing our Founders held dear was this strange idea that you had the right to speak your opinion in public and not get shot or imprisoned for it. They held that opinion because so many of them were imprisoned, shot, executed, and persecuted for theirs. 

The Freedom to do Evil Should Never be Celebrated

Freedom means you are free to do good—not that you are free to do evil. The shooter and the stabber used their freedom to do evil. 

Their reasons are not justifiable for any reason, regardless of physical fitness or mental capacity. You cannot sacrifice the innocent just to keep the guilty comfortable, whatever the circumstances.  

Let the murderers face justice for their crimes and let them be punished accordingly and permanently. They either forfeit their lives, or them spend the rest of them in prison.

Tyler Robinson, if guilty, at least ought to face the death penalty. Not because Charlie Kirk was a saint, not because we should venerate him as a martyr, but because he was murdered for using his constitutionally protected rights—rights six, if not seven generations of Americans have fought, died, bled, and suffered to protect. 

Hanging was ever the punishment for treason. And ought to be again. 

Our Constitution does not give you leave to use your freedom for evil. 

Charlie Kirk did not always use his rights well.

Ultimately, none of us uses our freedoms in the best possible way. If we did, war would not exist and our nation would not be so polarized.

Charlie Kirk, for all the good things he said, often said things that were polarizing and, frankly, unworthy of his better parts. He did two good things: he galvanized young men to step up and be men, and he defended our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the ideas our Founders thought were important enough to die for. 

But in others, he really should have taken a step back and considered his words and his arguments. 

His rant about selfish women based on a single poll automatically comes to mind because it ignores the reality most women in this country face: marriage and children disproportionately affect our lives and our financial stability. 

It also ignores the fact that many of us gave up on marriage and children—not because we didn’t value them, but because neither husband nor children are a guarantee in this life. Life has meaning beyond marriage and children, a fact Charlie Kirk ignored on a regular basis. 

I can’t blame him: he was, to all appearances, happily married with two beautiful children. Of course, he thought it was the only way to be happy. 

He was too young and too in the echo chamber of Evangelicalism to think otherwise. 

But when you get out into the cold, hard world, and no man comes to propose, no man asks you out, and your years of waiting merge into middle age, hanging all your hopes of survival on a husband and family is no longer the wisdom it proclaims to be: its stubborn naivete.  

What I wish dearly, that he’d done in that rant against “selfish” women is what he did elsewhere: call out men for being weak, for lacking the skills to provide, for lacking the willpower to be dynamic voices and leaders in our society. Because yes, we need strong men. 

I say this not as a “pick me” trad wife, but as a card-carrying feminist. Strong women need equally strong men. Strong men need equally strong women. This was the crux of Mary Wollstoncraft’s argument in Vindication of the Rights of Man and Vindication of the Rights of Woman. We need one another, but the more men talk about “submission” of women without calling out men who abuse their power or who weaponise their incompetence, the less you will have the families you claim are the cornerstone of our society. 

Charlie Kirk danced around this. He called out men who expected to split the bill on a date—good for him. Why, after all, should a woman pay on a date when the man more than likely, cause her more work when and if he becomes her husband? Sorry, men, but when you refuse to do dishes, change diapers, or even buy period products for your wife, you just prove why, yes, you should be the ones who pay on a date. 

He called out men who were weak and unable to provide: ok that’s also good. Men can and ought to provide not just monetarily, but provide emotional, physical, and psychological safety for their families. As the fallout from Bill Gothard’s ideology and the Southern Baptist Convention (among others) has proven—not enough men do that, even if they take up leadership. 

He spoke to the young men often left behind in the modern debate on mental health, quality of life and work-life balance. This is something that, even as a feminist, I agree needed to be done. Weak men make a dangerous society—ask Iryna Zarutska. Weak men make patriarchy the danger that is it, and weak men make Christianity a cage instead of a way out. 

You may not have agreed with the way Charlie Kirk addressed this, but he was, at least, doing something. 

Can you, sitting behind your phone screens, your readiness to use “fascist” and “Nazi” at your opposition, and your vapid ideals based on memes, say the same? 

Your 9/11 has just happened: make something of it.

