One year since Charlie Kirk's assassination | Hour 3

A year ago today, Charlie Kirk was assassinated. And this was shocking. It happened right about, like, right about, it was in the final hour of my show. I believe in the first hour, I had interviewed Charlie's friend, James Lindsay. And two hours later, Charlie Kirk was murdered. James Lindsay that evening wrote a very lengthy piece, which I read from The following day. And the name of that piece was. Catharsis or Civilization. And. James Lindsay has written. Another piece. Published today. A year later. And he said in his first piece. Last year. Catharsis or Civilization. It was a question. He said we have a choice. That choice is stark. and it is everything. Will we pursue the delicious ruin of catharsis, or will we eat our bitter and stand for civilization? Of course, we still have this choice and still face it. This choice is eternal for all men. We all face it constantly. Catharsis or civilization? A year has passed, and we haven't answered. I'm not sure we could, I don't think we got the chance. I don't think we got the chance to even face the question. In the immediate wake of Charlie's murder, an unmistakable light shone out of the darkness of that day like a ray of grief-heavy hope from some corner of heaven. There was this incredible moment of irreducible complexity in which tragedy and possibility lit the faces of a movement, a nation, and the world. Revival appeared around the corner. awakening, perched over the horizon like sunrise. There was a moment in time when many of us thought this horrific tragedy, this robbery of one of our very best, could wake more people up, create a movement towards truth, justice, and saving the West. But it wasn't to be so. In place of opportunity, we got horror. Almost as suddenly as the moment of noble legacy arose, it was consumed by a willful catastrophe of darkness and malicious fire. I, like so many others, have never witnessed anything like it and still cannot process how it unfolded. I stare to this day in shocked awe and grief, not just for my lost friend, but also for the wanton destruction of what almost might have been. And by the way, I agree completely with this. I said this last night on the live stream, I think. I harbor animosity towards the people, yes, on the left, that celebrated, obviously, and they're doing it today. They're holding parties today. The left is holding celebrations for the murder of Charlie Kirk. That's who they are. I know that darkness. Okay. I know what we're dealing with, with that darkness. What the, but the most animosity I have is actually for the people that were quote friends of Charlie Kirk's that were on quote his side that were part of the right that robbed us of what James Lindsay is describing here. Right. This awakening perched over the horizon like sunrise. There was this moment. It was like this outpouring of grief and unity and solidarity and people watching his funeral, people having an awakening to Christ and to God, to faith, to liberty, right? And what now? What have. What have we been watching now for the last year? From people that purport to be his friends. He says, I'm not talking about the debased left, which in far too many corners celebrated and still celebrates and mocks and desecrates, not just this, but everything. Theirs is precisely the darkness that the light of that awful circumstance might have repelled, that its ray threatened to pierce. I'm talking about something else, something far worse, in fact. This monstrosity demands witness it doesn't deserve. Within hours, Shock was fed to conspiracy. Within days, his own friends were tarnishing his legacy and using his memory to push evil. Worst of all, more than a few accounted just weeks before among Charlie's friends and colleagues acted in many respects like evil, Yeah, like by his murder, his main obstacle, they were acting like his murder was the main obstacle had now been removed from their path. That spectacle and the shocking horror of it never seems to end. And by the way, in case you might need me to just crack this code for you, he's talking about people like Candace Owens. He's talking about Candace Owens. And he's talking about Tucker Carlson. the quote-unquote woke right, or the horseshoe right, or the post-liberal right, whatever you want to call them, this is who he's talking about. And there are a lot of them. It's like Charlie Kirk was the obstacle for them. They were just kind of tagging along. He was the glue that was holding this movement together, this coalition. And now that he's gone, they rush through the void. Nothing was and nothing is sacred to this frothing monstrosity. Charlie's vision, his hopes, his aspirations, his organization, his friends, his mentors, the men and women who stood by his side, in some cases to his dying minute, his legacy, and his widow, for God's sake. Nothing sacred. Nothing set aside. Nothing safe. Nothing preserved. Everything devoured. It's simply incomprehensible like an evil of some debauched underworld unleashed upon something too worthy to exist. By the way, if any of these things seem evil, whether it's the celebrating by the left or the monstrosity he's describing on the woke right, if it seems evil, it's because it is. That is what we are seeing. Just in case you need a word for that, That's the word for that. A year ago, on the very evening of Charlie's murder, I asked in that piece, catharsis or civilization? Today, I ask a baser question. Men or monsters? Which are we? Are we men or are we monsters? He's talking about women too here, obviously, but, you know, for alliterative purposes, I'm assuming. Like, I'm not trying to exclude the women. He goes on to say later in this piece, a very lengthy piece, he says, we are religious beings, not necessarily because we recognize God, but because we organize ourselves around what we recognize to be sacred. We can conceive of the set-apart and honor it, and we can do so profoundly that it forms the basis of civilizations. And Charlie understood this. He didn't know it. He didn't think it. He understood it. He lived it. He breathed it. He walked it. He taught it and embodied it and exemplified it. James Lindsay says, I know he did, not just because it's obvious, but because it was Charlie Kirk more than any other human being ever to walk this earth who taught it to me, to my lasting gratitude. Charlie Kirk was a man. not a monster. 