Charlie Kirk: A Personal Reflection

1993-2025

These have been two hard weeks for me. I have had to replace all four tires one week, then replace the kitchen faucet the next week. The little that I have in savings is fast depleting. I had my-now former best friend ignore me for two weeks straight while we worked at the same location. Not a word, not a greeting, not an invite to lunch or breakfast, not a hello, not a goodbye. All these stressors caused me to miss part of my very high minimum payments, which I figure will increase. That, in turn, will increase my already heavy financial burden. I felt overwhelmed, distressed and depressed. I felt almost cruelly tested by God, forever attempting to show that I trusted Him by enduring harder and harder tests.

Then, the sight of a man, younger than myself, shot in the neck, blood gushing frenziedly, for holding an open-air debate, served as a terrible reminder that my troubles are in the long run, bearable. 

Charlie Kirk's assassination is monstrous. It is evil. It is damnable, and damn anyone who celebrates or condones his murder. Full stop. 

I saw the initial video, and it will shake me to my very core for however long I live. The details are in my mind: him putting the microphone down, the pop, the hole in his neck, the blood...dear God, the blood, the keeling over to the left. I cannot begin to imagine the total horror of his final moments. 

He expected yesterday to be a perhaps mocking back-and-forth between those who disagreed with his various views and himself. No one expects a particular day to be their last day, especially if you are as young as he was. I also figure that he was not expecting to be murdered before thousands for debating those who disagreed with him.

Everything about this horror distresses me: the crime itself, the celebratory nature among some who insist that "kindness matters", the ease to which violence is seen as justified because of disagreements. It is all so cruel, so evil, so terribly disheartening to me. However, I think of what Charlie Kirk was doing when someone shot him down. He was participating in something as old, if not older than, the Republic itself: asking and answering questions in a free and open exchange of ideas. 

Whether one agreed or disagreed with Charlie Kirk is unimportant. Whatever his views, he had the right to express and share them. He had the right to create an organization to promote those views (Turning Point USA). He had that First Amendment "right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances".

Charlie Kirk's assassination is counter to that vital right. We, as a nation and as a society, cannot tolerate, cannot accept, cannot endorse a culture where people can feel justified in killing those who hold different points of view.

Sadly, the warning signs that some believe a bullet should settle all debate have been there for many years. 

I go to the Congressional baseball team shooting in 2017, where someone attempted a mass assassination of Republican Congressmen because of their politics. 

I go to the idolization, at times literal, of Luigi Mangione after his arrest, charged with assassinating United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Mangione was not condemned in certain circles for allegedly shooting a man in the back, murdering him in cold blood. He was, instead, feted and declared a "thirst trap". 

I go to the attempted assassination of then-former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Had he not moved his head a few inches, we would have seen a former President and presidential candidate murdered before our eyes. Lest we forget, one man, Corey Comperatore, was murdered in the attempted assassination.

I go, now, today, to the slaughter of another man who was murdered for disagreeing with others and having people defend their views to him publicly in an open forum.

Each of these attempted or committed murders has a common denominator: the demonic belief that one can, perhaps should, kill those whose views you find more than objectionable. That oft-used phrase of "violence is not the answer" remains true. A free and open exchange of ideas cannot exist if any side decides that they have the power to execute whomever it disagrees with. That is terrorism. That is fascism. That is not what any American, on the Left or Right, can accept, support, endorse or celebrate.

Did I agree with Charlie Kirk? Did I find him and/or his views distasteful? I will not tell you, because my personal views about his political views do not shape my horror and anguish at his murder. I would feel the same if this had happened to Brian Tyler Cohen, a liberal commentator who is of Kirk's generation. I cannot find it in my heart or soul to think that killing your political opponents is right or moral on any level.

My heart breaks that anyone would think that such a thing would be right or moral on any level.

Politics is not my life. I vote on a regular basis. I have voted for Democrats and Republicans. I have my views, which are not uniform with one political party or another. I have criticized and ridiculed both sides. I have, at times, been appalled at some of what I hear from our political leaders and commentators. In all that, however, not once have I ever thought that those who disagreed with me should be exterminated. That anyone would think such a thing fills me, not with dread but with despair.

We cannot, we must not, kill those whose views are not like our own. No matter how odious you find those views, no matter how opposed you are to those views, committing murder does not make you heroic. It makes you satanic. Moreover, we cannot, we must not, justify or celebrate those who commit murder of political opponents. 

Charlie Kirk was murdered. We cannot celebrate murder. If we are not allowed to speak freely because someone believes that he or she has the right, if not duty, to kill us for openly holding a different viewpoint, we do not live in a free society but in a terror state. 

We never know if this day will be our last. We are today remembering that twenty-four years ago, so many were living their last day. Charlie Kirk did not know that yesterday, September 10, 2025, would be his last day of life. As I reflect on the horrors of yesterday, and remember the horrors of September 11, 2001, I remind myself to cherish those whom I love and that a late payment is not the end of the world. 

I close with this. Contrary to what some of my online compatriots say, I am not old enough to have been Charlie Kirk's father. True, I am much older than he was. As such, I have seen all sorts of terrible things. I never thought or imagined that I would live to see the political assassination of an activist, let alone an assassination that people dance to. It pains me beyond measure to see his birth and death date so close. I feel so much pain for his widow, his children, and his parents whom I presume are still alive. 

My deepest condolences to all of them.