First, with regards to the yougov survey, the survey didn't actually say that was limited to non-violent public figures. I would interpret the question as written as including Osama Bin Ladin and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as public figures. While publicly gloating about their deaths might be a bit much, I can certainly see a valid reason to feel a certain amount of private happiness at news of their deaths.
Second, in terms of "never speak ill of the dead", I think there needs to be an exception here for honest recognition of deaths which really were directly traceable to the deceased's own choices.
For example, Remi Lucidi, a professional french daredevil who made his name posting self-taken photos on instagram of himself climbing around unsecured on the tops of skyscrapers, usually illegally or otherwise without permission of the buildings owners.
He died in Hong Kong after lying to a security guard to gain entrance, then using an interior access door to secretly reach the rooftop.... and then the door locked behind him and nobody knew he was up there. A maid reported seeing him tapping on a window for help 90 minutes later, so she called the police. It's not like 40th floor windows actually open, so there's not much else she could have done. He's believed to have gotten tired and slipped up somehow shortly afterwards, resulting in him falling to his death. His camera with selfies was left on the roof afterwards.
I think we can all agree, even in the first day after his death, that Remi Lucidi's death was the direct result of a foolish risk he himself took, and that his death was a valuable lesson in the importance of good safety procedures, like having permission, filing your plans ahead of time, using safety lines, climbing with a partner, etc, etc.
Or Felix Baumgartner, world record holder for skydiving from the edge of space and breaking the speed of sound using only gravity and his own body. As near as we can tell, he later suffered a heart attack in mid-air while paragliding above Italy, and was already dead before he ever hit the ground. Saying something like "He died as he lived" or "What a way to go" or "He probably would have wanted it that way" does not seem unreasonable, as long as you don't say it directly to his family when you don't know them very well.
First of all, I'm glad someone besides me prays for dead bad guys like Osama bin Laden and George Tiller (although I have to resist the urge to write them off as bound for hell -- we are forbidden to judge)
I didn't know that much about Charlie Kirk when he was alive. I'm learning a lot about his life after his demise. I don't like Trump supporters on principle, and there is much I don't like about Kirk, but some things I've seen of him I do like, such as his defense of unborn life.
And his wife and small children didn't deserve to lose their husband and father. I'm heartbroken to hear that his 3 year old was there and saw her father get shot. No small child should ever see that happen to anyone, let alone her father.
"This rule is an expression of the Christian charity that lies at the foundation of our civilization, and at the foundations of our souls."
I think a reason that rule has eroded is that America, and the entire western world, is less Christian. The sense of 'there but for the grace of God go I' is faded and the spiritual work of mercy of praying for the dead is no longer obliged. So why would that norm remain when many of the critical reasons for it are no longer believed?
Personally I try to build the habit of always praying for whoever is in danger whenever I hear sirens or hear news that someone died. And I see obituaries roughly a couple times a week since my employer emails them to everyone whenever someone with a connection dies, so I try to always read them and pray for that deceased person. Those habits I try to build, well they're just trying to build up the ability to enact that principle even for someone I loathe. Not that I've ever really thought about it formally like that before.
Given his prominence as a public figure, different people may find different reasons to mourn his death (and I will not here detail such reasons as I see them), but his death should be mourned.
Thanks for these reflections, James. I especially appreciated the contextualizing of Mr. Kirk's statements -- which were widely misquoted even as single-sentence quotes. For example, some people misquoted him as specifically saying the 2nd amendment was worth some "mass shootings." Those were the very tragedies he proceeded to offer practical approaches to.
I would not have used the phrase "worth it" (and maybe if he were sitting down and writing a serious article he wouldn't have either). More neutral, perhaps, to say some gun deaths are "the price we pay" for a policy of defending gun ownership for its legitimate purposes. When someone first quoted (or misquoted) his sentence to me, my reaction was that it was technically true, just as some traffic deaths are the price we pay for, for example, letting Montana have an 80 MPH highway speed limit. (We just drove through there recently.) I recall reading about some past federal calculations on how much regulation of things like potentially polluting substances should be allowed in light of the lives that the regulation might save. Some bean counters actually came up with a dollar figure for the worth of a human life, to be applied to future policies... Clearly there are ways to make those conversations very crass indeed, but as a nation we frequently make some rough trade-offs like this. For me personally, I'm fairly sure I'd be far more likely to accidentally put a bullet in myself or a member of my family than to become the hero who stops a potential mass shooter.
All this is in the context of vociferous agreement with your first and most important statement: It doesn't matter. You don't go around defending the violent murder of someone for having ideas that disagree with yours. That way madness lies.
