What does it mean when one of the most visible of your peers is executed in broad daylight, in front of thousands?
For the past week, young Americans who could identify with Charlie Kirk in any way have been grappling with this question.
After Kirk’s death, I (with Karista Baldwin) talked with five young and earnest conservative Americans from a range of demographic and geographic backgrounds.
I found a sector of America united not in complete policy or cultural agreement, but in admiration for Kirk as a model of decency and faithfulness. These young people shared with me not just their grief over Charlie Kirk’s assassination, but also their determination to honor his work by imitating his kindness and faithfulness to God and country.
The older generations’ need to support our successors became evident in my interviews.
The young adults I talked with admired Charlie Kirk for his virtuousness. They deeply crave more order and less chaos in society, and they long for the true friendship and tolerance that an ordered society would allow.
Elisa, Gen Z, lives in the south, holds two jobs, and attends school as she advances in a career in medicine.
In our conversations, she told me that the assassination of Kirk “lit a fire” in her.
She loved and admired Kirk for his ability to connect “compassionately” with people who disagreed with him. She felt that Kirk’s debate opponents were often “hurting” and “misinformed” members of her own generation. She believed that Kirk never showed hate and always spoke politely, empowering his debate partners with the freedom to step back and say “I never thought of it that way” or “let me go and research that.”
As a young woman who has experienced various degrees of physical intimidation from strange men in her city-suburb, Elisa admired Kirk’s support for Riley Gaines and the movement to keep biological males out of women’s sports. She sees these situations as essentially enabling peeping Toms to harass young women without any criminal penalty. She believes that “now is the time to be outspoken.”
Elisa felt safe to enjoy dressing up to go to TPUSA conferences, because there was “no fear” there, given Kirk’s overriding emphasis on virtue and his focus on healthy living. “Charlie Kirk was the Republican who really seemed to prioritize safety for women. He really seemed to love women and to hold them in high esteem and to think that they are really important.”
The fellows I interviewed also expressed high regard for Charlie Kirk. Dominic, Gen Z, a full-time teacher and part-time construction worker in the south, viewed Kirk as “the most prominent speaker of the younger generation on the moderate right.” He told me that Kirk was an “everyman” who “asked the right questions” and was a “force for good.”
In his Rust Belt state, Jack, Gen Z, works in computer science. Preparing to attend an evening vigil as he was interviewed, Jack told me that he simply liked and admired the man. “I bet Charlie Kirk would want his killer to go to heaven instead of hell. He was a real Christian.”
Lesley, a Millenial, grew up in what she calls “the hood” of her southern state; she’s working towards an advanced degree and a new job. In pondering the question of why someone would want to kill Kirk, Catholic apologist Joe Heschmeyer helped give her answers.
As she summarized to me, “people doing that [killing and celebrating the killing of Charlie Kirk] already have numbness in their lives, sadness in their lives … [And they achieve a] sense of control and finally justice,” by changing their environment - with murder - rather than by trying to change themselves.
Like Lesley, Jack sees Kirk’s murder as a spiritual problem. “I’d read the Bible about unclean spirits and demons and would feel as if that was then, but now [I am] wondering whether this is what [the books of the Bible are] talking about -- gloating over the ending of life and the suffering of other people. Are they demonic? Is it a death cult? … We’re fighting a spiritual war.”
For Gen-X mom Jenn, Charlie Kirk personified ideals which Jenn holds for herself, especially to make peace with people with whom she disagrees. She considered Kirk gifted and diligent in taking “the time to learn the issues.” She’s thankful that Kirk rose up to do this work, because, as she said, “Social media doesn’t scream at me, but it screams at my kids!”
Jenn is concerned that her children’s generation (ages 20 and under) are at risk of being brainwashed by everyone and everything coming at them. She can barely keep up with the technology, let alone stay ahead of her children’s access to undesirable portions of the internet.
According to these young people, the stifling mind control and isolation have risen to dire levels. Elisa believes that Kirk was a powerful counter-voice against the cancel culture of the mainstream media. “Before Charlie Kirk became popular, you had to dig deep to find truthful representations of [different] perspectives.”
And the malevolent reactions to Kirk’s death have been wake-up calls.
Jack told me, “I like doing what Charlie does and agree with him. So does that make me open season? Because if people can say that it is O.K. for Charlie Kirk to die, does that mean it’s open season on half of the nation? He held no office; he was a campus evangelist with conservative overtones … like Martin Luther King [Jr.]… You’re literally murdering them for their ideas.”
Over the years, Jack had noted the left’s flippant use of terms such as “Nazi,” “fascist,” and “threat to democracy.”
Jack used to think that the ebb and flow of politics would result in a cooling of the heated discourse. Jack was hoping that “the left would self-police,” but it never seemed to do so. Feeling that the left is gaslighting people, he said “[They’re] trying to tell me that [Kirk is] trying to get [them] killed, when they just killed Charlie!”
Jenn, who lives in the Northeast, said that she used to count on a common decency which no longer seems to exist. She had never before questioned whether her liberal neighbors wanted good for the community’s children, just as she does. Now, Jenn questions something as simple as that; could people in her community, or in her state, wish evil upon children, even their own?
Elisa told me that she does not believe that she has ever let go of a friend for being a leftist. Now she is concerned not only that leftist friends may continue to cancel her, but that they might also be rejoicing in Kirk’s death. “To kill a family man, these people would kill me. They want me dead, too.”
Elisa considers Charlie Kirk to be the person who helped her to expand her friendship base. “[Charlie Kirk’s] TPUSA made my life easier because I could see a whole new group of Christ-loving, friendly women where I could say what I believe and no one was going to hate me. It made it easier for me to believe that I could share my faith, because if I got cut out by the people with whom I’d be talking, I’d still have this other community of friends.”
These five "earnests" range in age from twenty to upper forties. Their sincere love of faith, family and country quietly commands a response from gentle readers to this question: how can we help them honor the work of Charlie Kirk?
Obviously we can be their friends and try to model virtuous, wholesome living with our actions as well as our words. We can join them in pressing for true portrayals of conservative thought in media and throughout their years of schooling. Finally, we need to extend ourselves to these younger people with less experience. With our extra years of wisdom, we can fill in the blanks of their often self-directed civics education. For example, without necessarily being aware of these thought leaders, they were basically talking about Pope John Paul II's exposition of the Culture of Life versus the Culture of Death and about David Barton's linkage of our country's founding with the Christian heritage.
There is work to do, and we can do it, just as Charlie Kirk enthusiastically embraced opportunities to evangelize and to defend our country every day.
Image: Gage Skidmore, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed