We need to find the courage to speak as free men.

I have to admit I have had a hard time forcing myself to write about American politics in the last week. I was waiting in a long line of stopped cars to pick up my children from school when I looked down at my phone and checked social media. Suddenly, I was texting my wife: Pray for Charlie Kirk. Then, I scrolled more. I saw the horrible video. You know, the one that is more graphic than anything from the Kennedy assassination. I texted, “Pray for the repose of his soul and for consolation for his family. I think he’s gone.”

A little over a decade ago, a man went to the Family Research Council headquarters with a gun and Chick-fil-A to stuff into the mouths of his victims. He was, thankfully, stopped by the guard whom he had shot. It was around then that someone tried to spread information about my wife’s employment as vengeance for something I said defending nuns on MSNBC. A few years later, we got our first phoned death threat. The local cop asked if I could just stop doing whatever it was that provoked such a response. Then the congressional baseball practice was attacked by a left-winger who opened fire on Republicans. The draft decision overturning Roe was leaked, and I believed it was an attempt to incite violence against one of the conservative justices. In fact, a man traveled from California to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh. President Trump survived two assassination attempts. Charlie Kirk was killed while speaking.

Words are useful in a war of words. But if American politics increasingly resembles a firing range, in which now even conservative influencers are among the targets, what exactly is the point of reciting sweet or clever quotations from Edmund Burke or Roger Scruton into the howling, crackling noise? Wouldn’t I do better by focusing on protecting myself and my family?

But the words still matter. This week I joined an event meant to celebrate William F. Buckley’s centennial, a joint enterprise of two organizations that bear his imprint, National Review and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. In response to Kirk’s killing, the event was given extra security. Bags were inspected. Participants passed through a metal detector.

My opponent in that night’s debate observed to me that there were unseen costs if we continue to succumb to a siege mentality. Besides the costs that are diverted away from programming to security, there is the chance that it warps our own psychological perception about the threats we face and our position in this country, and how that shapes our engagement in the world. Further, the literal and psychological barriers we put up are forbidding to potential converts to our cause who simply want to hear us out, but who might balk at having their bags searched. We saw how an oversensitivity to threat changed the way institutions functioned under Covid. We face a similar risk now.

I don’t propose this to criticize anyone who makes the decision to increase professional or personal security. Our loved ones sometimes demand this for us. Sometimes the third-party institutions inviting us want such measures. We also need confidence that law enforcement really is treating political violence as the grave evil it is and that, without fear or favor, it will investigate and disrupt any organized domestic terror plots. It will take a little time to reestablish that confidence after Kirk’s death.

But in the medium term, we need to find the courage to speak as free men, not as men who are menaced and shouting out from behind a barricade. And I say this to myself as much as to anyone else. We cannot tacitly accept that our ideas are so incendiary or threatening that we need anonymity and military contractors on all sides. Our ideas are rooted in the Founding documents of this country, in the great tradition of faith and philosophy. We cannot play or fight on as if we were the foreign threat. This is our country, and we’ll be damned if we turn it into a giant TSA checkpoint.