Anyone politically involved over the past decade has likely heard of Charlie Kirk, and those involved in political commentary are weighing in on his impact and legacy. It would be cathartic to join in the defense of his character and condemn the obtuse cruelty of those who—even in this tragic moment—seek to distort and diminish his memory. But doing so would only add incremental weight to what is already a most welcome and overwhelming chorus. Instead, I want to highlight something Kirk said a few years ago that left a lasting impression. It offers another way that the beliefs he shared can help grow the movement he played such a vital role in building.
“Nobody should have to apologize for growing up as a member of the prosperous middle class,” he said.
This sentiment encapsulates an essential aspect of Charlie Kirk’s message, helping explain why he was able to connect with millions of America’s youth. It also points towards a goal furthered by everything he believed in, with an ultimate objective that has universal appeal. It suggests two distinct and interrelated avenues toward building a movement that can realign American politics for the next 100 years.
On one hand, there is the social agenda for which Kirk is best remembered. Without rancor or reliance on hyperbole, he expressed truths that are anathema to the American Left. Hard work and meritocracy are the only truly equitable ways to achieve a just society. Competitive capitalism is the most viable way to achieve broad-based prosperity. The only genuine “anti-racism” is to be utterly colorblind. The “green” agenda is inherently authoritarian, with a hidden agenda being the centralization of wealth in the hands of a corrupt oligarchy. And, perhaps his most ambitious and devastatingly effective effort at deprogramming was this: there are only two sexes, and marriage and families are the stabilizing foundation both of individual lives and of society itself.
No wonder Kirk was a threat to the left, along with the powerful special interests that finance its allegedly grassroots movement. He blended logic and precision with compassion and respect, and millions listened to him. For millions of voters, he altered their worldview, changed the trajectory of national elections, and launched a political realignment that now, with his death, hangs in the balance.
But Kirk’s position on these social issues, based on moral premises that have weathered the tests of millennia, has a pragmatic economic parallel. You cannot achieve a middle-class lifestyle, you cannot offer upward mobility, and you can’t even maintain a middle-class lifestyle for those who already enjoy it if you create a society that ignores these moral premises. You cannot deliver equal opportunity or a reasonable chance to attain middle-class status to a society that abandons meritocracy and erodes capitalist freedom while expanding socialist redistribution, promotes individuals based on identity quotas instead of competence, and throws away economically practical infrastructure in order to impose “green” solutions. These are fatal choices.
At the same time, the most controversial premises of the left, that people can reject marriage and raising children, and instead pursue lives of hedonism extending literally to the point of choosing their “gender,” are, at the very least, equally fatal choices at the level of society as a whole. Charlie Kirk never suggested an individual didn’t have the right to make these choices. But he correctly explained that if a society promotes these choices while degrading and disrespecting the option of families and children, that society is doomed.
So it is that Charlie Kirk’s legacy is not just to deprogram America’s youth who have been collectively brainwashed by a K-12 and college environment dominated by leftists. It is not only to explain why a traditional lifestyle should be celebrated and embraced instead of denigrated and rejected. It is to connect the choice to marry, work hard, and support a colorblind meritocratic system with the fact that only in this manner can we restore to America’s younger generation the economic opportunities they are currently denied.
Much is being made by Democrats, desperate to rebrand themselves as something other than “woke,” to promote “abundance.” We have the Abundance Movement. We have California Governor and peripatetic presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom, who is now “advancing an abundance agenda.” We have “Abundance Democrats,” and we have the 2025 mega-bestseller, “Abundance,” written by Atlantic author Ezra Klein.
And all of this hype about abundance by Democrats is a fraud.
Everything that the left promotes and believes in is anathema to achieving abundance. The left has undermined our private sector by mandating the hiring and promotion of unqualified people. It has disproportionately harmed emerging small businesses by imposing a regulatory structure so punitive that only monopolistic large businesses can afford to navigate the morass, pay the fees, hire the attorneys and bureaucrats, and buy off the politicians to fine-tune the rules to their advantage. What irony. And only the left has managed to distract multiple generations of Americans to view issues of race and gender as more important than the economic con job the left has perpetrated to destroy the middle class and enrich their donors.
Kirk saw through all of this and gave us an alternative. As we remember what he stood for and resolve to move forward, we must not hesitate to convey the difficult truths he expressed in such a uniquely convincing manner. But we must also explain at every opportunity that the social values he proclaimed are also a roadmap toward the prosperity we have denied our youth. Charlie Kirk helped rescue America’s youth from lives of nihilist resentment. He also gave them a path to economic salvation. Let’s not forget this other half of Charlie Kirk’s legacy.