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Get assassinated while bringing civil discourse to college campuses? They'll dance on your grave. So that's the darkness. Are we men or are we monsters? Monsters require something else that goes beyond rude brutality, says James Lindsay. Monsters are anti-sacred. Monsters look at what is to be set apart and venerated, kept holy and not desecrated. And what do they do? They profane it. They desecrate it. They do evil to that which is good simply because it is good. They spoil that which is worthy because it is worthy. They do it because they cannot abide it being that which it is, which is holy. The revolting horror of last year, he says, was brought to us by a legion of monsters who did lasting evil to everything Charlie Kirk stood for and much that he loved, to say nothing of what was done to those who loved him. So much that is, not should be, but is, so much that is sacred is was wantonly defiled, not just by Charlie's enemies, for whom he always prayed, but by people we all thought to be his friends, who he also trusted. They're monsters. He was the sworn enemy of the anti-sacred, the rightful defender of truth and justice and goodness and peace. He's not here anymore, though. And painful as it is, it's been long enough for us to realize that this is true. He cannot be our champion against the monsters of this world any longer. This is for us to do, and we must do it. But to do so, we must be men, not monsters. To do that, we must do what he did throughout his life. We must choose to be men, not monsters. We cannot lose hope. And then he goes on in the piece to say, darkness cannot consume light. Light drives out darkness. Darkness or that which produces it can only occlude and obscure. It cannot consume or destroy light. It isn't in its nature. It doesn't have the capacity. Darkness prevails where light isn't. So men must do what monsters will not, and that is to carry light into the shadows. as well as the darker places and make them shine. It is men bearing light that set things apart, set them holy and sacred. As we begin this second year without him, may we make the same right choice. May we choose to be men fallible, but never monsters and choose it again against all temptations day after day after day. I thought that was a, It was a good piece. Again, I'm just giving you the highlights of it. It was a very lengthy piece by James Lindsay. I have it linked in the podcast description. And then there was another piece that was written by Mikey McCoy, who was Charlie Kirk's chief of staff at TPUSA. And he started earlier, and this was also a very lengthy piece, as you can imagine. So he starts off recalling a flight. They were on some small twin engine or twin prop twin propeller plane. And they hit an intense storm and the turbulence was so bad and planes getting thrown back and forth through the air. Lights in the cabin are flickering in and out, lightning crashing all around them. And he said, Charlie and I were the only two people in the cabin. I remember being terrified, looking across at him and yelling, we're going to die. And wondered how on earth he looked so relaxed and And Charlie looked back at me, completely calm and with a big smile, and he said, don't worry, we're not going to die yet. We haven't suffered enough. It was such a Charlie thing to say. Because he understood suffering was not necessarily evidence that life had gone wrong. Suffering could actually shape you. It could humble you. It could deepen your faith, clarify what mattered. and prepare you to carry burdens you're not yet strong enough to bear. Christianity never promises us. A life without suffering. In fact, Scripture repeatedly tells us to expect it. But it also tells us that suffering is not meaningless. Paul writes in Romans, suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. He goes on to say later, Christianity does not ask me to pretend that suffering is good in itself. It gives me something far more hopeful, the assurance that God can bring good through it, that suffering can have meaning, and that even the darkest moments of our lives are not beyond his power to redeem. Over the last few years of Charlie's life in particular, there was one subject that that increasingly seemed to overwhelm all the others. And it was God. Charlie talked about Christ constantly, not because it was useful politically, not because Christianity pulled well with conservatives, and certainly not because someone had told him that it would help build the organization. He was genuinely captivated by God. Charlie would say, the answer is in Genesis 1. Before God, The earth was formless, dark, void, until God entered and brought light. Without God, there is chaos. With God, there is order. Would you rather have a chaotic life or an ordered one? Charlie understood something about America before most people did. He understood that a generation was being formed long before political consultants became obsessed with Gen Z and Charlie was sitting across from them. He went to their campuses. He listened to their arguments. He challenged them. He let them challenge him. Most importantly, he showed up. Again and again and again. He believed enough in young people to tell them things they might hate hearing, and then he let them argue back. Sounds simple now, but it wasn't. He believed young Americans, given a fair fight of ideas instead of another lecture... would rise to the occasion. But his vision was never merely about winning political arguments. Increasingly, he understood that politics is downstream from something far more fundamental. The character, the convictions, and the faith of a people. In that sense, Charlie recognized a truth that the founders themselves understood quite well. John Adams said it. