Charlie Kirk was my colleague at Salem Media with whom I was friendly and with whom I would exchange texts and e -mails. He was not a good friend. I was not his mentor. If someone was a mentor of this gifted autodidact that Turning Point USA founded, it would be Dennis Prager, to whom Charlie’s new book was devoted.
Dennis sustained a devastating injury at the end of last year, but recovers slowly. I learned from Dennis’ close colleague and co-founder of Prageru, all Estrin, last week that Charlie was often at the hospital bed of Dennis, and that Dennis called on the power to post his own grief online after the murder. Dennis is a moral giant, a shaper of men and women and especially young men. It is not surprising that Charlie looked up at him because he did few others.
If Charlie had been Jewish, “Sitting Shiva” would have closed now. As a strong supporter of the state of Israel and of religious freedom in general, Charlie would be overwhelmed by the love of his Jewish friends and admirers around the world. The fact that evangelicals and Catholics spoil his loss so deeply is less surprising, but the degree is still amazing.
Youth leaders mourn the godfather of Campus Conservatism ‘Charlie Kirk after murder
Most media people know Charlie as a political leader and in favor of President Donald Trump. His colleagues in Salem Media knew him as this incredible, growing power in many areas. I confess stunned about what comes next. The murder of young and dynamic leaders who did not look for function, but only to strengthen the reach of the gospel and the power of the Constitution is new in the history of the Republic.
Turning Point USA will continue and there are many young men and women who will pick up Charlie’s flag, such as his wonderfully articulated woman Erika and his friend Alex Marlow. The tragedy for the Republic is that Charlie showed a way to renew the dedication of the framers to order freedom, on a public square where the passion of faction could disappear in debate that became a dialogue. For some that was the threat. They do not welcome an argument. They only want the power to impose their will on non-adhesion on their visions.
“I really hope that the murder of Charlie Kirk is a turning point for us as a society where we look and see where things have come, the point at which we came to the United States,” Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett told me This week. Referring to a passage of GK Chesterton based on the need for argument, but the need for not fighting, she noted that this distinction is crucial and argumentation and fight in very different places. “One is to put ourselves on silo so that we don’t go with the other side. Now that is the opposite of what Charlie Kirk did. He consistently hired the other side.”
“I think the other message in that [Chesterton] Passage is that when you concern the other side, we address ideas and we don’t try to attack or tear people, ” The justice continued“And there is a huge difference between the two. And I think those who fall into attacking people, mainly doing it verbally and not physically. But all too often, I think, we now see that verbal attacks survive in slightly more sinister.”
I met Charlie a dozen years ago on the Campus of Colorado Christian University, where former Senator of the United States and the then President of the University, Bill Armstrong and his fellow senator John Andrews, were teaching me to teach around 40 high school students a course of two weeks. The course included the Constitution and the sketch of American history that was needed to understand the large “frame of silver” that the “Apple of Gold” protected from our nation as Lincoln described the Constitution, borrowing psalms.
It was the genius of Bill and John, a legacy of CCU’s new president, Eric Hogue, to bring high school students to the Western Conservative Summit in Denver every summer and to use their mornings to teach, their afternoons to enjoy the rockies and their evenings to learn from speakers on top. Just brilliant.
I accepted their invitation to lead the students in the morning lessons, although my experience is to give law students, not high school students. Senator Armstrong then added a brilliant blow (because he was a brilliant man.) He asked me to set aside for an hour for a young man who started a new project. That young man was Charlie, at the age of 18 or 19. Turning Point USA then had the structure of structure. Of course I agree. Which teacher does a guest speaker not welcome?
However, I was not prepared for Charlie, because when he rolled to the front of the room for those 40 or so students, only a few years younger than he. Charlie took and kept their attention and implanted an enthusiasm for political involvement of the kind that continues to exist. It was a revelation. He had a gift. Charisma cannot be taught. It just appears. Charlie had it. He never lost it.
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During the dozen years since then, because our paths have been repeatedly crossed until we both landed in the air for Salem, Charlie always grew and learned Charlie. I would hear from his colleagues in a seminar of the Claremont Institute. Charlie inhaled everything online at Hillsdale College, would repeat me repeatedly to continue the “Hillsdale dialogues” with the President of the College, Dr. Larry Arnn, because Arnn is a gifted teacher and wanted to learn, learn, learn. The classic autodidact, Charlie made his own way to wisdom while he was in, but not of the world.
Along the way he met and married the beautiful and great woman who has now met the country as a mourning widow, he had two beautiful children and became the friend and ally of almost every Republican, from President Trump to school board members of remote Townships. Charlie and his Turning Point USA team were all about building up the next generation of political leadership. He did that. They are everywhere, just like Hillsdale -Grads are, just like are diligent followers of Prageru. Because those who build institutions build permanent monuments to their genius.
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When all Estrin spoke about Charlie last week, he noticed that Charlie, just as important as he had already become – the reach and influence of Rush Limbaugh, but half the age when Rush hit that brand and supported by a large and growing movement that Charlie had built on campuses in the entire country – was not even at 40% of what he would have become. That is the tragedy for the country. Charlie produced informed and activist citizens, young men and women of faith and goal who injected life -fired into a republic of laws led by older generations Tired of fighting and always confronted with enemies abroad.
There are other dynamic young leaders who are there – Vice -President Vance, Secretary Marco Rubio, Senators Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz, congress members Elise Stefanik and Dan Harrigan, a generation of warriors from battlefields around the world and much more. Everything is hardly lost in the continuous struggle to retain the Constitution and religious freedom and Charlie would be the first to say that the Lord has control. But while his sitting Shiva ends, it is all together and appropriate to say: we will no longer be the same.
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