What Charlie Kirk’s Murder Really Means | The American Spectator

I have not known what to say in light of Charlie Kirk’s death. I wish I could say I am so enlightened and spiritually “on the path” that my first reaction to the news was to turn to my rosary beads, but my reaction was less pious. I prayed, yes, but I was angry during my prayer. Mostly, I am in shock and continually having to remind myself that he is dead.

Kirk’s death will have an outsized impact. Of course, we cannot ignore the real familial cost: the two children without a father, the wife without a husband. But Kirk’s murder was seismic precisely because Charlie was ordinary, not extraordinary. He did not have fringe opinions. In fact, many Americans share his worldview: that men and women are different, that killing babies is murder, and that the government is not to be trusted.

The fact that an ordinary conservative was assassinated has led many of us to give up hope that the “other side” can be reasoned with. “Charlie was one of the last true believers in that idea, and we saw what happened to him,” we think. This reaction is not rational, but it is understandable, especially if you have had the misfortune of reading the hateful rhetoric that is being spouted by bots and our brothers and sisters in the wake of Charlie’s death. (RELATED: Demons and Demonization)

A more reasoned response I saw to Charlie’s assassination was that, now, “It’s Christ or chaos.” It is no coincidence that all of the recent mass shooters have been wholly without Christ. But it’s not just “Christ or chaos,” it’s Christianity (specifically Catholicism) or nihilism. It’s Aristotle or Nietzsche. Aquinas or Foucault. What we saw with Charlie’s murder is that the bad ideas of the 1700s (e.g., the “Enlightenment,” Cartesian philosophy, and the French Revolution) and the 1970s (e.g., critical theory, anything written by Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, or Michel Foucault) are coming home to roost, especially in listless, community-less young people. (RELATED: Charlie Kirk Is a Casualty of the Cultural Counterrevolution)

I am a member of Generation Z, the same generation as Charlie’s shooter. Our generation tends to be fatalistic, and an undercurrent of nihilism is inherent to our sense of humor. We have been taught our whole lives — by experience and by those who proclaim that America is systemically racist, homophobic, and built for the rich — that our lives are not in our control. Numerous economic crises in our short lives have driven this point home, along with our lack of close social ties that have been brought about by our liberal, technocratic state. (RELATED: Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Exposes a Generation in Crisis)

In a word, we “free agents” are not free at all. We are alienated from ourselves, our bodies, and each other. This alienation and division is the fertile soil that the Devil and his minions need to foster a new scaffold of “moral” systems within us. Because the truth is that all of us desperately want moral issues to be black and white. That is why there is a concurrent resurgence: One group of young people seeks traditional forms of Christianity, while another seeks refuge in rigid, atheistic, leftist politics. 

You can see this divide on display in the Israel–Palestine debate. When presented with the same photos and evidence, two members of Gen Z can see wildly different things. But the left-wing radical Gen Zer has one guiding principle: “Supporting the oppressed is good, and since I am a good person, I must support the oppressed. Anyone who does not support the oppressed is therefore a bad person and can be eliminated.”

It is this stark, dichotomous thinking that got Charlie killed. “Charlie Kirk is bad, evil even, because he does not agree with me, a good person, on everything.” If you or I disagree — like Charlie did — with the Omnicause that has coalesced on the Left since 2015, we also are bad people trying to “destroy democracy and the environment,” fascists, Nazis, or literally Hitler. And what did we do with Nazis? We killed them.

What the shooter did this week was attempt to assert his Nietzschean will to power against a “fascist.” He declared with one bullet what many of us have already suspected: Big-L Liberalism is no longer working in America, or anywhere else. The once-roaring flame held by Lady Liberty has dwindled to embers. The fuel that was once provided by traditional family structures and moral systems no longer holds sway. Instead of freeing us, Liberalism has enabled the never-ending expansion of the state and its consumerist markets, all run by geriatrics who feel no sense of duty to their children.

