Please, God, let him live.
That was my initial thought upon hearing that Charlie Kirk had been shot. And I don’t know how many tens of millions of others uttered that exact same silent prayer in those same early moments, but it all seemed for naught when President Donald Trump announced to the world that his too-young friend had been taken from us.
My second thought was that they’ve assassinated a future president. He had all the tools, didn’t he? The talent, the intelligence, the vision, the energy, the charisma, and the deep and abiding Christian faith. Again, I thought, all these prayers are for naught.
As it turns out, though, they weren’t for naught. Prayer is never for naught. And in the case of Charlie Kirk, he’s alive in a way that no one could’ve imagined just a week ago.
For lack of a better, more clever name, it’s being called “The Charlie Kirk Effect,” and it’s playing out not just here in the U.S. but around the world. It’s a contagion, and those on the vile, hate-filled, America-hating Left are as powerless to stop it as a guy with an umbrella in a Cat-5 hurricane.
“To everyone listening tonight across America,” said his widow, Erika, in an emotional tribute on Friday at the headquarters of Turning Point USA, “the movement my husband built will not die. It won’t. I refuse to let that happen. … No one will ever forget my husband’s name. And I will make sure of it. It will become stronger, bolder, louder, and greater than ever. My husband’s mission will not end. Not even for a moment. My husband’s voice will remain, and it will ring out louder and more clearly than ever.”
If anyone had any doubt about whether Charlie Kirk’s widow would recede into the background, there to shield her two young children from the firestorm around them, those doubts were put to rest on Friday. It’s too early to tell what will become of Turning Point — who will lead it and what shape it’ll take — but this statistic should give us an idea of its momentum: The organization reports that campus chapter requests have surged to more than 37,000 since Kirk’s assassination.
Yesterday, images of Charlie and his wife appeared on the giant digital screen at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, home of the NFL’s New York Jets. They were accompanied by chants of “Charlie! Charlie! Charlie!” This indicates that the Charlie Kirk contagion has spread well beyond any control of mortal authorities, including the woke leadership of the National Football League.
At least a dozen NFL teams paid some sort of tribute to Charlie before their games yesterday, including a moment of silence at State Farm Stadium in Arizona, Charlie’s home state, and the site of the coming memorial service. And while we can acknowledge the good business sense of NFL executives for paying tribute to this fallen Christian Patriot, I’m not ready to believe that they’ve changed their ways so much as they’re merely responding to the overwhelming sentiment of their customers.
Dan Lanning, the head coach of college football’s Nike franchise, the Oregon Ducks, took time out during his press conference Saturday to acknowledge Charlie, saying, “I recently found out that Charlie Kirk was an Oregon fan, right? I didn’t know that. I hurt for his wife, Erika, and their kids. That sort of evil should never exist. … Life matters, you know, and I think we’ve lost sight of that. But I just wish the world could learn a little bit of something from our locker room because we had a bunch of people with differences, and what you got is a bunch of people that love there.”
Not surprisingly, Trump’s White House praised these outpourings, saying that they reflected a “widespread admiration for Kirk’s dedication to inspiring the next generation of American Patriots.”
Indeed, how’s that for blowback?
On a personal note, I met Charlie Kirk in Chattanooga, way back in October 2020. I remember him giving a great and wise speech, especially for someone so young. I remembered how well-versed he was on the God-given nature of our rights, but the remark I most remembered was a self-effacing one about how he’d decided not to attend college and instead took a gap year. “And here I am, eight gap years later,” or some such. And sure enough, when I rewatched the video of that event, it’s right there. Almost verbatim from what I’d remembered.
Charlie was fond of saying, “If you disagree with me, please move to the front of the line.” He welcomed not just vigorous debate but courteous and respectful dialogue. And it’s in this spirit that his memory will endure. It’s easy to denounce a dead demagogue. It’s far harder to dismiss a fundamentally good and decent and nonviolent Christian man.
Going forward, I don’t think we on the Right can possibly dedicate enough time to Charlie Kirk’s memory, nor his mission, the Turning Point mission. His assassination was a touchstone moment in American politics. There’s no one else even remotely like him out there, not on the Left or the Right. But what that assassin took from us is only part of the story. The other part is the need to continually raise awareness of the Left’s penchant for political violence — targeting anyone from anonymous Trump supporters to anonymous Tesla owners, to Steve Scalise, Rand Paul, Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump, Brian Thompson, Yaron Lischinsky, Sarah Milgrim, Karen Diamond, and now Charlie Kirk. They’ll never atone for it, of course, but we can’t ever let anyone forget.
It’s been said that when a tyrant dies, his reign ends. But when a martyr dies, his reign just begins.
In this respect, I hope Charlie’s death, his martyrdom, will indeed be a Turning Point for our nation.
