Labrador Letter: When Speech is Treated as “Violence” our Freedoms Die

Dear Friends,

This week, our nation suffered a loss that cuts to the heart of who we are. The tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk was not just the murder of a man. It was an attack on the very idea that Americans can debate one another peacefully, challenge each other boldly, and still remain a free people.

Charlie Kirk lived and breathed the First Amendment. He was, in many ways, the voice of his generation for freedom of speech. He believed that open political conversation-real dialogue, not censorship-was the path to healing our country. Charlie held strong views, but he shared them without malice. He modeled how to disagree without being disagreeable.

Charlie was targeted not because he threatened violence, broke laws, or sought to harm others. He was targeted because he told the truth. Because he challenged lies. Because his words and his ideas were too dangerous for the Radical Left to tolerate.

That is the chilling reality we face now. When speech is treated as violence, violence becomes the only acceptable response for unhinged individuals. And when the media spends years painting conservatives as threats to democracy, as extremists, as fascists, as Nazis, as literal Hitlers, they are giving implicit permission for physical attacks and violence.

Freedom of speech is the fight of our time. If we lose the ability to speak freely, we lose the ability to worship, to assemble, to vote, to live without fear. Charlie understood that. He didn't run from opposing ideas, he invited them and debated them. He understood that speech is not violence. He believed, as our Founders did and as I do, that the answer to speech you disagree with is more speech, not censorship. That is how a free republic survives and flourishes.

The day after the shooting, I attended an event with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Before his prepared remarks, he spoke movingly about his own childhood experiences with political assassination. He was only ten years old when his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was killed. And just fourteen when he watched his father die in a hospital bed after being shot.

RFK Jr. shared something that deeply resonated with me: he warned that political assassinations are attempts to silence political opponents. When the political class gains the power to silence its opponents, it also gains the license to eliminate all other rights and liberties of the citizenry. This warning echoes profoundly after this week's tragic event. The shooter's intention was not just to silence Charlie Kirk; he sought to silence all of us.

Kennedy closed his remarks with a lesson he learned from his mother. She had lost a husband, a brother-in-law, and later, a child. He asked her, "Does the hole in your heart ever get smaller when you lose a loved one?" She answered, "It never does. But our job is to become bigger in memory of our loved ones." It was a beautiful, sobering reminder. And one that feels especially fitting as we remember Charlie Kirk.

Let us honor him by refusing to retreat from sharing our ideas and values. Let us speak boldly, live faithfully, and grow bigger in his memory. For God. For Family. For Idaho. For our Country.

Best regards,