On Sept. 10, 2025, on a campus meant for debate and ideas, discussion was ended not by a meeting of the minds or a superior argument but by violence. Charlie Kirk, an outspoken activist, was fatally shot while debating at Utah Valley University. This wasn’t some distant act of extremism among strangers; it happened here, in our own community. That makes it personal. It has connected us across divides to our shared humanity.
Shared humanity calls not for finger-pointing but for self-examination. We can’t control all the dynamics of the world around us, but we can control how we participate in it. Integrity and courage require us to ask a hard but necessary question: “Have I, in word or deed, helped create a culture that treats political opponents as enemies?”
No matter the size of our personal circles of influence, our words shape the world. When we treat disagreement as evil or opponents as enemies, we contribute to the culture that makes tragedies like this possible.
To take a life over words or ideas is an act of profound entitlement. It’s a chilling reminder that none of us is entitled to anyone else’s agreement. No one owes us assent simply because we believe we’re right. If we want others to share our views, we must do the work of persuasion — meeting people where they are, grounding arguments in facts, exercising patience and wrestling honestly with problems that rarely have easy answers.
In a free society, if we don’t like the words we’re hearing, we don’t have the right to silence them with violence. Instead, we build a stronger argument. We work harder to carry a better message farther. In doing so, we rise to the duty and dignity of citizenship.
In today’s 140-character world, we’ve forgotten how to foster a meeting of the minds. Sound bites somehow pass for arguments. Viral outrage masquerades as civic engagement — without explaining problems in any kind of useful way. Complex challenges are reduced to clever one-liners that look good on a screen but collapse under the weight of reality. Many delve into outrage-fueled emails, posts and podcasts and call it research. It’s not. Opinion isn’t evidence and repetition isn’t verification. Primary-source fact-checking is neglected, even when sources are readily available online. When our engagement with ideas remains this shallow, we train ourselves to confuse performance with persuasion and indignation with truth.
Fact-checking is essential — but it isn’t enough. Real understanding of our nation’s toughest challenges won’t come from quippy zingers, even if they are factual. Facts need context and context is complex, layered and consequential. (It’s inherently untweetable.) Our nation is straining under the expensive, unintended consequences of hot-take policymaking.
In a free nation, long-term problem-solving cannot happen without understanding context. When “we the people” are in charge, the people’s many perspectives provide the relevant, indispensable criteria for real solutions. If we only listen to those who agree with us — and deem other perspectives invalid — we cut ourselves off from key information. Our problem-solving capacity is stunted. We lose the ability to imagine a range of acceptable solutions. We ultimately fail to craft solutions that have enough support from “we the people” to outlive the next election — let alone build a foundation for future generations.
Frustration follows. Having neglected the work of citizenship, we can see only one path forward — our own. Yet we lack the power to force our personal will on everyone else. That tension breeds anger.
Research shows that when like-minded people deliberate only with one another, they radicalize each other. In one study, participants completed a survey to assess their political positions, then were placed in ideologically uniform groups to discuss those positions. Post-discussion survey responses revealed their views had become more extreme. In fact, the group average had become more extreme than the most radical person in the presurvey. This was true for progressives and conservatives alike. It’s the group polarization effect: in echo chambers, we double down.
We need encounters that challenge our thinking, not closed Facebook groups that harden us — and above all, we need to listen. The stakes are high. Losing curiosity about the many perspectives within “we the people” is the path to authoritarianism. A society that can’t handle disagreement won’t remain free for anyone.
When we listen, we discover perspectives we hadn’t considered, hear experiences we’ve never lived and confront the limits of our own knowledge. We may even stumble into the greatest political heresy of all: that our own minds and hearts can be changed.
The rising tide of violence, fueled by division and isolation, is not only a tragedy — it’s a warning. A society that abandons serious discourse and shared humanity will inevitably descend into violence. If we want tomorrow to be different from today, it’s up to each of us to build a culture where opponents aren’t enemies, where solutions are achieved through the strength of our discourse, not the force of our weapons. It’s up to each of us to go in search of the other and to love — and listen to — our neighbor.
In a world hardened by polarization, anger is not disruption. It’s more of the same. There’s no bold vision in that.
The truly disruptive thinkers will do something different: listen deeply, hold multiple perspectives at once and imagine solutions that meet more than just their own criteria. Leaders with the courage to resist tribalism will be remembered for lasting solutions that carry our nation to a better tomorrow.
What will be the legacy of our time? Will history measure our day in lives lost to hatred or in solutions we forged together — for each other and the generations after us? That answer will depend, in no small part, on whether each of us is willing to set aside finger-pointing and ask the most important question of all: “Is it I?”