When is unity a weapon? When it’s demanded of people on one side that the other side has no intention of treating with anything but contempt, at best.

At worst, they treat them with hateful intolerance — like Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder allegedly killed by a leftist, who was radicalized online, at an event at Utah Valley University last Wednesday. The left no sooner realized that sullying the memory of a 31-year-old activist, husband, and father of two wasn’t a good strategy before they moved onto their next gambit.

You’ve probably heard some permutation of it, roughly speaking: It’s time to turn down the rhetorical temperature, unite, and listen to one another. This is what Charlie Kirk died doing and what they lambasted him for. They demand even more from us.

Vice President J.D. Vance, a close friend of Kirk’s, wasn’t having it. Filling in on the late host’s podcast Monday, he noted, “There is no unity with people who scream at children over their parents’ politics.

“There is no unity with someone who lies about what Charlie Kirk said in order to excuse his murder,” Vance said. “There is no unity with someone who harasses an innocent family the day after the father of that family lost a dear friend. There is no unity with the people who celebrate Charlie Kirk’s assassination.”

Then, he went on to put the fear of God — or, at least, the fear of the closest thing they have, a livelihood — into the professional left.

“There is no unity with the people who fund these articles, who pay the salaries of these terrorist sympathizers, who argue that Charlie Kirk, a loving husband and father, deserved a shot to the neck because he spoke words with which they disagree,” he said, then directly referencing an article in The Nation.

“Did you know that that George Soros Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation, the groups who funded that disgusting article justifying Charlie’s death — do you know they benefit from generous tax treatment?” Vance asked, rhetorically.

Vance is referencing the piece “Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning” by Elizabeth Spiers in The Nation — a left-wing publication which depends on the largesse of well-heeled left-wing donors like Soros because it’s so profit-resistant that it would go bankrupt selling sanctions relief to the North Korean government. (A business model that, by the way, I’m certain the editorial board would glom upon if the opportunity arose.)

From Spiers’ piece:

Many of the facile defenses of Kirk and his legacy are predicated on the idea that it’s acceptable to spread hateful ideas advocating for the persecution of perceived enemies as long you dress them up in a posture of debate. This is just class privilege. The man who smeared Black women like Ketanji Brown Jackson and Michelle Obama whom he claimed had benefited from affirmative action, saying, ‘you do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously,” said it while wearing a nice shirt and a tie on a podcast instead of tattered overalls in the parking lot of a rural Walmart. That does not make it any less racist. … 

When we decline to speak ill of the dead, it’s because we have compassion for the living. In this respect, I am sorry for Kirk’s children. I don’t know if Kirk was a good father, but if he was, that does little to mitigate the damage he did to other people’s children. I can only hope for the sake of his kids that they have role models who will teach them that it is wrong to profit off the dehumanization of people because of who they are.

It goes on. It’s not just reprehensible for the fact that it says those things, because plenty of hotheaded left-wingers parroted similar sentiments after Kirk’s death. Rather, it’s the fact that several layers of editorial oversight didn’t manage to quash the piece, or at least smooth its hateful, cherry-picked rhetoric into something less hateful.

The Nation, Vance noted, is “literally subsidized by you and me, the American taxpayer, and how do they reward us? By setting fire to the house built by the American family over 250 years.

“I am desperate for our country to be united in condemnation of the actions and the ideas that killed my friend,” Vance said. “I wanted it so badly that I will tell you a difficult truth: We can only have it with people who acknowledge that political violence is unacceptable and when we work to dismantle the institutions that promote violence and terrorism in our own country.”

???? JD VANCE just WENT OFF on people who are calling for “UNITY” with radical leftists

“There is NO UNITY with people who scream at children over their parents’ politics.

There is NO UNITY with someone who LIES about what Charlie Kirk said in order to excuse his murder.

There… pic.twitter.com/iDq3cKJQcO

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) September 15, 2025

This went viral, and for reasons that can be easily guessed at. At the same time that clips like that one were being spread on social media, this was the kind of stuff we were seeing from Democrats. This time, it’s Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut:

You need to know what might be coming.

Trump could have brought the nation together to confront political violence after the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Instead he appears to be preparing to use the shooting as a pretext to destroy his political opposition and consolidate power. pic.twitter.com/Wvhmrr35wM

— Chris Murphy ???? (@ChrisMurphyCT) September 16, 2025

He’s blaming Trump for not uniting us. Meanwhile, here he was in an interview conducted just days before Kirk was killed, which was published on his account just hours earlier:

Senator Chris Murphy, yesterday:

“We’re in a war right now to save this country. And so you have to be willing to do whatever is necessary in order to save the country.” pic.twitter.com/bdj1rlsDT5

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) September 10, 2025

From “we’re in a war … you have to be willing to do whatever is necessary” to hey, everybody, please unite! Don’t listen to the White House calling attention to, you know, people like me talking about literal war. 

These people were juiced about talking about that sort of thing in the days before Kirk’s killing. Then, they were busy trying to say Kirk deserved it while insinuating his killer was a Republican. Now, we’ve moved onto the let’s-just-unite phase of it all.

Vance is right: Conservatives continue to do the continual fool’s errand of unifying. Bush, McCain, and Romney all thought it was possible. For them, it was a continual game of Lucy and Charlie Brown. We need to understand that, no matter what, they will never let us kick the football. And yet, no matter what, we’ll always give it a go when they ask, “but don’t you want to kick the ball? This time it’s different.”

The vice president doesn’t buy it, and neither should America. Vance’s comment should free MAGA from any illusions and allow us to hit back without any compunctions about taking the high road. We don’t break the law, mind you. But we also don’t make common cause with people who literally don’t care if we’re getting killed.

If it hasn’t done so already, Charlie Kirk’s murder should wake us up to what we should have known from the get-go: These people want nothing to do with unity. They mean to make war until they cannot go on, then they demand peace on their terms. This isn’t to say we stoop to their level, but we also don’t countenance them, either. Enough is enough.

Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.