Letters

I was born in Dublin in 1960 and grew up watching Northern Ireland tear itself apart.

Once violence was unleashed, it became the language of politics. Over three decades, more than 3,500 people were murdered before peace was finally secured through the Good Friday Agreement. To put that in perspective, adjusted for population, it would be the equivalent of over one million Americans murdered.

The compromises reached then were not so different from what might have been negotiated years earlier — except they came after decades of trauma.

That is why the murder of Charlie Kirk today horrifies me. I vehemently disagreed with his politics — but assassination is not politics; it is its destruction.

A young husband and father was exercising his First Amendment right to speak when he was murdered. When we run out of words and let violence take over, moderates are silenced, extremists are empowered, and democracy itself is poisoned.

America is walking a dangerous path. Our divisions — political, cultural and social — mirror in troubling ways the sectarian rifts I watched consume Northern Ireland. If we normalize violence, we will discover, as we did in Ireland, that once the genie is out of the bottle, it does not go back in.

Here in Sag Harbor, we are not immune. We set the tone for how we speak, how we disagree, and how we treat our neighbors. Community leaders, schools, and local papers have a responsibility to foster dialogue that is respectful, not destructive.

We must prove that passionate disagreement can coexist with civility.

Aidan Corish

Sag Harbor

Corish is a member of the Sag Harbor Village Board — Ed.