Since we started this blog 5 years ago, I find myself writing the second eulogy for a young man who passed way before his time on. That is two more than I ever wanted to write. It is usually the task of an editor-in-chief to eulogize anyone who had a connection to their outlet, but in this case, the man I’m writing about did – very possibly – not even know we existed. Just as I had very little personal knowledge of his work, but I feel very strongly about what his death means going forward in our current climate of free speech on campuses across the globe.

I have written my first eulogy here for Dániel Karsai, a renowned Hungarian human rights lawyer and activist, known for is fight for euthanasia, especially in light of his ALS diagnosis. He will possibly go down in the history books as the one advocate for active euthanasia, who willingly died for his cause and fought the fight until his last breath.

Charlie Kirk did not willingly die fighting for his cause, but his message gets louder with each moment the world starts to reflect on his absence. If they had social media at the time Martin Luther King or President Kennedy were killed, I wonder if we’d experienced the same social effects. Given what I’ve seen happen now, Kirk’s death is definitely comparable in the impression it has left on the global spirit. His death is the next one in a long line of recent, politically motivated attacks on someone’s life that have shaken the United States in the past years. When I saw the outpour of reactions on social media created by Kirk’s death, it dawned on me that the United States has reached a turning point. Ironically, Turning Point was the name of Kirk’s youth organization as well. America might very well be facing her own ‘Je Suis Charlie’ (I Am Charlie) moment.

I’ll also explain why the analogy stands. A decade ago, Europe has been consumed with a similar outpour of emotions, also tied to free speech on the pages of a French satirical news magazine, called Charlie Hebdo. Their exercise of free speech was met with retribution in the form of a terrorist attack on the offices of the publication and Paris on January 7 2015. (It is also very symbolic that Kirk’s death happened the day before 9/11.) In the 10 years since the Paris attacks, we have not learned much. Nonetheless, Kirk’s death in American public discourse reminded me of a period in Europe when everyone – almost instinctively – changed their profile pictures on Facebook to ‘Je Suis Charlie’ signaling that they stand with the idea of free speech and with the victims. The same happens now, with images and videos of Kirk popping up everywhere, like silent statements: ‘I Am Charlie’ – I stand with you.

Online free speech and activism – especially among youth – has reached a boiling point, when emotions tend to run high in often secluded online communities grieving a future they think they cannot have due to their respective governments being faulted for the changes they think should happen as they imagine them. They also want a turning point, and disillusionment may very well turn many of them towards anti-establishmentarian narratives, thinking and action. (Note: current news reports allege that the assailant “appears to be college age”, and if eventually this turns out to be true, it will only strengthen this  point.)

Thinking about Kirk and youth, Kierkegaard’s famous sentence about grief popped into my head. He once wrote that “the most painful state of being is to remember the future, particularly the one you will never have”. As today’s youth often may mourn the future they feel they cannot have, we are left to remember the future that this young man, father, and an outspoken supporter of his cause, Charlie Kirk, will never have.

But, in remembering it is also important to reflect on our past, that defines our mission for the future. This blog rolled out as a youth startup, a few young academics coming together voicing their ideas about current affairs in public and constitutional law and public discourse, but in a professional and respectful manner, not resorting to “free speech unbound”, seeing what it might be able to cause, based on past events. We tried opening it up to a Euro-American intellectual space, and we have been successful in this effort – looking toward a future we’d like to have. Part of this future is to be able to freely share about these visions on the online marketplace of ideas. We will continue with this mission, hoping to lead by example that sharing ideas can happen in a professional and civilized manner without causing undue harm to anyone’s dignity, life or liberty.

While I am not Charlie, I also am. I stand with him and his family, and applaud him for speaking his truth the way he did. Some of this truth, I don’t share, but I wish that we can all remain hopeful that things can get back to normal in America, and that and free speech – on an off campuses – will find its way back to civility, minimizing senseless loss of life. Until this happens, I continue to live and work here in this spirit, and study how it would be best to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, as we approach the next big milestone of creating the United States in 2026. May we all live to see and have this future, taking shape in many ways as Charlie imagined it.

Márton Sulyok JD, LLM, PhD is a Visiting Researcher at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution in Washington D.C. He is also an Asst. Professor (Senior Lecturer) in Constitutional Law and Human Rights at the Institute of Public Law, University of Szeged in Hungary. JD (2007, Szeged), LLM in Anglo-Saxon Law and English Legal Translation (2012, Szeged), PhD in Law and Political Sciences (2017, Szeged). Certified as an American Legal Expert (since 2009) in a joint training program of the University of Toledo (OH, USA) College of Law and the University of Szeged Faculty of Law and Political Sciences. Currently, Prof. Sulyok is the Head of the Public Law Center at Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) in Budapest, Hungary. Previously, he sat on the Management Board of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (Vienna, 2015-2020), and is now a member of the European Group of Public Law, the Scientific Committee of the EPLO (European Public Law Organization), where he also sits on the Board of Directors.

Image Credit: Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia