Rather Than Fight Over Charlie Kirk, Learn from Him

In the year since Charlie Kirk was assassinated, there has been a unity never felt among conservatives: People went back to where Kirk was assassinated and picked up the microphone—literally—by engaging with students on the pressing issues of the day. Conservative podcasters, pundits, and politicians put aside their differences. They instead fully focused on significantly curtailing immigration, increasing the conservative vote, reducing abortion, and increasing one’s understanding of the Constitution, the country’s founding, and American culture. Kirk also examined many other topics, including the dangers of socialism, the problems of high home and grocery prices, the importance of decreasing our spending abroad while increasing our spending for the American people, and the need for Christianity. Surely Kirk has looked down in pride at the legacy that conservatives have championed in the aftermath of his assassination.

Of course, the preceding narrative is mostly false. In the year since Kirk’s death, conservatives have been anything but unified. Instead of carrying on what Kirk fought for, they have used the “delirium of national grief” to fight against each other, to more heavily gatekeep who is a true conservative, and to monetize conspiracy theories about who killed Kirk. The assassination of Kirk has led us to make the same mistake previous assassinations have wrought: We “memorialize a martyred leader by insisting on (or assenting to) a radicalized version, a sympathetic caricature, of the views [we] attribute to him.”

Despite these mistakes, only one year has passed, and there is still an opportunity to correct our wrongs and begin anew by focusing on what Kirk stood for. To aid in this effort, this essay will look at six foundational characteristics Kirk championed.   

Put God First

Just over a month after Kirk was assassinated, the organization he co-founded, Turning Point USA, put out a list of “31 ways to live like Charlie Kirk.” Organizing this list creates six themes, with one clearly standing out: put God first. Included in this are calls to “honor the sabbath,” “send Scripture to friends,” “go to church,” and “read your Bible every day.” Kirk understood that freedom and justice were sourced from Christ, who is the giver of “ [e]very good gift and every perfect gift” (James 1:17).  

Kirk insisted that “we need to be very clear to preach Jesus Christ to a broken world.” But Kirk knew that political issues were a gateway to lead people to Christ. He did not just engage in politics for politics’ sake, but recognized that “once people start drinking from the streams of liberty, they’re gonna wanna find its source. And liberty is not man’s idea, it’s God’s idea.” Thus, to Kirk, politics is a means by which we can lead people to Christ, and therefore we should not be afraid to engage in political issues, even controversial ones. 

The application for us is two-fold: We must put God first by being diligent ourselves in reading Scripture, attending church, honoring the sabbath, and engaging with others on Scripture. Yet at the same time, we must stop thinking that political issues are divorced from Christ. Instead, properly oriented political issues can lead people—both believers and nonbelievers—closer to Christ. In this way, Christianity and politics are a bidirectional causal relationship, where putting God first causes our politics to improve, and improving our politics helps us put God first.   

Govern Your Body

The second emergent theme from the “31 ways to live like Charlie Kirk” is to govern your body. This theme includes things like “work out,” “get sun,” “touch grass and get out in nature,” and “get 8 hours of sleep.” I think Kirk would agree with Roger Scruton that “[w]e live in a virtual world. TV, computer screens and the simmering background of comforts create an illusion of well-being with the bare minimum of physical and spiritual exertion. Our remoteness from the natural order is ever increasing. And our awareness of what this means is ever less.” The application for our lives is simple: We should increase our awareness of the natural order by eating better, working out, and reconnecting with nature.     

Get Married and Have Kids

A common refrain from Kirk is the third theme: get married and have kids. According to Pew Research Center, “25% of 40-year-olds in the United States had never been married,” which is a “record high.” Having kids follows a similar pattern: “In the U.S. . . . fertility rates [have] plunged rapidly to a record low of roughly 1.6.” Conservatives should have strong families because “without this primary association others are able neither to arise nor to endure.” Perhaps one reason why marriage and kids have declined in modern society is that they are not always easy. Yet we should be encouraged by Thomas Traherne that, similar to virtues, marriage and kids “in the beginning are like green fruits, sour and imperfect, but their maturity is accompanied with sweetness and delight.” The application is to create well-ordered and enduring families, from which we will find great “sweetness and delight” in the future.         

Increase Your Knowledge

Although Charlie Kirk never graduated college, he certainly knew more than many college graduates. At Kirk’s memorial, Hillsdale College president Larry P. Arnn recounted how Kirk texted him 31 times a certificate showing he had completed another Hillsdale College online course. Kirk would meet with Frank Turek to discuss apologetics. He knew the Constitution well. He could rattle off facts on a wide range of topics. 

Kirk also knew how to engage in persuasive dialogue: When he would engage college students on campus, he would often (a) seek common ground, (b) ask for evidence (while providing his own), (c) ask for definitions (without clear definitions, one just talks in circles with others), (d) ask these students about what matters to them, (e) change how issues were framed so that others can see it from a new perspective. Kirk had not only mastered facts, but he had also mastered rhetoric. 

This fourth theme from Kirk centers on increasing your knowledge and includes calls to “have conversations with people you disagree with,” “carry a pocket constitution,” “outwork your enemy,” and “learn something new every day.” Kirk ran one of the largest conservative youth organizations, traveled all over for speaking engagements and debates, podcasted, led a family, and still found time to be diligent in his learning. He took 31 Hillsdale Online courses; how many have you or I taken in the year since his death? Are we serious about listening to Kirk, or are we content to change nothing about our lives? The application from this theme is to not be “destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6).  

Be Bold

The fifth theme is to be bold, and contains the sub-characteristics of “never surrender,” “stand up for your beliefs,” “be bold and courageous,” “don’t be afraid of what others think of you,” and “pick up the mic.” Kirk had boldness in spades and was ultimately killed for this courage. We might categorize this theme as men with chests—those who are not “afraid of what others think,” not because they have an inflated intellect or intense emotions, but because they have learned that the “head rules the belly through the chest.” In simpler terms, bold individuals do not flinch because they have developed “emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments.” The application for our lives is two-fold: become stable and do not flinch.     

Reconfigure Ratios

The sixth and final theme is to reconfigure ratios. Sub-characteristics would be to “journal every day,” “limit your social media intake,” and “register to vote.” The application here is to examine our ratios of time, giving good habits more of our time and bad habits less of our time.

Conclusion

“He can’t be replaced,” Larry P. Arnn correctly noted at Kirk’s memorial. And because conservatives knew they could not replace Kirk, they decided instead to use him to stir up conspiracies, to gain followers, to gatekeep, and to advance agendas. The left has capitalized on this discord in the aftermath of Kirk’s assassination. One brazen example was when Hasan Piker ridiculed Kirk by singing, “Hail to Charlie Kirk… Together unbroken, we’ll make heaven known.”

Instead of using Kirk, conservatives should have done as he said, picked up the mic, and continued to champion his characteristics. We will never replace him, but we can try to mimic what he did and what he stood for. The hope of this essay is that these six foundational characteristics of Kirk would become a guide from which we can begin to replicate Kirk’s characteristics in our own lives.  

At the end of the day, Charlie Kirk did want to make heaven known. We must do better in the second year after his assassination if we want an increased chance of making this a reality instead of just a mockery.