I woke up this morning hoping that yesterday was a bad dream.
Unfortunately, this is our world. A conservative leader who inspired millions of young people to step into the arena was shot dead on a college campus yesterday afternoon, and his two young children will grow up never knowing their father.
Watch Michael Knowles’ wonderful tribute to Charlie Kirk, who he says would undoubtedly have been elected president someday:
The half-hearted statements issued by Democratic leaders following Kirk’s assassination are drowned out by mainstream leftists across the country who either blame Kirk for being shot, calling him hateful and controversial, or outright celebrate his death. Some who have tried to cover themselves after the shooting still have social-media posts from just a few weeks ago explicitly calling for killing Kirk and other conservatives.
This is not a moment for kumbaya, for Republicans and Democrats to sing “God Bless America” together on the Capitol steps. This is not a moment to condemn “both sides” for political violence.
This is a clarifying moment in American history. Over the past month we have watched a transgender terrorist murder Catholic schoolchildren, a career criminal casually stab a young woman in the throat on public transit, and now the preeminent voice of the conservative movement assassinated in broad daylight.
We know who the enemies of freedom and social order are. We’ve known all along. Those political and media figures who call Christians and conservatives “Nazis,” “fascists,” and “enemies of democracy” share responsibility for what happened yesterday. Every judge who let a violent criminal go free because of the color of his skin, every elected official who told their supporters to harass their opponents, every teacher who taught their students to hate—all share responsibility for where we are today.
Idaho GOP chair Dorothy Moon drew a connection between 9/11 and what happened yesterday:
Just like 9/11, I believe we will look back on this week as a turning point in American history. Just as 9/11 was a wake-up call to the threat of Islamic terrorism, September 10, 2025, should be a wake-up call to the threat of left-wing political violence.
It’s darkly poetic that an 18-year-old Charlie Kirk named his organization “Turning Point USA.” Founded in the lead-up to President Barack Obama’s reelection in 2012, it seemed to many that America was on the wrong track and needed to be put right. The process of putting America right again, started in earnest by President Donald Trump in 2015, has not been easy or painless. Yesterday is proof that the radical left will not allow us to make America great again without a fight.
9/11 was a turning point in American history, and not for the better. It shattered the 1990s illusion of what historian Francis Fukuyama called “the end of history” and instead proved Samuel Huntington’s thesis of a “clash of civilizations.” Rather than focusing on realistic security measures, restricting immigration where appropriate, and engaging in targeted destruction of the terrorists responsible, we instead passed sweeping new laws allowing covert surveillance of American citizens while wasting trillions of dollars and the blood of our finest young men and women in a futile attempt to impose democracy on the Middle East.
We face another turning point today, as the illusion of peaceful discourse and debate was shattered by a bullet from a bolt-action rifle. Violence has long been a political tool of the left. The Jacobins saw the French Revolution as an opportunity to annihilate the old order and turned execution into an assembly-line process. The Bolsheviks murdered Tsar Nicholas II and his family, then imposed a regime an order of magnitude more brutal than the tsar ever was. Mao Zedong, not content that his communists had won the civil war and conquered China, launched a Cultural Revolution to tear down the vestiges of traditional society and murder anyone in the way.
In America, leftist revolutionaries waged a campaign of terror in the 1960s, with bombings and assassinations occurring frequently. Rather than being punished, terrorist leaders such as Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn were rewarded with cushy professorial gigs where they mentored young leftists like Barack Obama.
Over at the Federalist, Mark Hemingway explained that the American Left was never held accountable for political violence:
…no matter how much corrupt Democrat leaders cook the stats to pretend right-wing violence is a serious threat, nothing the right has ever done comes close to setting off five bombs a day for 18 months straight, proceeding to terrorize the country for more than a decade, and then electing new generations of politicians that knowingly excused this insane level of violence.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk has driven many on the right into a dark place. The future of our country depends on what we do next. Aimless anger is counterproductive, but righteous anger, properly channeled, is valuable. Both the Trump administration and state governments must use every legal avenue at their disposal to hold accountable not only the person who pulled the trigger, but everyone who enabled each step along the way.
That means groups that encourage violence against Christians and conservatives should be treated as terrorist organizations. Antifa should have been designated as such ages ago. The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League create what are essentially hit lists for left-wing terrorists. George Soros’ Open Society Foundations uses money to elect prosecutors who let criminals off the hook.
I want to see organizations like these prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. That could mean RICO charges for those who fund left-wing agitation.
As for those glorifying this assassination, remind them that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. I was pleased to see that a cheer coach at Meridian High School who made a video celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death was quickly fired by West Ada School District.
May this fate befall all who choose to publicly celebrate in this way.
There’s a certain irony that many of those who are glorifying the assassination are in positions typically associated with empathy, as Chris Rufo pointed out:
The number of people celebrating Charlie Kirk's death who work as teachers, nurses, psychologists, social workers, and other "helping professions" is immensely disturbing. We have a serious problem in this country.