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. We've talked about this. This is a common refrain in conservative talk radio, has been for a long time, and Charlie took this message to kids on colleges who had probably never heard any of this stuff before. Never in their K-12 education, probably not even in churches if they went to them at all. I'm reading from a piece by Mikey McCoy, Charlie Kirk's former chief of staff at Turning Point USA. And he's talking about, in this section of the piece, he's talking about politics being downstream from character, the character, the convictions, and the faith of the people. That's where politics is downstream, right? And that's why Adams made the comment that he did, that the Constitution is made for a moral and religious people. It is inadequate to the government of any other. He also quotes Benjamin Franklin, who was not the most conventionally devout of the founders, who, when the Constitutional Convention reached a dangerous impasse in 1787— Franklin rose and reminded the room that they had once appealed to God for the birth of the nation and asked why they had stopped appealing to him while attempting to preserve it. Franklin said, quote, If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? He said, I have lived a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. That conviction rests at the heart of one of the simplest warnings in Scripture, which is Psalm 127, 1. Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. And Charlie Kirk understood this, that you could win elections and still lose a country. You could build organizations, register voters, elect politicians, win debates, pass legislation, and still watch the civilization beneath those victories decay. Because no political system can indefinitely compensate for the moral collapse of the people who inhabit it. America's constitutional order assumes virtues that it cannot manufacture. I'm going to say that again. This is a very important thought. America's constitutional order assumes virtues it cannot manufacture. No amount of laws. I've talked about this in a different way, which is high-trust, low-trust societies, and as you move to a lower-trust society... You end up having to pass more and more laws. You end up having to, you know, move more and more towards a carceral state because the people are no longer a high trust people. They are abusing each other in all of these different ways. And so in order to try to protect people because they are no longer virtuous and they are no longer self-governing amongst one another, that you then have to have the force of the state coming in to regulate those behaviors. He goes on to say liberty requires self-government and self-government ultimately requires men and women capable of governing themselves. That is why, particularly in the final years of Charlie's life, the distinction between his political mission and his Christian faith became increasingly impossible to make. They were one. They had merged. He did not believe Christianity was useful because it produced better conservatives. He believed Christ was true. And because Christ was true, everything else, politics, culture, family, education, liberty, civilization itself, all of it had to be understood in light of Christ. And then he concludes this piece, or I guess the final piece, section of the piece saying that Charlie Kirk was a builder and he understood that a movement could not survive. If everyone who disagreed on something eventually decided they could no longer stand beside one another on anything, right? You, you think about like you're building anything. You got a work crew out there, right? Building a data center. Sorry. Okay. Housing. Okay. Or, or something else that you, that you prefer. You've got a whole crew of people out there, and they don't all agree on everything. So you need something to unify everybody so they are all working together. They all have their own disagreements and opinions on things, but what is the thing that you are all united in building? Somehow, despite possessing very strong opinions of his own, he was often the person keeping everybody talking. In his absence, I have realized how rare that was. But I have also spent the last year realizing something else. The greatest evidence of Charlie's life is not what disappeared when he died. It's what remained. The students he challenged kept speaking. The pastors he encouraged kept preaching. The people he inspired kept organizing. The young men and women who came to a campus event expecting a political debate and left thinking seriously about God, well, they kept seeking God. That's the strange paradox of losing someone who spent his life pouring himself into other people. Yes, his absence is enormous. But so is the evidence that he was here. He said, I still constantly have moments when something happens and my first thought is, what would Charlie think about this? Or what would Charlie do in this situation? I'm convinced now that instinct will never go away. But after a year... I think I know what Charlie would want us asking instead. What are we going to