I am often puzzled by the way we respond when someone dies. It’s almost as if our brains have been switched off.

Me? I’m not very kind to the living, so I’m entirely unsure why my behaviour should change when someone dies. The idea that we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead is baffling. It comes from a time when we were far more committed to the woo-woo than we are now. As in, spooky woo-woo, some weird leftover from more spiritual times. Maybe people are riffing on that old saying “from your words to God’s ear”. If you believe in God, that is.

Charlie Kirk was a highly visible and important member of the conservative movement, and touted as a future president.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

If you speak ill of the dead, they will end up in hell. If you believe in hell, that is.

Sadly, that approach is stopping any serious discussion of the real legacy of Charlie Kirk, murdered last week.

Let’s be clear. I am definitely not in the camp of celebrating Kirk’s murder. I don’t celebrate violence. I was totally gobsmacked and impressed when John Howard wangled gun bans. Awesome. That man saved lives, while destroying many others with his policy on boat turnbacks.

I mourn the way Kirk’s family has been devastated. No one deserves that. No child deserves to be deprived of a parent (a lesson perhaps US President Donald Trump could learn as he deports the parents of minors).

But I cannot speak kindly of a person who, when living, was filled to the brim with hate. Kirk was a white Christian nationalist, the worst of US exceptionalism. He hated Latinos, Jews and blacks, with a special level of hatred for

© The Sydney Morning Herald