In a Straw Dogs kind of way.

Much like Charlie Kirk, Wallace was a charismatic political populist and provocateur who had the capacity to rouse significant and intense passions amongst both his supporters and detractors, and there were times when he appeared to relish the angry divisions he had created and fostered.

Still, regardless of where adults stood on the matter of George Wallace and his race-baiting populist appeals to white Southerners, I remember most people being sincerely shocked and dismayed by the assassination attempt against him.

Obviously, nobody should be shot for holding noxious personal views or expressing them in public. But still, there was a discernable awkwardness amongst those who had truly despised Wallace, which included most members of my family in Southern California.

It was a situation not unlike the one we're experiencing at present: How best does one lament the cruel fate of someone who is so intensely disliked and held in such contempt by so many? Rep. Shirley Chisolm (D-NY), a Black politician who like Wallace had embarked on a quixotic quest for the Democratic nomination that same year, responded by visiting Wallace while he was still in the hospital to express her condolences for his misfortune and wish him well.

Because, like you, I find it distasteful to speak ill of the deceased on the occasion of their passing, I've decided to just shut up about Charlie Kirk. I'm under no illusions about who he was and what he stood for but still, I recognize that resorting to violence as a means to resolve a political or philosophical disagreement is the ultimate of selfish acts.

Nearly ten years after Arthur Bremer left him confined to a wheelchair for life, and after some obvious and no doubt painful soul-searching, George Wallace embarked on an odyssey of personal contrition and redemption. He spoke to congregations of Black churches and members of civil rights organization across the entire state of Alabama and expressed what many who heard him felt to be a sincere and heartfelt mea culpa, taking personal responsibility for his own past hateful conduct and incendiary rhetoric and apologizing to everyone for having hurt so many in his earlier lifetime.

Black voters responded by sweeping Wallace back into the governor's mansion in 1983, where he matched his words of contrition with actual deeds, making more African American political appointments to public office than any other figure in Alabama history, before or since.

George Wallace proved that nobody should ever be dismissed as totally irredeemable, and that people can and do change their ways for the better, regardless of whether it's of their own volition or they were compelled by circumstances to do so.

Personally, I am grieved that Charlie Kirk will never be afforded that opportunity to find his own more productive path forward, to learn from his mistakes or misfortune and grow positively from the experience. It's as much our loss as it is his own.

Between the lines: Federal and state law enforcement officials also are examining leftist groups in Utah to see whether they had knowledge of the alleged shooter's plans beforehand, or if they lent material support to him afterward.

One of those groups eliminated its social media profile after the shooting, Axios has learned.
The motive and political ideology of Robinson, 22, are subjects of intense online debate. Some conservatives have insisted he's an unhinged leftist. Liberals have pushed back by pointing to Robinson's conservative upbringing in Utah.