Only in Blue America could spray-painting a rock with patriotic themes and a tribute to a murdered conservative be treated as vandalism.
Yet here we are in Charlotte, North Carolina—edging toward a 21st-century East Berlin, a blue zone planted in a reddish-purple Tar Heel state.
At Ardrey Kell High School, someone painted the rock with the words “Live Like Kirk,” an American flag, “Freedom 1776,” “John 11:25,” and the names “Gabby,” “Lily,” and “Logan.” Aspirational notes building to a crescendo: a call to live with the faith and courage Charlie Kirk embodied.
Anyone familiar with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) knows the drill: the spirit rock is a de facto free-speech zone, just like rocks scattered across the fruited plain.
Seniors slap on their class year. Teams splash it after a big win. Some lovestruck junior turns it into a prom-posal billboard. Parents paint birthday greetings. Layer after layer piles on—more coats than Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s coiffure.
But this time was different. The message honored Charlie Kirk—recently assassinated—and dared to invoke America’s founding year. For that, the system went full police state and manufactured outrage on demand.
Whatever else she did this weekend, Principal Susan Nichols made time to fire off a stern missive about paint on a rock—as though that were the crisis facing her school.
While Ardrey Kell has a track record of brawls in classrooms and hallways, even the football stands have become a circus. In 2017, the principal at the time had to eject the entire student section from a home game.
As his email put it:
We had a significant number of students who were intoxicated, high on drugs, cussing at other students, spitting and throwing items at our band, chanting inappropriate cuss words, shouting racial comments towards other students, vaping, and physically abusing their peers.
That kind of mayhem barely made a ripple outside the school community. But a patriotic message on a rock? Today’s Ardrey Kell leadership went so far as to declare the message “not authorized” and “vandalism.”
Local law enforcement is investigating—as if a patriotic mural on a rock designed to be repainted were a DEFCON 1 threat to national security.
And remember, this is the Charlotte-Mecklenburg that failed Iryna Zarutska, shoveled NGO funds into racial equity jail-emptying schemes, and even built inmates a recording studio so an accused murderer could cut his demo tape.
Priorities, Charlotte-style.
Then came the pièce de résistance: CMS urged students and families to use the district’s “Say Something” anonymous reporting app to dime out whoever wielded the spray can. It was even suggested that students speak to “trusted school staff” as the “preferred method for communicating concerns.”
Trusted staff? Please. Anyone triggered by patriotic spirit rock art is hardly trustworthy in my book. When administrators treat “Freedom 1776” like fightin’ words sparking a cafeteria riot, they forfeit the right to pose as guardians of “student safety.”
Translation: turn in your classmates. Go full narc. Report patriotic kids for deportation to hard labor in CMS’s Siberian outpost—where the syllabus features neopronouns, the patriarchal oppression of American literature, a Five-Year Plan to bring bougie Bolshevism to Ballantyne, and a Marxist re-reading of Thomas Hardy.
According to CMS’s own Code of Conduct, vandalism means damaging or destroying property—“graffiti, permanent markings, damage to technology.”
The spirit rock is none of those. It is not damaged when painted; it is fulfilling its intended purpose. By the district’s own rules, calling this vandalism is a misapplication of their policy, weaponized only because the message was politically inconvenient.
But let’s take a look at recent spirit rock history at Ardrey Kell. The hypocrisy is staggering.
In 2020, when the rock was painted with Black Lives Matter messaging, a repainting with Blue Lives Matter was denounced as vandalism and defacement. Outrage followed, investigations were launched, community leaders railed, corporations donated paint, and students were praised for restoring the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others.
Fast-forward to 2025: “Live Like Kirk” and “Freedom 1776” appear, and now the message itself is the vandalism.
They dared to speak Charlie Kirk’s name. Within hours, it was painted over with progressive plainchant: “Be Kind” and “You are enough.” And just to be sure no one missed the point, the names of Gabby, Lily, and Logan were crossed out—lest the real message get lost in subtlety.
Worse than a double standard; it’s the wholesale corruption and weaponization of language. “Vandal” no longer means defacing property—it means expressing an idea that the power collective hasn’t pre-approved. Paint the “wrong” message, and you’re not just erased; you’re branded a vandal, canceled, and crossed out.
It’s “free speech for me but not for thee,” enforced with a blue clipboard, a police report, and an anonymous app that would leave Walter Ulbricht nodding in approval.
The rot runs deep at CMS. Meet school board member Melissa Easley. After Kirk’s assassination, she posted that “political violence is not okay,” but you knew there was a “but.”
She went on to insist she would feel no “pitty” (her spelling, not mine) for him. Apparently, this board member couldn’t ace third-grade spelling. No pity for her.
Easley campaigned on “student safety,” which in her world meant more nurses, counselors, and anti-bullying initiatives.
But when it comes to conservatives, she’s happy to do the bullying herself.
According to a Facebook post by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the department issued a standing order for regular checks on Easley’s residence after her remarks on Charlie Kirk’s death stirred backlash.
The FOP argued that Easley, like Mayor Vi Lyles, was able to secure “preferential treatment” by phoning police leadership—a luxury not available to ordinary citizens, or to Ukrainian war refugees like Iryna Zarutska, whose brutal murder still haunts the city.
Officers are dispatched to check on politicians’ houses hour by hour, while ordinary citizens—and refugees like Zarutska—are left to fend for themselves. That inversion of priorities tells you everything.
Charlotte didn’t use to be this way. Then voters imported Blue America, and voilà: thought police for rocks and safety patrols for third-grade spelling faceplants.
Calling a tribute to an assassinated speaker “vandalism” is like calling Susan Nichols or Melissa Easley “trusted staff.” It’s hogwash.
And it reveals what CMS and its media enablers fear most: free expression that doesn’t bow to their orthodoxy. Bureaucrats fear free speech the way cats fear bathtubs.
The spectacle of Charlotte school officials urging students to “Say Something” about who painted “Freedom 1776” would be laughable if it weren’t so sinister. It echoes the authoritarian instincts of regimes where informing on one’s neighbor—or classmate—was considered a civic duty.
Charlotte isn’t East Berlin circa 1950—at least not yet. But the instinct is eerily familiar, and the dress rehearsal is underway: condition young people to equate freedom with danger, to see classmates as potential criminals, and to funnel their suspicions through an anonymous pipeline to authority.
The spirit rock was meant to embody school spirit, community voice, and youthful expression. CMS has twisted it into a cautionary tale of weaponization, selective outrage and enforcement, and the normalization of anonymous snitching.
And then they wonder why parents are fleeing. More and more families are ditching CMS for schools of choice—public charters, private academies, and parochial schools that don’t erase patriotism with Orwellian zeal.
Gabby, Lily, and Logan—wherever you are—thank you. You make me hopeful for the future.
And Principal Nichols—leave those kids alone. No dark sarcasm on the spirit rock, or it becomes just another brick in the wall.
Charlton Allen is an attorney, former chief executive officer and chief judicial officer of the North Carolina Industrial Commission, and founder of the Madison Center for Law & Liberty, Inc. He is editor of The American Salient, and host of the Modern Federalist podcast. X: @CharltonAllenNC
Image from Grok.