Charlie Kirk and My Friend From Boy Scouts | The American Spectator

Like every other conservative I know, I spent Wednesday afternoon vacillating between stunned shock and explosive rage. When I wasn’t consoling myself that surely I hadn’t just seen conservative superstar Charlie Kirk get shot, I was resisting with all my being the urge to “fedpost,” as the kids say. (RELATED: Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Is a Turning Point for the USA)

Then, I got an Instagram message from my friend.

Out of respect for the affection we once shared, I will not name him here. He and I were in Boy Scouts long ago — I came to his Eagle Scout ceremony and he to mine, from my recollection. Unlike many of the older scouts, he made an effort to treat those junior to him as peers instead of subordinates. Along with others, he taught me how to camp, how to hike, how to stand around a fire and tell stupid stories. How to play German lookout — one Scout would stand on a table or rock with a big flashlight and scan the forest around him. If he got the flashlight on you and described an article of clothing you had (red shirt!), you were out and had to go back to the starting point. Whoever reached the lookout first would win. 

As so often happens, you lose track of all but the best of your friends when you go off to college. It wasn’t until 2023 that he reached out to me to ask to have dinner. He knew I worked in conservative movement politics (back then, as a field representative for the Leadership Institute), and I quickly deduced that he wanted to pick my brain since I “was one of the smart ones.” We’d talk intermittently after that — sometimes small talk, but politics was never far from the surface. After Trump’s inauguration, he reached out and acknowledged that he had been wrong about who would win the election, and wanted to know what my thoughts and hopes were for the administration.

There was some small part of me that wasn’t surprised when he responded to my Instagram story — like everyone else on the right, a picture mourning Kirk — with a wilted rose. He had already been on my mind because he had messaged me the day prior about something unrelated, but I immediately got a bad feeling. I would like to relay our subsequent conversation verbatim:

Me: [Name], I’ve been busy today but I am curious, what do you think of what happened today

Friend: It sounds like a busy day. It’d be TOS, I’d prefer to talk on the phone.

But I’d enjoy your perspective too.

But to put simply, we are in an era where the 2A is essential for the civilians to show resistance to the primary force that’s governing our nation. 

Especially when they’re coming for trans folks guns.

If the gov’t assassinated Kirk. I’m against it, but Kirk was a mouth piece for the administration.

Me: [Name], I don’t mean to accuse you of anything or assume you support things that you don’t. But before I talk to you any further I need to know now: do you think what happened to Charlie Kirk was in any way justified?

Friend: I don’t think Charlie Kirk’s ideals or ideology should be platformed.

Does that mean I believe he should be dead? I don’t believe in that. 

I don’t know the justifications of the person pulling the trigger.

I have no power though, so it’s whatever

Me: [Name], Charlie Kirk’s ideals and ideology are largely mine. I’m a member of the conservative movement too. I’m just less famous. If you’d make excuses and prevaricate about his murder, you’d do the same if somebody killed me

Friend: I would. And I’m sorry. But that’s politics, business as becoming normal.

It’s scary, and I care about you. I’d say get out.

Me: Why would I take anything you have to say seriously when you just admitted you’d make excuses if somebody murdered me

Friend: I’ve made no excuses.

If you speak the crowd may respond.

Me: Respond with murder?

Friend: Or you could nuke the entire event. But then you aren’t a part of the crowd

It can be protest, but has that worked?

Me: Charlie was a moderate. He was about debate and persuasion. He wanted us to sort things out through the democratic process and without violence, because that’s the point of democracy

Friend: I don’t believe we live in a democracy anymore

Me: Your “protests” have worked because normal people can see you’re delusion psychos who make excuses for murder

Friend: Due to executive theory

Me: People voted for Trump. You may not like it, but they did

Friend: I agree they did

This is what this country want

It’s what the country gets

I’m an accelerationist ex-Nazi turned libertarian socialist.

So I’m sorry if my view point isn’t moderate

This is why I preferred this to be on the phone

I’m scared of you

Me: Frankly [Name], the fact you would come into my DMs and admit that you would make excuses for my murder is fucking insane to me. Especially when I’ve been nothing but civil to you. I don’t feel safe having you anywhere near my life. Please never contact me again.

Friend: Understood. I took it as a philosophical argument. I do truly wish you no harm. 

I won’t reach out any longer.

What was so striking about this interaction was the banality of my friend’s composure. “Yeah, sure, I’d have mixed feelings if you were killed, but let’s just carry on talking.” This matters not because I happen to have been friends with one lunatic — he wasn’t even the only one I saw justify Kirk’s murder. It matters because every conservative knows people like this. People that you know, in real life, who are posting about how Kirk deserved to be murdered in front of his wife and children because of the things he believed. People who know you believe those same things. People who know that you’ll see those posts, and decide to post them anyway.

How do you live with that? How do you share a country with that?

Candidly, if I had an answer to that, I’d probably be doing something more important than writing for The American Spectator, as worthy a publication as we are.

Death is a hard thing to accept. I grieve most of all for Charlie and his family; it goes without saying. But I also grieve for my friend. For the boy I knew, not the creature he grew up to be.

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