Charlie Kirk was one of the internet’s most divisive figures. Like many, I disagree with much of what he said. Yet a year on from his death, I find myself mourning what he represented: a rare beacon of liberalism in a world that fears disagreement.

We must ask ourselves why Kirk’s debates attracted so much attention.

Perhaps, in his taste for disagreement, he represented the desire that many college students have for it yet feel unable to express.

Indeed, a 2024 study of American college students by the Knight Foundation concluded ‘students crave opportunity to engage in constructive dialogue’ yet remain ‘unaware of programs’ to do so. A 2026 report by the Menzies Centre similarly found that 28.3 per cent of Australian undergraduate students did not feel free to express their views on campus.

It thus seems that Kirk, in allowing people to witness debate, may have fulfilled a hunger for discussion while allowing them to remain free from the discomfort that is inherent in disagreement.

Perhaps Kirk’s willingness to debate also stands out because our tendency to view politics as a moral matter can cause us to distance ourselves from our political opponents. In a largely secular world unable to draw on one’s religious behaviours as a reflection of morality, it seems political opinions are often treated as a proxy for who someone really is deep down.

Indeed, a 2022 Pew Research poll found only 54 per cent of surveyed Americans said that one’s ‘political affiliation says nothing about whether they are a good or bad person’.

As psychologists Linda Skitka and colleagues found in their paper Moral conviction: another contributor to attitude strength or something more?, moral convictions are typically associated with a greater desire for distance from those with differing attitudes. Given that many of his stances were related to his Christian faith, I have no doubt Kirk’s convictions were moral. Yet rather than fleeing from disagreement, he ran towards it.

In a piece on Charlie Kirk last year, New York Times journalist Ezra Klein labelled Kirk ‘one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion’, pointing to how ‘college-age voters shifted sharply right in the 2024 election’. Yet as Dr Sarah Stein Lubrano outlines in her book Don’t Talk about Politics, there is limited evidence that debate serves to change public opinion.

This, however, does not mean that debate cannot aid the liberal project. Debate forces us to hear the other side, giving insight into a way of thinking that may feel foreign to us. Indeed, in a series of experimental studies, Diana Mutz’s 2007 paper Effects of “In-Your-Face” Television Discourse on Perceptions of a Legitimate Opposition concluded that while televised debates can cause people to view the opposition as less legitimate than they otherwise would have, they still allow people to have a greater understanding of the opposition’s perspective.

In other words, even if one comes to the conclusion that their political opponents are simply insane, debate at least allows them to understand how and why they are crazy.

Our collective refusal to practise liberalism through conversation impacts not only the political sphere, but also personal relationships. According to a 2024 YouGov poll, 26 per cent of Americans reported ending a friendship over politics. The McKinnon Index, a survey of young Australians taken in 2025, similarly found 21.9 per cent of 18-24-year-olds sampled agreed with the statement: ‘I could not be friends with people with different political views.’

While this data suggests most people disagree with the sentiment of cutting off others due to politics, there seem to be few people actively taking a stand against such a culture.

Charlie Kirk was one of such people.

In one of his debates, he spoke to a young man who had a difficult relationship with his father due to politics, saying: ‘never let politics get in the way of the beautiful relationship between father and son’, before explaining how they could better see eye to eye. Such a scene is heartwarming. Yet there is also evidence to suggest that relationships with those of differing political beliefs can promote greater political tolerance.

In Paul Roberts’ book The Impulse Society, he argues that America’s increasing political division across the latter half of the twentieth century was in part due to people’s failure to interact with those who vote differently to them. As mobility became more possible, people were increasingly able to move to areas that aligned with their beliefs, allowing less opportunity to discover that their Republican neighbour may in fact have a semblance of reason behind their beliefs.

Kirk was ultimately killed while debating. Yet I don’t view him as the Messiah of the liberal utopia I dream of so much as someone who simply embraced the disagreement that is important for a liberal society. In a world where this is rare, it seems the man who did the bare minimum may win the title of liberalism’s prophet.

You can find Inga-Britt Pinkstone on LinkedIn and Substack.