So, it turns out once more that the cliché “words matter” has a fatal consequence.

Commentator Charlie Kirk’s assassination allegedly by a college-aged kid with good aim is only one irony here. Answering a question about gun violence when shot near the vocal cords was another for the pugnacious advocate of the First as well as Second Amendment.

Kirk stood out for resonating with the psyche of the young adult male, attributed to his willingness to be outrageous and to debate anyone and everyone on college campuses. His aggressive catchline: “Prove me wrong.”

Many credit him for a youth vote that helped tip the presidency to Donald Trump last year and growing a conservative toehold among the student body at lefty universities.

Here was a guy willing to debate Ivy Leaguers on their home ground who dropped out of college himself after a semester. Just like the young man who allegedly shot him dead while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem.

Kirk lived to enter lion’s dens and grapple intellectually. Honestly, though, this dude was not very intellectual. He was more among the breed who aim for outrage in exchange for attention, audience. The pathetic thing is that works.

No need to go into examples here, but there wasn’t much of a Sister Teresa and her “love them anyway” outlook at play here. His commentary often included racist, misogynistic nonsense that nonetheless found a home in the hearts of many, many people.

None of it merited being shot. This wasn’t justice in any sense. Quite the opposite.

Kirk was a commentator, a pundit, an influencer. He was buddies with the president, sure, but he had no role in government. He hadn’t won an election, hadn’t been appointed to anything, ran nothing but a political advocacy group.

He was no Kennedy, no Martin Luther King Jr., no Archduke Franz Ferdinand, none of that.

Yet in his martyrdom he takes on aspects of each, and he mattered very much. First and always as a person like you and me making his way in this world, ripped from loved ones, most acutely his young children and his wife. Over some words.

We’ll see whether one person pulling a trigger had more to say about free speech than Charlie Kirk for all his willingness to speak out and engage with people who didn’t agree with him.

Kirk’s core point was that conservatives and liberals, right and left, were best off talking through their differences. That’s why he came to college campuses in the first place.

“When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence,” he said. “That’s when civil war happens, because you start to think the other side is so evil and they lose their humanity.” He made that point a lot.

CNN commentator Brian Stelter remembered Kirk writing him while they discussed the possibility of debating one another publicly: “I’m trying to be proactive about encouraging dialogue between people who disagree.”

In the spirit of finding common ground, here it is for me.  

Will his core message prevail? In the rage of the moment, that’s a real question. Plenty of cultural warriors, public commentators and political leaders are posturing otherwise.

I’m not hearing a lot of this, words attributed to Voltaire but actually a biographer’s summary of his point: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will wholly defend to the death your right to say it.”

That’s founding father stuff, a big part of Kirk’s “prove me wrong” tour of the nation’s campuses, including the fateful stop in Orem.

Will a single bullet be allowed to do the very thing?

This is where the soul of America is at stake. The greatest danger ahead, an ultimate irony, is if Kirk’s core message were upended, there’s nothing left to say to each other, and words no longer matter.

Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745.