I recently watched Netlfix’s excellent series, “The Bombing of Pan Am 103.” This series has a 100% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, likely due to its non-ideological, gripping, and sensitively-told dramatization of the bombing of a plane traveling from London to New York in 1988. A suitcase on Pan Am 103 containing a radio bomb killed all 259 people on the plane plus 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland. After over a decade of investigations by law enforcement in England, Scotland, and the United States, two alleged members of the intelligence service in Libya were tried for this mass murder. Watching as a law professor, I noted the differences between this terrorist attack and the meticulous collection of evidence and arduous process to ensure guilt before these men could be convicted of a crime.

The bombing of Pan Am 103 can be designated a terrorist attack because it involves the purposeful targeting of civilians to effectuate a political aim — not a targeting of military assets, or a targeting of civilian infrastructure used as military assets, with unintended or collateral civilian casualties. The response to this terrorist attack, while surely imperfect, demonstrated important rule of law principles, including a lengthy investigation, counsel provided for the defendants, a trial accessible by the public, and efforts to prevent witness intimidation (some witnesses had to testify behind bulletproof glass). Ultimately, one of the men was deemed not guilty. The other, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who had lied about not having a false passport that he used to travel under a fake name to place the bomb in a suitcase in Malta, was convicted by three Scottish judges. (Not everyone believes he is guilty, or that the evidence was sufficient.)

Of course, no system is without major deficiencies. The FBI at first investigated a Pan Am 103 passenger, who emigrated to the United States with his parents from Lebanon, who was entirely innocent. His name was cleared, but the reputational damage to his grieving family in the United States remained.

Meanwhile, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi eventually returned to Libya to what many called “a hero’s welcome” and a cheering crowd. I have long associated the cheering and celebrations of civilian casualties with places, like Libya under Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, that do not respect the rights we cherish here, including due process and freedom of speech.

I fear we are becoming the sort of place where people celebrate the death of their political enemies, including civilians killed simply for exercising freedom of speech. I fear we are becoming a place where civilians are purposely targeted for their views, or people are killed without trial for behaviors the public has condemned.

Perhaps I am too earnest or too literal, but the jokes about the murder of Charlie Kirk, including jokes by those who style themselves as intellectuals, profoundly concern me. The thing I love most about this country is our robust First Amendment, which (although imperfect) guarantees us the right to speak freely no matter your views. It seems quite obvious that we do not want to become a society (and many exist) where people are killed for expressing objectionable views, creating objectionable art, or decrying things that members of the public find sacred or above scrutiny. The line between speech and violence is the line of freedom.

There are many people who, on a daily basis, share views – on a variety of subjects to extremely large audiences – that I find distasteful, illogical, immoral, wrongheaded, politically despicable, or even dangerous to me personally. I hope these people are shielded from violence, just as I hope people who agree with me and people who disagree but have totally reasonable and sensible views are shielded from violence. What is much more dangerous to me than any of their views is a United States where we condone the murder of people for their speech.

It is hard for me to understand celebration of the murders of Charlie Kirk, or Brian Thompson, or any other figure where people have eminently reasonable, serious objections, as anything other than failures of systemic thinking, principle, and humility. We have lost the ability or the desire to abstract away from people’s glee.  The deaths of those that many believe to be participating in oppression should trigger an appreciation of the more abstract principle that protects against systemic oppression – the principle that we do not resolve political disputes with tribal violence.

The celebrations of public assassinations of politically divisive people are also, of course, protected speech. I will defend people’s right to make the most distasteful (and sure, sometimes clever) jokes free from violence. It all just seems so shortsighted. Radicalization in the face of a flawed system seems to result from those entirely insulated from the dangers of a society that cheers death, tolerates terrorism over due process, and conflates speech and violence.

I remember 9/11 vividly. People working on a house near my off-campus place were listening to the radio, so my roomies and I heard enough to wake up and turn the television on to see a plane hit the second tower.  I remember still going to biology class, which proceeded as normal, and then going to lab before realizing that I should go home.  This was a much bigger horror than I had initially realized because the towers had come down.  I remember a scared friend trying to reach his father, who might have been in the Pentagon.  I remember my own father, stuck at airports.  I remember my grandmother, who lived in the Lower East side and saw the Twin Towers out of her window, thinking we were at war.  I remember the 911 calls of people who worked above where the planes crashed, who knew they were going to die.  I thought about their last moments, and the moments of those who jumped.  I remember the outstanding first responders and the pride and sadness I felt knowing the most heroic and the best of us are the ones who have to sacrifice.  I remember that a plane flew over me while walking around my college campus in Boston, and I wondered if that plane would crash down on me. I remember the beautiful stories of friendship and the sacred stories of people coming together.

I remember being told that large parts of the world thought “the Jews” did 9/11, and believing that was true in places where they don’t have free speech or information circulating sufficiently, yet not seeing real evidence of these conspiracies until recently. I remember that my parents lived in the same area as the “let’s roll” hero from United Airlines Flight 93. I remember the anguish of the families of people affected.  I remember the companies that lost most of their employees. I remember wondering, naively, why anyone would hate the janitor and the trader and the CEO and the restaurant employee and the travelers and the police and the firefighters who all died together on that day. I remember learning why, and learning that the world is both simpler and more complex than I had realized. I remember the love those on the planes sent to their families. I hope that sort of love still exists today, in a much different world.

I remember. I hope we remain a society that largely celebrates life over death and rule of law over violence.