Charlie Kirk's Legacy

In The Mission Robert Bolt’s Jesuit priest (Jeremy Irons) is shot dead while carrying a cross in a pacific procession while protecting his 18^th century Indian community from Portuguese troops whose masters seek to enslave them.  Two decades earlier Bolt dramatized a pious Sir Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons.  More’s papal-grounded opposition to Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon and marriage to Anne Boleyn is rewarded with imprisonment and, after the perjured testimony of a one-time admirer, beheading.  Not long ago Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino dies to save his young foreign friend by exposing those who threatened him.  Eastwood’s irascible character, Walt, lies stretched out in cruciform after having been pummeled with bullets by a neighborhood gang in plain sight of onlookers. 

Those examples are cinematic creations that pay tribute in various ways to their spiritual predecessor.  Charlie Kirk, however, was a Christ figure in real life.  Far from a “spreader of hate” as asserted by politicians and commentators who specialize in that activity, Charlie practiced respectful dialogue and viewed even rude interlocutors as fellow humans created in the image of God.  Anyone taking the time to sample the many hours of dialogue available will never see any name-calling or personal insults proceed from his mouth.  Instead one witnesses an impressive willingness to listen to opposing comments.  Those who disagree are encouraged to “come to the front of the line,” and their often ill-tempered challenges are met with thoughtful, sometimes forceful, responses.  Frequently Charlie seeks points of agreement from which further dialogue becomes possible. 

In encounters with exponents of the narcissistic relativism that permeates American campuses, Charlie sought to expose the vacuity of arguments that reject God or Nature’s God as the fundamental ground for morality.  “My heart” and “my truth” provide no rational counter-argument to “Mao’s truth” or “Stalin’s truth.”  Absent a more fundamental foundation even “the greatest good for the greatest number” melts into a hodge-podge of undefined terms.  What is meant by “greatest good” or by “greatest number,” and how do we understand the word “good”?  And why must everyone follow this formula if nothing undergirds it?  Such are the infuriating questions posed in Socratic fashion to students who have been told (not  taught) that religion is foolish superstition, that the Western tradition represents the prejudices of old white men, and that morality is nothing more than a person’s own “values.”  

It was galling to detractors that this vibrant, intellectually intimidating young man gained his insights by consulting the Western literary tradition and contemporary scholars like Thomas Sowell—especially taking to heart the wisdom contained in the Old and New Testaments. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” was a skeptical observation from two millennia past.  A contemporary echo of that comment would be “Charlie didn’t go to college and quotes the Bible”--an observation that condemns most of higher education rather than the intellectual stature of the autodidact who rejected schooling’s institutional corruption.  

As Dennis Prager regularly observed, “You have to go to college to believe some things.”  Men can become women and vice-versa.  A man who has undergone hormonal treatment to appear more feminine can compete on an equal playing field with women.  You are the sex (‘gender”) you want to be.  A man who wants to be a woman is a woman and thus entitled to undress in the women’s locker room and to invade a women’s spa.  A mountain of evidence and common sense was available for Charlie to counter those absurdities--millennia of tradition plus obvious physiological, psychological , and chromosomal differences.  Similar arguments were presented to abortion advocates who equate “my body” with the nascent life having its own genetic structure within that body.

To religious or “spiritual” challenges that stress “Jesus gets us” tolerance, Charlie presented the Jesus of  Scripture (John 8:1-11) who not only saved the woman accused of adultery from being stoned but also approached her and said, “Go, and sin no more.”  Yes, mercy is fundamental to Christianity but also the truth about sin.  The latter value, Kirk noted, has been forgotten or even condemned as “judgmental” not only by popular culture but also by a vast number of Christians.

Perhaps most of all Charlie was hated as the image of a personal goodness that exposes, like sunlight, the moral and spiritual decay of our culture and of individuals consumed by that decadence.  He was a faithful husband with two beautiful children, to whose welfare he was passionately devoted.  He engaged in a disciplined, spiritually informed health regimen—no drugs, exercise, healthy food and drink.  He was remarkably judicious in the use of his time, a trait inimical to a culture awash in slothful self-indulgence.  Such things arouse self-loathing when one looks in the mirror and sees the polar opposite.  Now his assassination has exposed the evil that brims with revulsion at an utterly decent  husband and father who was skilled at respectful and forceful dialogue—a Christian devoted to God, family, and country.

 “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).  So may it be with the death of Charlie Kirk.  

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle