Charlie Kirk’s Martyrdom Should Spark a New Conservative Boldness

Charlie, rejoicing with the Heavenly Father, should take comfort in knowing that, in his death, he won the debate for all time. Postmodern morality has been irreversibly exposed.

Photography by Garrick Hoffman

Charlie Kirk’s murder hits close to home. Just five weeks ago, we were laughing and chatting at an event not unlike the one at which he was assassinated. Though we were merely acquaintances, his death feels indescribably heavy. Many of my friends, family, and associates in political life feel the same way. Part of that is the intuitive recognition that a Rubicon has been crossed, that a new era of American politics has dawned. But the sharper devastation is vicarious: we see in Charlie a bit of ourselves—our brothers, neighbors, friends. He was a happy warrior for Christ and an amiable conservative, like millions of us—and for that he was murdered. He was murdered for saying aloud and publicly and eloquently the things we all believe.

None of us match his accomplishments, of course, nor the heights to which he soared. In a mere 31 years, Charlie changed the world with his disciplined energy, the embodiment of American virtue, and the sincerity of his Christian faith. We can aspire to that level of true American greatness, but never quite equal it. Yet as his wife and two children mourn, those of us in politics and media can’t help but imagine what that experience might be like for the ones we love. Charlie was, by any reasonable standard, at the center of the conservative political spectrum—not a moderate or centrist, but squarely aligned with hundreds of millions of Americans and freedom-loving Christians worldwide. Nonetheless, powerful people and public figures vilified him into a caricature of malevolence and extremism. If Charlie was made into a monster worthy of assassination, then any public figure not aligned with leftist orthodoxy must now wonder if they’ll be next—whether they, too, are being hunted by deranged, radicalized fanatics.

In this moment, we must have perfect clarity about who these fanatics are, how they became radicalized, and how society must proceed into this new era of American political life. The first part should now be obvious: leftist political terrorists are the problem. Let there be no whataboutism or “both sides” sophistry. Alienated left-wing extremists twice attempted to murder the current President of the United States. Before that, a Bernie Sanders-loving Rachel Maddow viewer attempted a mass murder in 2017 at a GOP congressional baseball game, leaving Republican Leader Steve Scalise hospitalized. Tucker Carlson, Matt Walsh, and Andy Ngo have faced violence, vandalism, and intimidation from leftist Antifa groups. ICE facilities have been firebombed by leftist agitators. The BLM riots destroyed entire city blocks. The assassination of a health care CEO was broadly celebrated on the Left. An assassination attempt on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was foiled in 2022, a plot doubtless fueled by the Democrat Party’s organized attempt to frame Kavanaugh as an alcoholic gang rapist. Then there are the multiple shootings carried out against Christians by transgender radicals.

We’re still learning about the man who murdered Charlie, but there’s no hiding his motivations, and we can see clearly the faces of the people who are celebrating. For many of us, the countless number of public school employees, government workers, social workers, politicians and other trusted professions posting expressions of joy is heinous, unrecognizable, and alien. We cannot understand or empathize with their callous indifference to human suffering. We barely recognize the instinct to shout down a moment of prayer in Congress. Yesterday, on Sept. 11 of all days, a YouGov poll found 77 percent of Republicans believe it is always unacceptable to feel joy at the death of someone they oppose, while only 38 percent of Democrats share this view. Both numbers are hideous, but the gap is telling.

Indeed, right-wing political violence — or support for political violence on the right — is so rare these days that, here in Maine, leftist social-media personalities have to fantasize about it, promote it, and dream it up themselves. They become publicists for the very thing they claim to hate in the rare event they find it. The supply of right-wing violent extremism is so low that Democratic demagogues hallucinate it in normal men and women with mainstream beliefs. They must mentally trick themselves and their followers into believing that speech with which they disagree is violence. For these demagogues, the very same beliefs that Barack Obama or Bill Clinton held when they were elected president are now the hallmarks of a “fascist.”

That word has lost all meaning, of course, except as a method for the Left to designate targets: the “fascist” is worthy of disrespect, intimidation, harassment, vandalism, violence, even murder. You don’t have to listen to the “fascist,” nor should he have the right to speak. And because elected progressives and media personalities have decided that anyone who slightly deviates from left-wing orthodoxy can be tarred as a fascist, they’ve effectively given themselves and their sycophantic followers license to dehumanize their entire political opposition. Leftist leaders have been declaring open season on right-of-center commentators and politicians for more than a decade. At the same time, they’ve pumped them full of hateful rhetoric and mind-altering drugs, both recreational and prescription. Now America is reaping that poisoned fruit.

Ironically, it was a left-wing Daily Kos blogger who popularized the term “stochastic terrorism,” which accurately captures how Democrats and leftists have weaponized mass media and political rhetoric. That blogger was making the now-debunked case that the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords was indirectly spurred by right-wing rhetoric from the likes of Rush Limbaugh. Yet the term seems fitting for the current moment. Consider the language used by former President Joe Biden, or rather, the people controlling his social media:

“Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy…Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation. He's a threat to our freedom. He's a threat to our democracy. He's literally a threat to everything America stands for… Donald Trump is the greatest threat to our democracy… You don’t have to agree with me on everything to know MAGA extremism is a threat to this country… Trump poses many threats to our country: The right to choose, civil rights, voting rights, and America’s standing in the world. But the greatest threat he poses is to our democracy… I wish I could say the threat to our democracy ended with our victory in 2020, but it didn’t. Our democracy is still at stake… Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are a threat to the very soul of this country.”

