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There have been several, just in my lifetime. The assassination of JFK is probably the most important one, because it opened the way for the others: September 11 and the nothing-to-see-here Epstein files are two other rather obvious such turning points – maybe better to call these inflection points of greater acceleration…but that would kind of mess up the use of my title to this post.
Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Did I even need to write that this event is what has prompted this post, given the title? Many thoughts come to mind, but I will stick to a couple of quotes from Angelo Codevilla, who I have written about often over the last several years – even before Trump’s first election nine years ago. So, here goes.
This he wrote even before Trump’s first victory in 2016:
We have stepped over the threshold of a revolution. It is difficult to imagine how we might step back, and futile to speculate where it will end. Our ruling class’s malfeasance, combined with insult, brought it about. Donald Trump did not cause it and is by no means its ultimate manifestation. Regardless of who wins in 2016, this revolution’s sentiments will grow in volume and intensity, and are sure to empower politicians likely to make Americans nostalgic for Donald Trump’s moderation.
This from a few weeks after Trump’s first inauguration:
Hear me…you see the entire ruling class essentially rejecting the Constitution, the American way, rejecting the legitimacy of elections. There can be no mild response to that, and there isn’t one. Trump’s voters want certain results and they don’t particularly care how they get them. The ruling class wants its power and doesn’t particularly care how it holds on to it.
This also from around the same time:
In short, the P.C. “changes in law and public norms” (to quote Galston again) that the ruling class imposed on the rest of America, rather than having “gradually brought about changes in private attitudes across partisan and ideological lines” as the ruling class imagined (and as Gramsci would have approved) have set off a revolution—of which we can be sure only that it won’t be pretty.
What do all of these have to do with Charlie Kirk? (Oh, and let’s not forget the image of a young Ukrainian female refugee knifed while on public transit in Charlotte, and the reaction this has caused.)
Charlie Kirk was just talking. He held no involuntary authority over anyone. No one was forced to do as he said, or even to listen to him. He was not a politician; he did not manipulate the suffering masses to be pawns in his game.
He was just talking.
No, I didn’t agree with him on everything, but he moved the conversation in America in a better direction, and he did it the way it should be done – by just talking.
Charlie Kirk was to be just such a voice for the next forty years. Now? We get to hear mainstream media talk about how he supported gun rights so he kind of deserved it, just a few days after they told us that the system failed the black man who came up behind a white woman and stabbed her. And, by the way, here is the background of the system that failed him.
Someday, true conservatives (not the ones who merely wear the “R” label out of convenience, or the ones that support some tiny speck in the Middle East no matter what) are going to decide that Trump’s “moderation” is not going to get the result they want, and they want their results and don’t particularly care how they get them; it most certainly will not be pretty.
They know how to shoot back, and they are way better at it. And, even though much of what they do is destructive, most people in the military and in law enforcement lean conservative and not kooky.
With that said, all of us are being set up by the elite written of by Codevilla.
Conclusion
A 31-year-old young man, a husband, a father of two, was assassinated for talking. This word combination can’t be real, but it is.
Christ or chaos. We each face this choice in our personal lives, and as a society the choice is no different. I pray we move toward Christ, but it seems we are being ever-increasingly pushed (manipulated) toward chaos.
The last set of years, 2020-2025, has been similar to the rise of the New Left in the late 1960s. It culminated in the violent years of 1968-1970. It led to the election of Nixon and I think even Carter was a reaction against the violent left. Then we got Reagan.
ReplyDeleteBut the problem was that the left radicals were never really dealt with. Popular opinion shifted greatly against hippies and commies, and the problem seemed to solve itself. The government cracked down on public protests and arrested a few radicals like the Weather Underground. The police killed Kent St students and the subversives went underground.
But the architects of the New Left, the Frankfurt School professors and Herbert Marcuse were left in place to poison the minds of the next generation. The evil stayed incubated for about 40 years. But then when Obama was elected he took the radical left ideology out of the universities and implemented it into government policy.
The big question is how far the right will let them go, and will they be willing to remove the ideological cancer from universities. I'm not sure how to do that in a way that respects natural rights, but I think we must find a way to protect natural law from those who are tearing it down. There has to be a way that threads the needle.
"I'm not sure how to do that in a way that respects natural rights,..."
DeleteI don't think it can be done because too many people, both those in government/power control systems and those who want to be, have no respect for nor any desire to solve this according to natural law and the respect for natural rights. It will only be done forcefully and violently with many, many unnecessary, unjustifiable transgressions along the way. Everyone is in danger from the backlash.
The bigger question is how far the conservative right will go now that the pendulum is swinging in their direction. One thing seems sure--there will be over-reaction and the New Powers That Be will go too far in the opposite direction, causing backlash of its own and further intensifying the social division, chaos, and desire to rectify situations using politically motivated force and violence.
I have said before that present-day America looks like Tsarist Russia of the early 20th century, with multiple factions increasingly turning to violence in order to keep and maintain power or to gain it. I see no reason to change my mind.
Why is there such a hullaballoo over the murder of Charlie Kirk, but very little said about that of Iryna Zarutska? Or, for that matter, the eleven crew members of the boat which Trump blew out of the water with a Hellfire missile, killing all of them? Where is the outrage over those deaths?
ReplyDeleteThink about it. All of these people were killed suddenly, without warning, without cause, without mercy. Two seconds before the missile arrived, the bullet struck, or the knife descended, the victims were oblivious to their imminent demise, then, Boom! Lights out forever. Yet, all we hear about is Charlie Kirk, especially if you tune into the "conservative" side of the blanket. Why?
All I can come up with is that he was one of "ours". He was with us, not them. This smacks of tribalism, the idea that those close to us, those we associate with, and those who think and act like we do, are somehow more special than everyone else. Charlie Kirk's murder hit close to home. Iryna Zarutska's was a blip in the new feed, an item of interest soon to be forgotten, and the fishermen (if that's what they were) belonged to a country which is "our" enemy and probably is one that "we" will soon be at war with. All because Trump, Hegseth, Rubio, and others like them want it.
Murder is murder is murder. Period. However, in our minds and to our depraved and perverted way of thinking, some murders can be justified, excused, even celebrated while others are to mourned, lamented, and wept over.
https://poorrogersalmanac.com/2025/09/11/the-wages-of-sin-is-death-official-or-not/
Roger, Kirk's murder is so much more than these others. Yes, a life is a life, but a movement was in place that could fundamentally transform America (and, from everything I know of it, generally for the better) and its leader was murdered.
DeleteCall Charlie Kirk a symbol of what chance such a movement has without resorting to violence. Yes, we all comment amount the tension in this country and we throw around the term "civil war" as if this is a casual re-enactment.
Kirk's murder is a sign of where we are inevitably headed unless one side just voluntarily and peacefully gives up.
If we are counting lives, yes, murder is murder. If we are examining the possibility of peaceful change for the better, Kirk's murder is infinitely more significant.