Speech Should Never Be a Death Sentence

This is Not About Politics – This is About Reason and Freedom

By R. Michael Brown, College Public Speaking Instructor*

I’m angry.

As a college public speaking teacher, I’m horrified.

In America—the land of the First Amendment—someone has been assassinated for their words. Not for violence. Not for crime. For speech.

It shouldn’t matter who the speaker was—Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, religious or non-religious.

What matters is that Charlie Kirk was exercising a right guaranteed to every one of us: the right to speak freely without fear of death or violence. That right is sacred. That right is non-negotiable.

Your Voice Matters

Every semester I tell my students: your voice matters.

You can argue, you can persuade, you can push back, if you do it without breaking our laws in the United States of America.

You can stand up and say what you believe. But, do it with respect.

You do it with the understanding that disagreement is part of democracy and our democratic republic. That’s how a free society works.

But now, we’re staring at a darker reality. Violence has replaced debate. Murder has replaced dialogue. And let’s be clear: when speech becomes a death sentence, freedom itself is at risk.

The great free speech advocate Noam Chomsky once said, “If you don’t believe in freedom of expression for people you despise, you don’t believe in it at all.”

That’s the test. If we only defend speech we agree with, then we don’t actually believe in free speech—we believe in censorship with a smile, or worse.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said it even more bluntly: free thought means “not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”

If we forget that, we forget who we are as Americans.

Free Speech vs. Disagreement

And let’s remember Salman Rushdie, who nearly died for the words he wrote. He put it plainly: “What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”

Taking offense is not violence. Disagreement is not violence. Words are not bullets.

What terrifies me is the chilling effect. When the public sees that speech can lead to assassination, they hesitate. They self-censor. They stay silent. And that silence isn’t safety—it’s the slow death of our republic.

If you disagree with someone, it’s perfectly okay to debate with logic, reason, facts, truth and honesty, beliefs, the best persuasive ideas you can offer, even emotion.

And, it’s perfectly fine to agree to disagree.

Free speech requires courage, yes—but it should never require the courage to face a gun or other violence. It should only take the courage to stand, to speak, and to be heard.

We need to get this straight: nobody—nobody—has the right to physically attack or kill someone for their beliefs or their words.

The only answer to speech we don’t like is MORE speech: arguments, counterarguments, debate, legal protest. That’s it. That’s the line.

If we don’t hold that line, we lose everything.