Yes, the individual who organized and carried out this evil deed is ultimately responsible for pulling the trigger. But the source of the ideas he transcribed onto bullet casings is indisputable. There is no question that the extreme rhetoric leftists have adopted as a second language, coupled with increasingly siloed information echo chambers, has produced a wrathful fringe. Go look at BlueSky, the social platform far-left radicals colonized to escape the free speech Elon Musk brought to X/Twitter. It’s filled with leftists practically orgasming with glee at Kirk’s death and naming the next conservative they’d like to see murdered. Liberal politicians casually toss around “threat to our democracy” and “existential threat” without considering that their demented followers might take them seriously.

The leftist rage machine Democrats have built—fueled by money from ideologically ruthless billionaires—was on display last week in Searsport, Maine, where Republican Sen. Susan Collins attended a ribbon-cutting. Listen to those videos. Look at those images. Can you even comprehend the anger these men and women feel for Susan Collins? I can’t. I can’t imagine being that angry at any politician, regardless of how far apart our opinions are. Yet there’s a room full of rage, whipped into a frothy fervor of hate over… what? Whatever was fed to them by billionaire-funded propagandists in order to weaponize their rage. That’s what.

Much like Kirk devoted his activism to civil discourse and open debate, Collins’ career personifies bipartisanship, compromise, and moderation. Yet the Democrat rage machine has succeeded in labeling even her a fascist worthy of harassment, derision, and vitriol. These enraged leftists—many of them Facebook-addicted baby boomers—are part of a deliberate, organized political structure. It’s time for Maine Democrats to be held accountable for the monsters they’ve created. It’s time for their leaders, whoever they might be, to present a concrete strategy to de-radicalize these fringe elements before it’s too late. So far, they seem to be embracing the rage machine for political gain. President Trump is entirely right to call for a RICO investigation into the dark forces weaponizing left-wing rage in America.

In hindsight, it’s a miracle one of those radicalized, socially isolated Democrats didn’t bring a gun to the ribbon-cutting and murder a U.S. senator. Sadly, that’s not an assumption Collins can make in the post-Charlie Kirk era. Collins—like any other Republican or conservative in this state or elsewhere—will always have to wonder. Already there is a chilling effect from this act of left-wing political terrorism. Candidates from statewide office down to town council seats are wondering whether they’ll be the next victim of some unhinged leftist persuaded by Democrat public figures that everyone to the right of Angus King is the newest incarnation of Adolf Hitler.

So what comes next?

Now that this violent leftist extremism has metastasized into an intolerable cultural cancer, it must be confronted and neutralized. It’s been tolerated and enabled for too long.

In the past 24 hours, I’ve talked with dozens of conservatives in the media, elected officials, and private citizens from Maine and across the country. There is a palpable sense of anger and a desire for vengeance. I find myself oscillating between anger at what the Left has done to Charlie and the knowledge that embracing that anger would discredit his legacy. I see the commentators who say, “Charlie tried to talk it out peacefully, and they killed him.” I get that. I really do. But the cowardly act of an assassin doesn’t mean Charlie was wrong to pursue peaceful dialogue and de-radicalization.

At the same time, this new era calls for boldness and action. Conservatives, in all facets of American life, must no longer tiptoe and hide. We are not the minority—we never have been—and conservative, biblically rooted morality is superior to the moral relativism and nihilism of the left. That’s the truth. We should be unafraid to proclaim it. The survival of our society depends on it. We must stop kowtowing to the annoying zealots on the Left and catering to their “microaggressions,” made-up offenses, and pretend sense of victimhood. We can no longer entertain the notion that there is even a hint of equivalency between the morality of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the fake moral codes leftists reinvent every 15 minutes on Reddit threads or college campuses.

The new spirit of boldness conservatives must adopt is perhaps best personified in Vice President J.D. Vance’s attitude toward preening leftists with their fake sense of intellectual or moral superiority. “I don't really care, Margaret,” he famously quipped to some tut-tutting liberal reporter. “I don’t give a shit what you call it,” he recently replied to some hectoring social-media influencer. That’s the same energy every man and woman must summon in the face of screechy activists who hurl terms like “fascist” or “racist” to shut down debate, who threaten negative Google reviews to scare business owners—or whatever pathetic power tactics leftists have tried to wield against normal Americans for too long. Enough.

Charlie, rejoicing with the Heavenly Father, should take comfort in knowing that, in his death, he won the debate for all time. Postmodern morality has been irreversibly exposed, not only by the cowardly act itself but by the gleeful and ambivalent responses of Charlie’s enemies. What we’re witnessing now is the death of the political movement that built its foundation on this poisonous ground of nihilism and moral relativism. The ugly truth has been laid bare. Normal Americans are horrified by what they’ve seen from some of their colleagues and neighbors. Failing to defeat him in intellectual discourse, they murdered him. Now, his martyrdom has so brightly illuminated the dark cultural sickness infecting the left that it will inevitably wither.

The time for caring what these degenerate leftists think is over. The time to reassert conservative values and conservative power has begun. This project must start with lovingly shepherding and coaching a generation of young men and women who just witnessed an intellectual icon and role model savagely murdered. They will be angry. They should be angry. If you’re not angry or deeply saddened, reflect on how you’ve become so divorced from the human experience that your soul has forgotten how to shudder. But only peaceful expressions of our political values and virtues, expressions that come from love and not anger, will save this country from the demons who want to tear it apart.

Today, we mourn.

Tomorrow, we win.