First, with regards to the yougov survey, the survey didn't actually say that was limited to non-violent public figures. I would interpret the question as written as including Osama Bin Ladin and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as public figures. While publicly gloating about their deaths might be a bit much, I can certainly see a valid reason to feel a certain amount of private happiness at news of their deaths.
Second, in terms of "never speak ill of the dead", I think there needs to be an exception here for honest recognition of deaths which really were directly traceable to the deceased's own choices.
For example, Remi Lucidi, a professional french daredevil who made his name posting self-taken photos on instagram of himself climbing around unsecured on the tops of skyscrapers, usually illegally or otherwise without permission of the buildings owners.
He died in Hong Kong after lying to a security guard to gain entrance, then using an interior access door to secretly reach the rooftop.... and then the door locked behind him and nobody knew he was up there. A maid reported seeing him tapping on a window for help 90 minutes later, so she called the police. It's not like 40th floor windows actually open, so there's not much else she could have done. He's believed to have gotten tired and slipped up somehow shortly afterwards, resulting in him falling to his death. His camera with selfies was left on the roof afterwards.
I think we can all agree, even in the first day after his death, that Remi Lucidi's death was the direct result of a foolish risk he himself took, and that his death was a valuable lesson in the importance of good safety procedures, like having permission, filing your plans ahead of time, using safety lines, climbing with a partner, etc, etc.
Or Felix Baumgartner, world record holder for skydiving from the edge of space and breaking the speed of sound using only gravity and his own body. As near as we can tell, he later suffered a heart attack in mid-air while paragliding above Italy, and was already dead before he ever hit the ground. Saying something like "He died as he lived" or "What a way to go" or "He probably would have wanted it that way" does not seem unreasonable, as long as you don't say it directly to his family when you don't know them very well.
First of all, I'm glad someone besides me prays for dead bad guys like Osama bin Laden and George Tiller (although I have to resist the urge to write them off as bound for hell -- we are forbidden to judge)
I didn't know that much about Charlie Kirk when he was alive. I'm learning a lot about his life after his demise. I don't like Trump supporters on principle, and there is much I don't like about Kirk, but some things I've seen of him I do like, such as his defense of unborn life.
And his wife and small children didn't deserve to lose their husband and father. I'm heartbroken to hear that his 3 year old was there and saw her father get shot. No small child should ever see that happen to anyone, let alone her father.
"This rule is an expression of the Christian charity that lies at the foundation of our civilization, and at the foundations of our souls."
I think a reason that rule has eroded is that America, and the entire western world, is less Christian. The sense of 'there but for the grace of God go I' is faded and the spiritual work of mercy of praying for the dead is no longer obliged. So why would that norm remain when many of the critical reasons for it are no longer believed?
Personally I try to build the habit of always praying for whoever is in danger whenever I hear sirens or hear news that someone died. And I see obituaries roughly a couple times a week since my employer emails them to everyone whenever someone with a connection dies, so I try to always read them and pray for that deceased person. Those habits I try to build, well they're just trying to build up the ability to enact that principle even for someone I loathe. Not that I've ever really thought about it formally like that before.
Charlie Kirk's death should be mourned.
Given his prominence as a public figure, different people may find different reasons to mourn his death (and I will not here detail such reasons as I see them), but his death should be mourned.
Thanks for these reflections, James. I especially appreciated the contextualizing of Mr. Kirk's statements -- which were widely misquoted even as single-sentence quotes. For example, some people misquoted him as specifically saying the 2nd amendment was worth some "mass shootings." Those were the very tragedies he proceeded to offer practical approaches to.
I would not have used the phrase "worth it" (and maybe if he were sitting down and writing a serious article he wouldn't have either). More neutral, perhaps, to say some gun deaths are "the price we pay" for a policy of defending gun ownership for its legitimate purposes. When someone first quoted (or misquoted) his sentence to me, my reaction was that it was technically true, just as some traffic deaths are the price we pay for, for example, letting Montana have an 80 MPH highway speed limit. (We just drove through there recently.) I recall reading about some past federal calculations on how much regulation of things like potentially polluting substances should be allowed in light of the lives that the regulation might save. Some bean counters actually came up with a dollar figure for the worth of a human life, to be applied to future policies... Clearly there are ways to make those conversations very crass indeed, but as a nation we frequently make some rough trade-offs like this. For me personally, I'm fairly sure I'd be far more likely to accidentally put a bullet in myself or a member of my family than to become the hero who stops a potential mass shooter.
All this is in the context of vociferous agreement with your first and most important statement: It doesn't matter. You don't go around defending the violent murder of someone for having ideas that disagree with yours. That way madness lies.