Charlie Kirk.
Most of the media coverage of Charlie Kirk in the days after his assassination on the campus of Utah Valley University focused on his political opinions, his political influence.
But that misses the biggest reasons that Kirk was so influential and the reason why his murder is so important.
In my opinion, it will be a pivotal moment for years to come. Scores of people are contacting me every day, talking about how Kirk’s assassination has affected them — how it makes them want to do something, even if they aren’t sure what that something should be.
Kirk’s effect was bigger and broader than politics. It operated on a cultural level. He aimed to revive and restore what it means to be a person in America, what it means to be part of a family, part of a community, part of nation. He used the pursuit of truth — not personal “truth” but transcendent and eternal truth — as his mechanism for that rediscovery and restoration.
Kirk wisely chose college and university campuses as his preferred locations for conversation and debate. He welcomed young people to challenge him (and themselves) about core beliefs and controversial issues of the day. These debates and conversations were a sly indictment of the institutions on whose grounds they took place. Kirk was making the point that colleges and universities have fallen away from their original purpose as centers for inquiry and free exchange of ideas. Too many have become the opposite of that, factories of rigid ideology and conformist thinking.
Kirk used the Socratic method in his conversations. He asked penetrating questions, aimed at peeling away layers of preconceptions, assumptions, cant and confusion that often cloud young people’s (and all people’s) thinking. Socratic questions are a technique that good teachers can learn but, with Kirk, they seemed to come naturally. Some of the most striking moments in his videos of the campus conversations come when young people answering Kirk’s questions begin to see the flaws in their arguments. This is real learning. And, I believe, one of the reasons that so many young people were drawn to Kirk. Young people want to learn.
This was all the more remarkable because Kirk himself was not formally educated. He didn’t have any advanced degrees — he didn’t even have a college degree. Yet, when he traveled to England and debated students and instructors at Oxford University, he bested the bunch. How did he manage this? By developing a calm resolve that comes from checking one’s ego and serving a transcendent truth that’s greater than individual biases or foibles that we all, as people, have.
Kirk’s calm resolve came from his devout religious belief. For people of faith, religion is usually their source of calm. But it can come from other types of belief — philosophical, psychological, nonspecific “spiritual.” Political beliefs, on the other hand, don’t usually provide it. Politics is inherently transactional, temporary. Not transcendent.
Kirk’s calm resolve and focus on transcendent truth are more reasons that young people were drawn to him. They recognized these qualities as strengths. They wanted to emulate them. Importantly, these strengths are the reason that so many of Kirk’s critics hate him so viciously. They also recognize his strengths but, rather than wanting to emulate them, Kirk’s critics fear them.
That fear is why so many of Kirk’s critics are drawn to violence — either violent rhetoric, as in the weird “celebrating” they indulged in after he was killed, or violent action. Their fear is weakness and their weakness breeds anger and shame.
I knew Charlie Kirk very slightly. We met and talked a couple of times, at a big dinner a few years ago in Yakima and at one of his campus events. I’m not sure he remembered my name — but he did greet me once as “the Republican from Washington state.”
The last time we talked was last summer at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. It wasn’t scheduled or planned. We ended up standing next to each other for a moment in a curtained hallway on the floor of the basketball arena where the Convention was being held. A few days earlier, Donald Trump had been shot at a rally in Pennsylvania and suffered what turned out to be minor injuries. People were on high alert. I mentioned that legislators in Olympia were concerned about copycat violence and asked Kirk if the attack on the president was making him rethink his security processes. (There were what seemed to be bodyguards standing nearby. And they weren’t with me.)
Kirk nodded and said something casual about how there’s always risk. His words were less memorable than his demeanor. I remember his calm and resolve. He seemed to accept that the risk of violence was part of the public life that he’d chosen to live. Part of the price of serving the truth, no matter how much the truth scares or angers or shames some people. He seemed reconciled to that risk.
His calm resolve was powerful. It’s what I’ll never forget about Charlie Kirk.
State Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen, is the chair of the Washington state Republican Party.
