R.I.P. Charlie Kirk, 1993-2025

Brief Thoughts and Reflections on The Assassination of Charlie Kirk

As everyone is doubtlessly all too well aware, conservative speaker Charlie Kirk was assassinated yesterday while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. The name of the event was “American Comeback Tour," organized by Turning Point USA. He was pronounced dead soon after the shooting. There is ample footage of his shooting, and it is not for the faint of heart.

Those of a hard-right persuasion often derided Kirk, for either being a “grifter,” or being too moderate on a wide range of issues. He was famously excoriated some years ago for propping up a black homosexual at one of his “Turning Point” events. Over the years, however, he developed a bit more of an edge. To his credit he did acknowledge the Great Replacement was real, and even came to denounce so-called gay marriage. He also rightly insisted that the democrats engaged in widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Despite a modest shift to the right, he was nonetheless fairly inclusive.

Whatever misgivings or disagreements one may have, he nonetheless exemplified basic human decency, and his instincts and tendencies on most (but not all) issues were fairly well calibrated. He leaves a loving wife, Erika, a former beauty contestant and devout Christian, and a young son and daughter.

Perhaps the single most defining characteristic of Charlie Kirk is that he believed in democratic norms and believed in engaging with the other side. The Internet is replete with examples of him engaging with hard leftists, particularly of the sort of student who has been brainwashed and deluded by a steady diet of indoctrination and programming. This is demonstrative of his basic optimism about humanity and his basic human decency.

For this basic decency, for this optimism, he was branded a “Nazi,” “a fascist,” “a right-wing extremist.” And yesterday at least one person killed him for it. Certain corners of the Internet are awash with leftist swine celebrating his death. The twitter accounts (@)redditlies and (@)libsoftiktok¹ have been tirelessly documenting this. There are many others.

The murder and assassination of Charlie Kirk will not be without meaning. Far from it. Millions—nay, tens of millions—of people are moved, and they are angry. Perhaps the greatest meaning from this tragedy will be to demonstrate that he was wrong about democratic norms, wrong about the very idea that there can be any sort of civil exchange or dialogue with these people, or that they can be reasoned with. Virginia state assemblyman Nick Freitas stated the matter succinctly.

But we aren't "one people" are we? The truth is we haven't been for some time now, and there is really no point in pretending anymore, if there ever was. We are two very different peoples. We may occupy the same piece of geography, but that is where the similarities seem to abruptly end. . . . It’s not a civil dispute among fellow countrymen. It’s a war between diametrically opposed worldviews which cannot peacefully coexist with one another. One side will win, and one side will lose.

Freitas elaborates further:

I don’t want to “stand in solidarity” with the other side of the aisle. I want to defeat you. I want to defeat the godless ideology that kills babies in the womb, sterilizes confused children, turns our cities into cesspools of degeneracy and lawlessness…and that murdered Charlie Kirk.

As stated earlier, there is a certain irony that the left denounced Kirk with such pejoratives as “Nazi” and “far-right extremist.” He was a mainstream, establishment conservative who believed in democratic norms, who believed the civic norms characteristic of the Reagan era or the 1950s still applied. The truth is these “people” have no idea what “far-right” is, they have no idea what right-wing authoritarianism is, or those stern and drastic measures capable of removing them from the political sphere altogether. Now, however, there is a greater chance they will find out, first hand, and that right good. His assassination and death may disabuse a critical mass of mainstream conservatives and even moderate “swing voters” of that particular sort of naïveté that convinced people like Charlie Kirk that we could talk this through, that we could resolve our differences peacefully and democratically.

Despite whatever greater ramifications and consequences that may ultimately flow from this, it is, most fundamentally, a tragic event and, simply stated, the cold-blooded murder of a decent and kind-hearted man, husband, and father. Unfortunately, given the horrible and irredeemable elements in our midst, he was not the first and certainly will not be the last.

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