So, I am encouraging you, the young, the bold, the ones for whom this past week will be your 9/11: be vigilant. Use your talents and develop your knowledge base for something other than TikTok trends and reaction videos. Learn to think logically, critically, and sympathetically. 

Be courageous in the face of opposition, but be courteous to your opposition as well. Learn to be good citizens and neighbors to one another without thinking that means “witnessing” to them over your ideology. 

Learn to debate, to entertain ideas without accepting them, and learn to speak to nuance. 

Whatever you do, don’t try to strategically “withdraw” from society as previous generations have tried to do, or worse, think that you have to conquer the entire culture to make a difference. That is the fundamentalist road, and it deliberately flies in the face of Jesus’ teaching to seek the good of the city where you live. 

Do not accept what Wikipedia says at face value, or what an influencer tells you. WAKE UP. Learn to read if you cannot. Learn to think if you do not know how. Visit your local library and start reading physical books again, discuss old philosophers in the coffee shops, and read old poets in the corners of the street. 

Look for and create objective beauty wherever you are. Learn to care for the world you will leave behind and to make public spaces habitable for everyone instead of using them for your convenience. 

Most of all, learn to express yourselves respectfully, honestly, and succinctly. You have the disadvantage of being born in a technological age, so you have a greater uphill battle ahead of you. It’s easier to allow barbarity to rule than it is to reason. 

Do not wish evil upon those with whom you disagree. Learn to live with people who differ from you, think differently from you, and believe differently from you. Find what unites you instead of dwelling on what separates you. 

Do not force other people to your own arbitrary rules and regulations, claiming it’s offense to you otherwise. Part of the price of freedom is living with being offended. 

My generation’s battle was overseas. Yours is within your own mind. You have a worse battle ahead of you than we did. We, at least, could put unfamiliar faces to our enemies. Yours is staring at you in the glow of your phone screen and the mirror of your bathroom. 

Wake up. 

The time when you divide yourselves into categories and along ideological lines is over. You will stand together or you will die separately.

But, as someone who live through 9/11, but also remembers 9/12, I can tell you that unity is more precious than division. 

The United States, and the civilized world in the days after 9/11 was a time unlike any other. The Queen of England had our national anthem played at the changing of the guard at Buckingham for the Americans in London. She sent an address to the people of New York to mourn with them. Walt Disney World resorts in Florida and California gave away extra days at their hotels and in their parks for families who couldn’t fly home. French restaurateurs brought out their best wine for the Americans in their establishments and mourned with them. Jews and Muslims alike helped one another out of the dust and ash of the city and called one another “brother.” 

That is what you should fight for. That is the world you want to live in. It’s not the one where you celebrate a husband and father being murdered or a war refugee stabbed. It’s the one where people saw one another humanity and grief, and decided that they didn’t care if that person believed differently, prayed differently, or looked differently. 

What mattered was that we were all human and all inherently worthy of life, liberty, and the chance to pursue a meaningful, happy life. 

I charge you to take your lives and your souls more seriously than the momentary pleasure of a few likes.

In the end, objects and words are morally neutral. What isn’t morally neutral are the people who use them: you. You are morally culpable for the way you use works, objects, and your freedoms. 

Put aside the childish tantrums for likes and views.

Put aside the endless slogans that mean nothing. Be more than what you imagine and seek for greater than you can dream. In your quest to practice the virtue of selfishness, remember that seeking the good of the world around you is also good for you. 

Put aside your differences and be the nation our founders believed could exist. It’s going to be a fight in the coming days and months to control the narrative, to lionize or demonize the people involved and their victims, to push for gun bans, book bans, and speech bans. 

Do not give in to any of it. Learn wisdom, or at least the semblance of wisdom. 

This is your 9/11, let it not have been in vain. Let Charlie Kirk’s children grow up in a world that is changed not because Christian Nationalists won the day, or because Sharia Lawis the rule of law, or because we tore down all the statues, churches, and institutions; or killed all the people we claimed were Nazis, but because a nation divided saw their father get murdered and said enough. Let Iryna Zarutska’s family see a United States is worthy of the love she had for it.

You cannot stop evil for all time—that is not a task for any human being—but you can control what you, what you say, what you do next, and the world you help build.

Take up your heritage of liberty and use it for something better than you have been. 

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