The murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk is one of those rare events that make a society pause to wonder if it has crossed a terrible threshold. The killing seemed a cardinal moment of horror that makes you remember where you were when you heard the news.
On the fatal day, Sept. 10, people found themselves hesitantly reaching back across decades for comparison to 1968 when Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were cut down by assassins.
That is not to say Kirk was a man whose impact was or will be comparable to that of MLK or RFK, or that he will with any certainty take a similar place in the ranks of political sainthood. But one cannot know for sure because it’s only been two weeks since he was killed, not half a century, during which rough edges and controversies can be smoothed away to leave an iconic portrait.
Kirk and the manner of his departure from this Earth may be responsible for many young Americans returning to Christian faith and for a greater number of them trending back toward conservatism and the principles and values that made this nation great. One does not know yet how this ends.
In an outpouring of dismay at the brutality and cynicism of Kirk’s slaying, thousands of university students are eager to start Turning Point USA chapters on their campuses. The murder revealed the dangerous depth to which our political culture has sunk, but it also sparked a desire in many young hearts to change course and do something about it.
On the flip side, however, Kirk’s death is also a stinging reminder of the Left’s relentlessness in this fight. It is determined not to let any event, no matter how appalling, deflect it from its generations-long undertaking to obliterate the principles on which America was founded. Many celebrated Kirk’s end and ruthlessly defamed his memory. By responding to his murder with instant libels, they showed that they are as determined as ever, perhaps more than ever. Not a second passed after Kirk’s death before the most militant of them started to trash him. He had suddenly elevated and had a higher profile, so they had to drag him down. The aim was clearly to seize the narrative and prevent it from being framed by those who knew, admired, and even loved the man.
The day after he was killed, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who disgraces Congress every day she is in it, dismissed those who praise Kirk for civil debate as “full of s***” and accused him of “hateful rhetoric.”
You expect some flashes of poor judgment from a man who has come to prominence in his early 20s, and it is true that Kirk occasionally spoke hotly and inappropriately. But these were exceptions, not the norm, and only a cynic with a determined agenda to defame him would refuse to recognize that Kirk had in recent years become a deeply impressive man, influential for good reason. Omar traduced him because she knows his death could become a catalyst that turns people away from the racial grievance politics she peddles.
Her fellow “Squad” member, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), characterized Kirk as “ignorant and uneducated,” whereas, in truth, the most evident qualities of his civilized discussions with students everywhere were his knowledge and his ability to marshal facts to meet and overcome the arguments of those who, like Ocasio-Cortez, rely on hot rhetoric.
The nastiest reaction came naturally from the far Left, which instantly compared Kirk to Horst Wessel, a young Nazi whose murder was exploited by Hitler and Goebbels to depict him as a martyr. With this calumny, those who want to stifle Kirk’s legacy depict both the man and those who lead the movement of which he was a part as fascists.
Leftist pushback against any narrative that contradicts their own is now instant in a way that it used not to be. It did not allow a dignified period of reflection after Kirk’s murder, for it was determined to keep up the momentum of its assault against President Donald Trump’s administration in particular, and against conservatism and Christianity more widely.
The Left’s victim blaming was much slower to get underway a generation ago, after Sept. 11, 2001. Back then, it took several weeks after the Islamist terrorists’ shattering attacks on New York and Washington before the leftist alliance decided that the greatest danger was posed not by terrorists but by Islamophobia.
But there was no such delay two years ago, after Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s equivalent of 9/11. It took less than a day before Harvard students said Israel was “entirely” to blame for the Hamas terrorist attacks in which Jews were murdered and tortured, beheaded, burned, raped, kidnapped, and beaten.
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Those horrific events, Sept. 11 and Oct. 7, were, of course, much bigger than the Kirk assassination. But like it, they were moments when good people stop deliberately and contemplate what they have just seen. They reflect on its meaning, how it could have happened, and what its long-term ramifications will be. That is the natural reaction of people who, despite everything, are not indifferent or inured to the horrors of political murder.
But today’s Left does not pause, does not reflect, and it does not want you to either. It knows that reflection and thought expose it for the fraudulent and destructive force that it is. If events make decent people start thinking about what has gone so wrong, the leaders of the Left don’t waste a second before telling you that your civilization brought it on itself.