Dear Editor:
Re: Not worthy of ovation, Sept. 25.
Daniel Bratton appears to be doing a bit of cherry picking in painting a negative picture of Charlie Kirk.
No doubt Charlie had his faults, as we all do. However, from my reading and listening, I believe he was a sincere Christian who sought to speak the truth about often controversial moral, religious and political issues, while inviting his opponents to make their case.
Although some might be turned off by his support of Donald Trump, and by some of the speakers who eulogized him, I believe Charlie spoke for many conservatives who are silenced, vilified or worse, by the mainstream media, leftist politicians, academia and other left-wing extremists.
One theologian and writer, Dr. Thaddeus Williams, analyzed 100 videos featuring Charlie Kirk, in an experiment to determine whether left-wing claims that he was a proponent of hate, violence, white supremacy and other dangerous phobias were true. They were not.
He found that Charlie was called names like “stupid,” “piece of trash,” “Nazi,” “Hitler” and many unprintable terms 59 times by those who disagreed with him, but that Charlie never responded by calling the person who disagreed with him a derogatory name.
He often thanked his opponents for their courage in publicly engaging with him on hard topics.
Charlie did resort to name calling 11 times, but appeared justified in doing so, such as when he called a young man who had praised Hitler a “low IQ individual.” Three of those times, he called himself names, admitting “I’m a sinner,” “I’m selfish” and “I’m broken.”
Charlie Kirk’s assassin likely thought that by killing him, it would silence his conservative Christian views.
I’m hoping it will result in more conservative Christians having the freedom and courage to speak about controversial issues without fearing violence and censorship.
Henry Brunsveld,
Puslinch