Charlie Kirk: A Life of Virtue - and Dialogue

Charlie Kirk

A month ago on Facebook, when I posted on my attendence at St Tudno’s old church up on the Great Orme at Llandudno, I mentioned my grandmother’s sage advice to my youthful self: “Find a girl, get a job, go to church.” It seemed innocuous enough at the time. I thought I knew better and went to university instead. My granny was neither an extremist nor a Fascist. Anything but. My granddad was one of the soldiers evacuated from the beach at Dunkirk in 1940, being shipped to India to fight in Burma for the rest of the war. Their practical ethics were "traditional" - commit yourself to something greater than you are, put a shift in, make yourself useful, be honest, don't lie, don't steal, don't cheat, do right by others, raise a family.

Hearing Charlie Kirk being repeatedly described as “controversial”, “far right,” and “extremist,” I went in search of his views. I knew him as the dialogue guy, the person who would ask intelligent questions and invite those being questioned to deliver intelligent answers in response. It was an invitation into critical thinking by way of ancient Socratic technique, and it rested upon an anthropological optimism in recognising that all human beings possess a rational faculty, and ought to use it, both for their own good and for the good of society. It required people that be clear, coherent, and logical in argumentation, offering sound evidence and good reasons for the views they held. Charlie Kirk’s “crime” was being very good at publicly dismantling bad arguments and in the process motivating young people to construct good arguments. A Socrates for our times. He has now suffered something of the same fate. As ever, those who live in falsehood run in fear of being questioned.

I was intrigued to know what was “extremist” about this. I thought critical thinking to be essential to any education worthy of the name. I found that most of what Charlie Kirk promoted is “radical” in the true sense of the word – it goes to and cleaves to the roots of a flourishing life:

• Find meaningful work;

• Get married and stay married;

• Have children and raise a family;

• Love your country;

• Worship God and serve God with your deeds.

Just like my old granny said in those saner times once upon a long ago. These are the foundations of a fulfilling and fulfilled life. But it seems that saying so can now get you killed in the insane times that are now upon us. When his death was announced, Charlie Kirk was described as "controversial," as if he invited his demise on account of the views he held. Charlie Kirk was “controversial” in that he spoke in favour of Christianity, of going to church, marrying and raising a family, keeping communities safe for citizens, of upholding national borders, and of citizen empowerment in face of potentially tyrannical government.

There’s no doubt that Charlie Kirk rubbed some people up the wrong way, particularly those who couldn’t offer good reasons for their views, and who would prefer not be questioned, only obeyed. To get a pertinent answer, Jacob Bronowski said in The Ascent of Man, it is often necessary to ask an impertinent question. Power never likes to be questioned. Charlie Kirk held views which contradicted the prevailing orthodoxy. He thought that men shouldn’t be allowed to enter women’s sports and spaces; he thought that children should be protected from gender ideology and from potential mutilations aided by adults; he argued that a nation requires strong borders and that open borders spell the end of the nation; he argued for life as against the death cults of abortion and euthanasia. These are views that would have been considered normal barely a decade ago, before abnormality was pushed from every captured and corrupted institution and imposed upon all, popular will and consent be damned.

The only thing extreme about any of this lies in being singled out and murdered for having views that deviate from the newly imposed and rigidly enforced orthodoxy. We should take it as significant that Charlie Kirk was murdered at an open and impeccably democratic event inviting one and all into dialogue. He did the same all across America, and at Oxford University and Cambridge in the UK, where he engaged in open debate with people who disagreed with him. He offered a model of civility and reasoned discourse that is increasingly lacking in the failing politics of our day.

These may well be “dangerous” ideas for the reason they establish the foundations of a life worth living – foundations which the technocratic and cultural nihilists pursuing other agendas are seeking to upend – people who can’t bear comparison with counter-examples coming from the past times and from old ways.

We don’t know the motivations of Charlie Kirk’s killer. We do know what motivates those who are celebrating, justifying, and/or rationalising his murder. In advancing traditional views he was challenging new orthodoxies. He was walking and talking in a political minefield. Speaking up on these issues, or merely just raising them to invite others to speak on them, can get you shot. It never does to upset power. The sociopaths who now dominate politics and culture will hope that those Charlie Kirk inspired to speak up in favour of these supports and stabilisers of the ethical social life now curtail their speech, and join others in a mute going along in order to get along. If these things are no longer proclaimed, or are proclaimed by less and less people, then Charlie Kirk’s legacy will be betrayed. And that will condemn us to non-life in a dystopian wasteland in which being a practising Christian, proclaiming traditional family life, and affirming the freedom to speak freely and live in peace in the process are prohibited.

This should be of concern to everyone regardless of differences in political and religious views. We live at a time of widespread abuse and corruption, of increasing indebtedness grace of economies running on empty and governments bereft of solutions, and of an ever extending control and surveillance over people on the part of authorities that have got nothing to offer. The more governments fail, the more power they arrogate to themselves at the centre. All of this is fine, pip, and dandy, though, going by with protests only from the despised proles. But the expression of conservative and Christian values has you branded an “extremist” by liberals and "progressives", who learn and parott their lines all too well, and puts a target on your head if you dare proclaim them publicly. (The people who throw the accusation of “fascist” around need to acquaint themselves with the meaning of the term – the merging of coercive centralised state power and corporate power – the very antithesis of the ethical life upheld by the traditional view, in which power and resources reside at the appropriate level of competence, articulated through subsidiarity and solidarity).

What we are seeing in politics across the Western world are the actions of sociopaths at every level. There are the architects at the top, the engineers carrying out the design, and the apologists and ideologues who supply the words and rationales, the functionaries and footsoldiers of the power regime.