Next year marks the 250th anniversary of our liberal country’s founding. Two hundred fifty years is as good a time as any to right this ship. I still have hope we can. C. S. Lewis said the true progressive is the man who, when he realizes he is going down the wrong path, turns around. And we can turn around. But we have to start now. Surveys reveal that young people across the political spectrum are only becoming more tolerant of political violence, not less.

Here are our options. We can either stoop to the violence of our enemies or continue using Charlie’s peaceful approach. There are camps on the right calling for both options. This is why we need to loudly assert the fact that the most effective revolutions in history were characterized by nonviolence. Catholic apologist Trent Horn had this to say: “Our Lord was the victim of a political assassination, but it did not invalidate his nonviolent approach.”

I have seen others say that the solution is more state power. More intervention. But that is how we got into this mess. Our last Civil War was fought over slavery, yes, but also over how much authority the wig-wearers in Washington could exert over the South. Washington won, and thus began the slow march to where we are today: fatherless homes, hollowed communities, thin ties. Let’s not make the same mistake we did post-9/11 with the Patriot Act. We do not need to go back to the 1960s, either. Another COINTELPRO will only make things worse.

Federal intervention, even the dismantling of extremist groups, will not restore the brotherhood that we have lost. Social media and being “chronically online” (as most of these mass shooters are) have already thinned out the ties we currently have. These platforms turn us into abrasive memelords who can’t trust each other. The reason the COVID pandemic was so destabilizing was that it exposed this fact. It showed us that many of our fellow Americans lived in an alternate reality — one where the experts were always right, masks worked, vaccines stopped transmission, school closures were “good for children,” and narcing on your neighbors was morally upright. 

Charlie Kirk’s death is a similar revelation. The number of men and women celebrating his death makes every one of us — Right and Left — less able to trust our fellow citizens. We now have no idea if we’re talking to a ghoul or a person who is real. Maybe we were in an illusion 20 years ago about this, but I don’t think so. My elementary school was safe; you could ask a stranger for directions, and you could rely on a random man to protect you from a predatory one.

Now, everyone is on their own. And humans, who are inherently tribal, cannot survive this way. Cue the absolute avalanche of comments across the internet of people saying that they are going to church for the first time in 20 years due to Charlie Kirk’s death. This is not necessarily because Charlie Kirk was a Christian. No, it’s because now we know we’re fighting against spiritual powers. We know we cannot navigate this world alone. We need to be around people who believe in something, anything that is higher than politics and themselves. And we can find this higher thing in the sanctuary of a church.

Americans finding faith again is the only thing that can recreate the bedrock of this country. It is the most important piece of our history that we’ve lost, as Charlie himself realized over time. But while we find our faith, we also need to reassert basic rules in the marketplace of ideas. Shaming those who celebrate Kirk’s murder is a great place to start.

Shaming and shunning are not inherently evil acts. They are a sign that something you have said or done is so monstrous, so heinous, that you are no longer a good-faith actor with whom we have to verbally spar. This does not mean we shout down our opponents, or worse, silence them through violence. It means we fight bad speech with more speech, better speech. The terrorist who shot Charlie wants to end the conversation entirely. He will not be successful.

Abortion, COVID, the events of October 7, 2023, and the death of Charlie Kirk have laid bare many things about people we thought we once knew. It has made the Jews who traded Jesus for the revolutionary–murderer Barabbas look like sane, rational individuals. We shouldn’t forget these things we have learned about our friends and family, but we must try to forgive and pray for them, as they are clearly lost and spiritually bankrupt. 

At the end of the day, we can only control ourselves. So get baptized and get to know Jesus, His Father, and the Holy Spirit. Speak up in your home, at work, at church, and online. And for God’s sake, don’t compromise your values. The time of putting your pronouns in your bio is over. Because, at the end of the day, I am Charlie, and so are you.

READ MORE:

The Blood of the Martyrs: Charlie Kirk’s Witness and Movement

 It’s Charlie Kirk’s America Now

The Trigger on Charlie Kirk’s Slow-Motion Assassination Was Pulled Before His Birth