do about it? Charlie had a remarkable ability to call greatness out of people before they could even see it in themselves. He took risks on people. He gave them responsibility before they were certain that they were even ready for it. He says it was true of himself. He was named chief of staff at age 21 years old, right? Looking back, Mikey McCoy says he was building something that would outlive him, even though none of us ever imagined it would have to. Charlie believed history was made by people who refused to be spectators. He spent his life telling ordinary people they had agency, that courage was contagious, that truth was worth defending, and that one person willing to stand could give someone else permission to stand beside them. Most importantly, he came to understand with increasing clarity that none of it mattered apart from Jesus. All right, so this is Mikey McCoy, who is a chief of staff for Charlie Kirk at Turning Point USA. And in this final portion of his presentation, piece that his essay that he wrote about, you know, the one year anniversary, Charlie Kirk was assassinated a year ago today. In fact, almost precisely at this time, I remember the, we were, we were getting the early report that there was a shooting at the campus where Charlie Kirk was and that he was struck. And that was the only report that we had before we signed off for the day. And McCoy says, looking back, Oh, sorry, this is the final portion. He's talking about Charlie Kirk was a builder, right? He says, looking back, he was building something that would outlive him, even though none of us ever imagined that it would have to. And that Charlie believed courage was contagious. Truth was worth defending. And he came to understand with increasing clarity that none of it mattered apart from Jesus. When Charlie described a world without God as formless, dark, and void, chaos, right? And a world into which God enters as one transformed by light and order. That wasn't just an observation about civilization. It was the conviction by which Charlie increasingly lived his life. Remembering Charlie cannot only mean looking backwards. It also means asking what those of us who remain are going to do with what he left us. Love your family. Have the difficult conversations. Tell the truth when it costs you something. Stand when it would be easier to sit down. Forgive people. Bring people together. Take the risk on somebody. Refuse to be a spectator. And above all, put Christ at the center of it. Again, Charlie spent his life building people, building an organization, building a movement, building faith. building courage, building something he believed was bigger than himself. He spent his life convincing people that they did not have to sit on the sidelines and watch history happen to them. So perhaps the best way to remember Charlie Kirk is not only to keep asking what Charlie would have done, but is also to become the kind of people he believed we could be. He said, there is still an empty chair here, but there are millions of people standing. Charlie spent his life building something that was never supposed to end with Charlie, and it hasn't. So, those two pieces that I just read to you are the highlights of both of those pieces, from James Lindsay, friend of Charlie Kirk's, Mikey McCoy, his chief of staff. Choose to be Man, not monster. And build. Right? And be the change. Build people. Build faith. Build movements. Right? That's what I have been trying to do as well. Not because I had any insight to what these guys were writing. But when I read these pieces, it articulated my view on what it is that I do. That's what I'm trying to do. And that's what you can do, too. People usually ask me, right? I get it. You know, we complain about stuff. We read the news. We're like, ah, so angry. And it's usually like, well, what can I do? And I will ask people, well, like, what have you done? And more often than not, people tell me nothing. Like they say that they haven't done anything. I remember one time I had a guy call and he was so angry and frustrated and I asked him what he did to affect any of these changes and he said, well, I'm calling your show. And I do appreciate that. But what actual change are you having in calling the. Show, right? There's more you can do than calling the show, sitting on hold, getting, you know, on the air for a couple minutes. Like, if it's in politics, are you knocking on doors? You phone banking, that kind of stuff? Volunteering to watch the polls, to work at the polls? Are you donating money to a campaign? For somebody you believe in, not just, you know, throw, oh, here's my money, whatever, and now I've done my part. And it doesn't have to be politics. I've talked often enough here about. My, you know, volunteering to work at the HOA to try to help the neighborhood. Like, I'm trying to help. I'm trying to build something there to right that ship. Is it in your church? Does your church need help? Are you doing work for the church? Are you involved in any civic organizations? These are all things that you can do, that people can do to help build up the community and the people around us. to bring light into darkness. And when you encounter the darkness in the form of, you know, people like today who are celebrating Charlie's death, have the difficult conversation with them, ask them to explain why they could hate someone they never knew. So that's my advice. It's not even really my advice. It's advice from James and Mikey, but, hopefully this gives you some sort of insight and hopefully some comfort, but also maybe some direction. Be a builder and be a man, not a monster. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to the Pete calendar show.com again. Thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.