They may seem all-powerful. They are certainly dominant and have captured and corrupted every major institutions. But the resort to force and fraud is a sign of their weakness. They rule by coercion rather than by consent for the reason they are not persuasive and have nothing to offer. They rule by fear, but are frightened themselves. They are terrified because more and more people are seeing through the deceit, are finding their voices, and are pushing back. Power is best preserved by being concealed. More and more, however, these sociopaths are coming into plain sight. And they are terrified. Hence the push for more control, more surveillance; hence the engineering and exploitation of crisis. Many express the view that it is all by design. It may well be. But as these sociopaths become more desperate, they will start taking risks and rolling the dice. Their game is up, for the reason we can see it, can see the playbook. We need to keep looking beyond the surface level to avoid the traps and snares being set. They operate by fear and necessity, forcing changes in behaviour – myriad money grabs, power grabs, and land grabs in an ecology of fear that is organised to drive us into a society of total surveillance and control. With every crisis they engineer and/or exploit, they propose electronic ID cards as the solution. They have no interest in solutions, and let problems go from bad to worse to create a despairing population ready to accept any proposal that may be offered ... for their own good. It's a protection racket without the protection. They rule by fear and division. They set people apart and turn them on one another, have people looking at one another as enemies, to prevent them from joining together on the basis of the traditional supports and stabilisers that built and sustained the essentially self-governing and free social life. We can see clearly how a top-down engineering on the part of would-be universal controllers is doing everything it can to destroy the associational laisser-faire that is the condition of the free society. Charlie Kirk was the moderate option. We should fear that we won’t get any more Charlie Kirks from now on, only warriors in a war that ends in a common ruination. Don’t the bait. And hope against hope that the tools and fools will come back to their senses and reclaim their reason.

War and division are being stoked to set people who should be joined together against one another. Those who do politics 24/7, who make politics their God, and who therefore lose connection to the transcendent standards that orient and inspire political actions to their true ends, end up subservient to power, tools and fools in the service of ends inimical to their own health, freedom, and happiness – and that of others. The moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre described contemporary politics as civil war by other means. The problem is that when politics becomes an end in itself, it is no longer able perform the mediating function that keeps it sane and healthy. When God is supplanted by competing political goods, each a new and jealous god in itself, mediation becomes impossible. Politics is dissensus and disagreement. But when you obtain your standards from politics alone, dialogue becomes impossible – a God-like political good is a non-negotiable truth, running directly against the negotiation and compromise that is at the heart of politics. When one’s own side is unimpeachably good, and all other sides are irredeemably evil, there is no point to dialogue and no possibility of compromise. You no longer learn from others as fellow citizens, you simply fight them as enemies. The loss of the metaphysical underpinnings of politics leaves us mired in the endless and unwinnable war of a 24/7 politics – the death of God as the transcendent source and end of all things is the triumph of power as force and might.

In my book on J.R.R. Tolkien (Tales for Our Times 2023), I write on the technocratic nihilism and inhumanism of the age. The desired end of the would-be universal controllers is the upending of the very things Charlie Kirk spoke in favour of – family, community, the nation, and the Christian faith in which each individual is of equal value. The love of freedom, of community, and of country are bound up with loving thy neighbour. All these are now in the crosshairs as the very things that certain people of money and power want gone. And they are prepared to do anything to see them gone. And people, too. They can’t fight us all, “we the people” are too numerous, and impossible to beat when united. But they can have us fighting one another and eliminating one another. And too many, in an age of 24/7 politics, are quick to enter fight mode, never to come out of it. Charlie Kirk was the moderate option. We should fear that we won’t get any more Charlie Kirks from now on, only warriors in a war that ends in a common ruination. Don’t the bait. Conflict feeds on itself, as people set about settling scores. We need to come back to our senses.

The only way that Charlie Kirk could ever be viewed as an “extremist” is on account of his cleaving to normality and reality at an insane political moment in time, a time in which people have been “educated” out of the sense they were born with. I'm thinking of my granny's advice, which I ignored in favour of a university education that I thought would offer a much better deal than the girl of my dreams, a decent job, and God ... There is education and there is education. From the Latin, educare, education means to draw out essential, innate qualities. Charlie Kirk addressed people as reasoning beings and sought to change minds. (I note that he dropped out of college). He told the truth and shamed the devil.

Like so many, I just feel sick. God have mercy on Charlie Kirk’s soul and on his poor family. And may He also bring to repentance those who foment the hatreds that generate political violence, and who in doing so work to destroy both their country and their own souls (Edward Feser).

In his final X post, Charlie Kirk tweeted an image of the poor Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska who was slaughtered on a train in North Carolina – ignored by the mainstream media - with a picture of her terrified face, which he captions: “America will never be the same.” There needs to be a massive turning around, now – for the Western world as a whole. This cannot go on.

Those either celebrating or justifying Charlie Kirk’s death reveal the soullessness of their morality – their views are shaped only by their politics, their inculcated ideology, and their (toxic) environment. The man was shot in front of his wife and children, and there are people out there who not only seem to welcome it, but openly do precisely that. I'm not sure which are worse. The ones who continue to demonize and dehumanize Charlie Kirk whilst at the same time saying no-one deserves to die miss entirely that it is their dehumanisation and demonisation that leads to political violence. The liberal-left have been doing this for too long, now, failing to see that if you persist in describing people as Hitler and as Nazis and Fascists, others will feel justified in doing violence against them. By now we should have learned that this is as clear a case of projection as there could ever be. This is the godless mindset at work, in which ‘morality’ is no more than a political calculation. When there is no metaphysical underpinning embracing each and all in an ethic greater than politics, there is only us and them, friends and enemies, a zero-sum game that diminishes and ultimately destroys us all.

When people stop talking, that's when you get violence. That's when civil war happens because you start to think the other side is so evil and they lose their humanity. (Charlie Kirk, RIP).