The same leftists who tearfully call for compassion for a career criminal who has just murdered an innocent woman, or a foreign gang member facing deportation, will dance for joy when a conservative husband and father is brutally murdered in front of his family.
President Trump correctly called out divisive media rhetoric as the driving force behind this murder:
Recognize who these people are. There is no coexistence with people who want you dead. There will be no “coming together,” no reminder that “we’re all Americans” or “we all bleed red.” There are countless people within our country who are enemies of the good and the beautiful, enemies of truth, enemies of social order, and enemies of you and me.
Cartoonist turned political observer Scott Adams made the obvious point that we just saw what happened when we try to have a civil dialogue with the left:
Two days ago I would have said the healthiest thing for the country is that there are two strong political parties battling it out, in a war of ideas. But you know who else thought that? Charlie f**in’ Kirk.
He thought that we could talk it out. His whole model was based on polite debate and doing it in public so everybody could see it. That didn't work. He got shot to death. So now we just need to destroy the entire Democrat Party. Legally.
This tragedy demonstrates that, at a high level, there are two sides in America right now: those who believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and those who will dance on your grave because you have the wrong political views.
It certainly makes our squabbles in Idaho over which tax to eliminate first or how much to pay our legislators seem quaint and banal, doesn’t it?
If you’re a Democrat reading this, I hope you take some time for serious soul-searching. If you’re a Republican who still believes we could all get along if we only toned down the rhetoric, look at where we are and what time it is. If you claim we need a “strong Democratic Party” for balance, what are you even saying? Can you imagine George Washington insisting that we need a strong British Army in America?
If you’re a conservative who thinks the top priority right now is to relentlessly attack your nearest ideological neighbors for a few petty disagreements, then get your head straight.
This is 1789; this is 1917; this is 1948. The American left has declared war on civilization, and closing our eyes and pretending it’s not happening does not change the facts. We have been in a “cold civil war” for a while now, and the only way out is through.
I am not calling for reciprocal violence. Rather, I want to see the full force of our government—which was created to protect our life, liberty, and property—engaged in punishing evildoers and enforcing the law. Idaho’s own Pastor Doug Wilson said it well:
The assassination of Charlie Kirk can either become the true turning point that he gave his life for, or it can become a tipping point into societal chaos.
The preacher in Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for love and a time for hate, a time for war and a time for peace (Eccl. 3:8). This is not the time for love and peace.
A time for a normal societal peace will not arrive unless and until the agents of chaos are soundly rejected, repudiated, and delegitimized, across the board, finally and completely.
Recognizing this as our new cold reality is not to give way to the politics of malice and envy. It is rather to have eyes in your head.
We are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. If it is time to fight, and our duty to fight, as it is, then we must fight with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. All of Christ for all of the war.
Having said this, we remain always under the authority of Christ, and so those angry voices on the right who have said that we must be willing to do absolutely anything to defeat these people have basically vowed that they would be willing in principle to become just like these people.
But you cannot defeat the left through becoming the left. You cannot conquer the Abyss by throwing yourself into it. You cannot beat the devil by telling him lies. He’s better at it than you are.
This is a time for war. Not a chaotic spate of aimless violence, not an opportunity to settle old scores, but a legal and rational crackdown on the forces that are fighting to destroy our nation.
Mark Hemingway, once again:
I do not want to live in a society where half the country simply uses whatever power is available to them to go after the other half. I do not believe the average Democrat voter believes that successfully engaging in good-faith debates on college campuses warrants death. But, and I am hardly alone here, I am increasingly concerned that there are forces on the left that cannot be debated, they must be made to feel pain until they stop. I pray that this can be done within the bounds of the law and the Constitution, not that the left has much cared about those restraints.
Here in Idaho, this starts with pressuring school districts and employers to fire anyone who publicly celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk. From there, our Legislature must start cutting funding to organizations that indoctrinate children to hate our country or their fellow countrymen—organizations that should never have received taxpayer funds in the first place. Even if those organizations are called public schools. County prosecutors and the attorney general must enforce the letter of the law against those who sow chaos or incite violence.
Yesterday I referred to the proverb that strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times, and hard times create strong men. Nowhere is it set in stone that such a process is inevitable. We face a choice: allow our country to be torn apart by internal enemies who would burn it down just to rule over the ashes, or do what is necessary to save our civilization and restore law and order. Only in a society where laws are enforced and evildoers are stopped do we have the freedom to live our fullest lives.
I’m still sick to my stomach over Charlie Kirk’s death. Let’s use this moment for good and save the country we love before it’s too late.
Good job writing something that makes sense to all of us. I hate the divisions in Idaho Republican circles. I hate that we have people making it about personalities and who you align with. There are huge stakes at hand. Can we agree to compromise? There are true enemies against us and we can't afford all the pettiness.
Well said, as usual, and particularly poignant today as many of us who knew Charlie to some extent or another, grieve and are asking ourselves what we can do.