Remembering Charlie Kirk

The death of Charlie Kirk shook the entire nation and perhaps brought a sense of much-needed unity on the right. On Wednesday, when he was shot, him being rushed to the hospital brought no comfort as the likelihood that doctors could stabilize a carotid artery gunshot wound would be nothing short of miraculous in this situation. Charlie Kirk was a dynamic figure, a great orator, and someone who moved the needle with conservative audiences. But I did not always see Kirk this way.

Charlie Kirk’s emergence was not something I welcomed back in 2017. As a college student then, I did not value campus organizations and saw them as glorifying the “college experience,” which funded liberalism. So I was neither a fan of TPUSA, YAL, YAF, or College Republicans. My view of Charlie Kirk was that I detested his social media for being generally shallow and I compared him to Candace Owens without the tokenism. The first moment that changed that is when I heard him speak (I forget who interviewed him), and I wondered why his tweets don’t sound like this.

But Charlie Kirk remained viewed with suspicion. During the 2019 Groyper Wars, I found myself closer aligned with the Groypers who challenged the gay conservatism advocated by Kirk, who defended buttpirates like Rob Smith as conservatives. But these events changed Charlie Kirk.

Charlie Kirk was not like the multitude of grifters on the right. Charlie Kirk would adopt the talking points of those to his right on a multitude of issues. Kirk leaned more into Christianity, and TPUSA Faith, however flawed, was an outgrowth of that. But Charlie Kirk would move to the right on immigration, civil rights, nationalism, and even acknowledge the role of Jews in liberalism.

Zionism, going forward, would have been the biggest criticism of Kirk. Steeped in dispensationalism, it was the major non-right-wing view held openly by Kirk. I believe had he lived long enough, his views on this would have changed.

Nevertheless, some might criticize Charlie Kirk for flip-flopping. But Charlie Kirk started out in a much different movement. Almost everyone’s politics (not convictions) has changed in the last ten years, as events like that in 2020 have forced us to update our political operating systems to adapt to the times. Charlie Kirk was no different. Moreover, he read the room, was in touch with the movement, and even though he was a much more moderate voice and temperament, he never stopped learning.

Charlie Kirk’s willingness to continue learning and develop his views based on argumentative merit and new information was paired with a brilliant talent for articulating them. This combination made Charlie Kirk invaluable to the movement.

And I would be remiss for neglecting to mention that Charlie Kirk had the heart for evangelism and increasingly made the gospel a prominent message to his audience. I’ve often said that false teachers get worse over time and not better, but the fruit of Charlie Kirk was a compelling witness for Christ, appreciated by those outside of normiecon, MAGA circles. Well done, good and faithful servant.