What We Have Lost: The Assassination of Charlie Kirk

Like millions of others, I opened my X account yesterday afternoon and saw videos filling my feed that I will never be able to forget. First, a familiar scene: Charlie Kirk, conservative activist, sitting behind a table on a college campus with his microphone. I thought it was another one of those ubiquitous clips of Kirk engaging a college student on politics, faith, culture. Then a single crack, Kirk slumped to the side, there was blood, so much blood, people screaming. I felt myself grow physically cold. My first thought was that it couldn’t be real.

As the entire world already knows, it was. Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, 31-year-old husband and father of two beautiful children, political activist, commentator, and a historical figure in his own right, was assassinated on a college campus while doing what he did best: civilly engaging with those he disagreed with. As Ezra Klein, a progressive columnist, wrote in the New York Times:

You can dislike much of what Kirk believed and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion. When the left thought its hold on the hearts and minds of college students was nearly absolute, Kirk showed up again and again to break it. Slowly, then all at once, he did. College-age voters shifted sharply to the right in the 2024 election.

Kirk, strangely, had become one of America’s most popular and public advocates for Christianity over the past decade. He constantly urged people to seek God, even on campuses, even to those he knew would sneer. He did not merely market MAGA; he urged his generation to get married, have children, and go to church. He was the most famous political activist of his generation, and that made him one of the most prominent pro-life advocates, as well. I and many others suspected that he was one of the pro-life voices working behind the scenes urging the Trump team to stand up for the unborn as many MAGA figures wavered in the post-Roe era.

Over the last several years, I came to appreciate Charlie Kirk more and more. While some notable figures on the MAGA Right lurched into viral and venal conspiracies, Kirk did not. In fact, he consistently and repeatedly repudiated these trends, especially Jew-hatred. He was more than capable of impassioned speeches, but what so often set him apart was that he was a genuinely happy warrior who did not succumb to bitterness or anger. He was not merely attempting algorithmic audience capture; he was trying, with staggering success, to capture a generation. With his grotesque, public execution, I fear not just for America, but for the Right. The space he has left feels very, very empty.

Kirk’s obvious happiness and energy came, in part, from a clean conscience. Several of his conservative colleagues have already noted that unlike so many in the scandal-ridden world of political media, Kirk practiced what he preached. He was a faithful husband and a doting father who lived a life defined by virtue both publicly and privately. The private text messages from Kirk being posted online over the last 24 hours all show him encouraging people, sending them Bible verses, reminding them of what was important. He was not just a good warrior, he was a good man. That, too, set him apart.

The response to his death from many on the Left has revealed once again the cancerous hatred that has metastasized in America’s body politic. I read only a few comments, and thought of Mother Teresa’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “For if a mother can murder her own child in her own womb, what is left for you and for me to kill each other?” Ultimately, you cannot have war in the womb and peace on the streets. As Samuel D. James has already so eloquently written, the murder of this young father once again highlights the horrifying consequences of a post-Christian society.

The killing of Charlie Kirk feels like one of those black swan events that constitutes a before-and-after moment. I have been on many major American college campuses to do pro-life displays; I’ve stood next to the open mic with over a thousand angry protestors crowding the display. Even when hostility seethed below the surface, it never felt genuinely dangerous. With one bullet, the era of open discourse on campus feels utterly transformed. Kirk’s murder is already being compared to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.; a figurehead cut down for both his convictions and his effectiveness. His death feels like a turning point for America. I pray that it will be for the better.