When people say, "I can't believe someone could be killed just for their political speech" in response to Charlie Kirk's murder, I hear two things at once: a profound misunderstanding of what politics actually is, and a symptom of how cocooned many Americans have become inside the project of America.
Let me explain.
Politics Is Not a Desk Job
If an accountant were murdered and we said, "I can't believe someone could be killed for just doing taxes," that would make sense. A CPA is not wading into existential questions of power. But politics is not accounting. It is not neutral. It is not detached.
Politics decides who eats and who starves. Who lives and who dies. Who is protected and who is left exposed. Political speech is not "just words"—it is the blueprint for laws, policies, and cultural currents that rearrange the very conditions of life.
If you're in politics—whether as a policymaker or a commentator—you are not just "sharing ideas." You are wielding a weapon. That weapon has consequences.
The American Delusion of Safety
The shock at Kirk's murder exposes a uniquely American delusion: that politics here is somehow different, cleaner, safer. We imagine politics as debate-club sparring rather than what it has always been: the contest for power, survival, and resources.
But history says otherwise. Abroad, political speech is understood as life-and-death. Dissidents in Russia, feminists in Latin America, activists in sub-Saharan Africa—all know that words put you in danger because they matter. They destabilize, they challenge, they cost.
Meanwhile, American politicians and commentators have convinced themselves they can unleash cruelty with no responsibility attached.
They call for stripping healthcare, banning abortion, or demonizing immigrants, and then act surprised when anger and violence follow.
Violence Is Not Abstract
To understand why this matters, let's be clear about what violence looks like in our own country right now:
Nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the U.S. That's more than 10 million people every year.
The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of homicide by 500%.
Intimate partner violence accounts for 15% of all violent crime in America.
More than half of women murdered in the U.S. are killed by a current or former intimate partner.
These are not distant statistics. They are the everyday fallout of a political culture that tolerates hate, undermines protections, and erodes rights.
Charlie Kirk's Words Were Never Neutral
So when we talk about Charlie Kirk, we cannot treat his death as if he were an innocent caught in crossfire. His career was built on sowing cruelty, contempt, and division. He is not disconnected from the harm. His rhetoric—amplified daily to millions—helped fuel policies and attitudes that stripped people of healthcare, safety, and dignity.
The War on Women's Autonomy
Kirk's most vicious work was his systematic assault on women's reproductive autonomy and bodily self-determination. These were not abstract philosophical positions—they were blueprints for laws that have already killed women and will kill more.
When asked about a hypothetical 10-year-old rape victim, Kirk said without hesitation: "The answer is, yes, the baby would be delivered." He doubled down: "It is a growing consensus in the pro-life world that abortion is never medically necessary."
Let that sink in. Kirk advocated for forcing a 10-year-old rape victim to carry her rapist's child to term. In his world, the trauma of sexual assault should be compounded by the state-mandated destruction of that child's body and future. He called this "something good in the face of evil, instead of saying we're going to do evil."
This is not philosophy. This is policy. Kirk's position is now law in multiple states, where children who have been raped are denied abortion care. The direct line from Kirk's words to state violence against children is not theoretical—it is documented, measurable, and lethal.
The Assault on Women's Freedom
Kirk's hostility toward women extended far beyond reproductive rights into a comprehensive attack on women's autonomy, economic independence, and political participation.
At Turning Point USA's Young Women's Leadership Summit, Kirk told thousands of young women to "trade their feminism for femininity, ditch their professional aspirations and focus on finding a husband to fund being a stay-at-home mom." He warned them: "If you're not married by the age of 30, you only have a 50 percent chance of getting married. And if you don't have kids by the age of 30, then you have a 50 percent chance of having kids."
This messaging was calculated manipulation designed to terrorize young women into submission. Kirk weaponized women's fears about aging and fertility to push them away from education, careers, and independence. He explicitly told them that "everything they do on a daily basis should then point towards that goal" of marriage and motherhood.
Kirk regularly featured guests who went further. On his show, Terry Schilling declared: "Every goal of the feminist movement — ever since they got, you know, the right to vote — after that, it all went downhill." Kirk provided the platform for rhetoric that explicitly called women's suffrage a mistake.
The Broader Pattern of Dehumanization
Kirk's rhetoric about women was part of a broader project of dehumanization. He described young women who voted for Kamala Harris as wanting "careerism, consumerism and loneliness," while Trump-voting men wanted "family, children and legacy."
He regularly dismissed women's experiences of violence and trauma. When discussing domestic abuse, workplace harassment, or sexual assault, Kirk's response was consistently to minimize, deflect, or blame victims. He described women as "the most depressed group in the history of the species" and "the most miserable they've ever been," attributing this to women's liberation rather than the systematic oppression his movement championed.
The Body Count
How many deaths can be traced back to policies Kirk defended or narratives he mainstreamed?
We may never know the number. But it is not small.
Every woman who has died from pregnancy complications in states with abortion bans. Every teenager who has been forced to carry her rapist's child. Every woman who has stayed with an abusive partner because Kirk's movement eliminated her economic alternatives.
Every girl who has been pulled out of school to prepare for early marriage because Kirk convinced her family that education was a threat to femininity.
Kirk spent over a decade building the intellectual and cultural infrastructure for a war on women's bodies and minds. His words became laws. His laws became death sentences.
Reconnecting Politics and Consequence
If there is one takeaway from this moment, it is this: politics must be reconnected to responsibility. Political actors—whether elected, appointed, or self-anointed—do not get to disown the damage their words create.
What does that mean for us?
Stop saying "it's just speech." Speech is the precondition for law, for power, for violence. When Kirk said a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry her attacker's child, he wasn't engaging in abstract debate—he was advocating for state violence against children.
Name the harm clearly. If a law leaves people uninsured, undocumented, unsafe, or dead, that is not "debate"—that is political killing by another name. When we pretend otherwise, we become accomplices to the violence.
Demand accountability. Politicians and commentators alike must be judged not just by their intentions but by their impacts. Kirk built a media empire by promising his audience that cruelty was consequence-free. His death proves that promise was a lie.
The Lesson of This Death
The lesson is not that political speech "shouldn't be dangerous." The lesson is that political speech is dangerous because politics itself is dangerous. The sooner we stop pretending otherwise, the sooner we can reclaim politics as a serious and moral endeavor—one that safeguards lives rather than destroying them.
Charlie Kirk spent his career promoting laws and attitudes that terrorized, injured, and killed women. He described this work as defending "traditional values" and "protecting families." But there is nothing traditional about forcing children to give birth. There is nothing family-friendly about stripping women of economic independence. There is nothing valuable about a culture that celebrates cruelty.
Kirk's death is not an aberration. It is a reminder. The stakes of politics have always been this high. We forgot. And forgetting has cost us dearly.
The women who died because of the policies Charlie Kirk championed will never get justice.
But maybe—just maybe—his death will remind us that politics is not a game. Maybe it will teach us to take words seriously again. Maybe it will force us to reckon with the violence we have allowed to masquerade as "values."
That would be a legacy worth having.