Ezra Klein Argues for Big-Tent Politics

"I think this is a weird critique. Genuinely. You know human beings, David. In the moments after a murder or death, do you go to people and tell them exactly what you thought of the person they just lost? Is your relationship to people who you're in community with-and I do believe myself to be in a political community with people who cared about and loved Charlie Kirk even as much as I'm very much on the other side from them"

"Ta-Nehisi Coates, for example, wrote a piece in Vanity Fair, setting out a collection of statements from Charlie Kirk, that was quite representative. Did you think that was unfair? No. I agree with Ta-Nehisi on virtually every view he has on things that Charlie Kirk had said. As I wrote in my second piece, I have poured virtually every ounce of myself into preventing everything that Kirk poured himself into creating."

"For more people than I had understood, the sense that we are in any way in community together-the sense that we are still in a place where we are all practicing and doing politics-has already eroded. Something that's very alive for me is a feeling that we are not that far from national rupture. So many things that we like to say "can't happen here" have already been happening here."

"I saw two remarkable things. I saw the widow of Charlie Kirk, Erika Kirk, get up and do an extraordinary thing. Here is a woman whose world has been shattered, whose family has been shattered, who's lost the husband she adored, and she forgave the person who killed him. I don't know that I could ever be capable of that."

Questions arise about the appropriateness of criticizing someone immediately after violent loss and about responsibilities within political communities. A prominent compilation of Charlie Kirk's statements was viewed by many as representative, and critics expressed agreement with those assessments. One political opponent describes having invested tremendous effort to prevent the projects Kirk created. A growing sense of eroded communal practice and political fellowship produces anxiety about nearing national rupture. Specific leadership conduct after the killing is blamed for worsening that rupture. The widow's public forgiveness of her husband's killer stands out as an extraordinary act amid the turmoil.

Read at The New Yorker