We are appalled at the murder of Charlie Kirk. He was a decent man, a father and husband, a patriot, a Christian, and a force to be reckoned with in opposing the radical left on campus. That reckoning came today when someone at a rally at Utah Valley University shot him in the neck.
I met him years ago when he was meditating the creation of Turning Point USA, and was seeking counsel from organizations that were already established in the work of preserving liberal education against the efforts of left-wing activists to subvert higher education. Charlie's idea was to turn some of the techniques of leftist organizing against the left. That was a lane that was wide open, at least since the days that the former Marxists Peter Collier and David Horowitz published their flamboyant newspaper, Heterodoxy. Charlie's ambitions, however, went beyond satirizing the left. He saw the possibility of building a nationwide movement of campus activists on the right.
We at NAS kept our distance, though sometimes with grudging admiration for Charlie's success in reviving the spirit of students who were subject to cancellation campaigns and who seldom saw any support for their free speech from campus authorities. Turning Point USA volunteers often saw their literature trashed and their tables overturned. They were occasionally assaulted by leftist bullies. Charlie stood up for those volunteers and they stood up for him.
We have no details yet of who shot him or why. Charlie had become friends with President Trump, which no doubt increased his value as a target of political violence. In April 2017, the comedian Kathy Griffin attempted to earn applause by posing with a prop made to look like Trump's severed head. Two months later, a disgruntled Democrat, James T. Hodgkinson, opened fire on Republican members of Congress and their staff during a baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, gravely injuring U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise. Since then, the left's rhetoric of violence has only intensified and materialized into two attempted assassinations. President Trump is now protected by the Secret Service, or at least better protected than he was last year. Someone like Charlie Kirk had no such cover. He may have been the assassin's stand-in for the President.
Charlie certainly is a martyr for all of us who believe that America has indulged far too much with people who have delusions of grandeur and a willingness to deploy violence to score political points. This is a cultural affinity that cannot be fixed by law, though proper law enforcement would help. What we really need is what Charlie fought for: education that restores American faith and values. He truly gave his life for that cause.
Photo of Charlie Kirk by Gage Skidmore // CC BY-SA 2.0
