The Legacy of Charlie Kirk | The American Spectator

It was November 1963.

In the day, I was… ahhh… younger. But what had happened that Friday, November 22, was not to be forgotten.

Riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas — the limousine with its portable roof down — President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. On the spot, the country was plunged into a four-day — seemingly endless — period of mourning as the young (merely 46) president’s body was returned to Washington. Over the course of those four days, his body lay in a flag-draped casket in both the White House and the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. There was, of course, a church service, this one in Washington’s St. Matthew’s Cathedral. Then came the motorcade to Arlington National Cemetery, where the president was laid to rest in a grave with an “eternal flame” lit graveside by his widow, the first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

But it is what followed those four shocking days that made so much history.

The legacy of the late president did not fade away because of his death. To the contrary. JFK’s legacy grew and grew and grew. An entire generation was so inspired by the late president and his famous inaugural call to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” that they did some version of just that.

All over America, for decades to come, there were young Americans inspired by JFK in both political parties, plunging into politics. They ran for office — federal office, state office, local office. They started appointed careers in government at all levels.

By the time I reached my own tenure as a Reagan White House staff member, President Reagan himself was celebrating JFK’s life and legacy. Speaking at a fundraiser for an endowment for the John F. Kennedy Library in 1985 at the home of Senator Edward Kennedy, President Reagan noted that JFK

 was a patriot who summoned patriotism from the heart of a sated country. It is a matter of pride to me that so many men and women who were inspired by his bracing vision and moved by his call to ‘ask not … serve now’ in the (Reagan) White House doing the business of government.

In fact, I was one of those young Reagan staffers on that day, working away with a portrait of JFK hanging on the office wall of my Reagan White House office.

Which is to say, that was a full 22 years after President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. The JFK legacy was going full speed ahead — in both parties.

This comes to mind while watching the television coverage of the response across both America and the world to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It is abundantly clear from that response from American youth and others that Charlie’s legacy, as with JFK’s legacy before him, is not only not going anywhere, it is instead inspiring young Americans everywhere. (RELATED: Charlie Kirk Must Now Be Made Immortal)

And if history is a guide, Charlie Kirk’s legacy is clearly going to be front and center in American politics and government as those young people flood into the American political scene. They will run for office. They will spend entire careers in not only appointed political office, but, befitting Charlie’s views on the American free market, they will also flood that free market with their own business skills, building businesses and creating jobs for their fellow Americans in their own communities and beyond. (RELATED: Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Is a Turning Point for the USA)

Notably, without question, the words of Charlie’s wife, Erika Kirk, in a heartfelt and loving tribute to her husband as seen here, will similarly inspire generations to come as she goes about the considerable task of rebuilding a life without her husband and the father of her children. When asked where Daddy was, she said she told her three-year-old daughter, Daddy was “on a road trip with Jesus.”

Indeed.

In fact, the group Charlie built from scratch — Turning Point USA — will now grow stronger and bigger as Americans of all ages rally to Charlie’s legacy and make that legacy their own.

And in its own way, there could not be a better and bigger tribute to Charlie Kirk than that.

RIP, Charlie Kirk. RIP.

Onward.

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