A year ago, on the afternoon of September 10, 2025, I was 20 feet away when my friend Charlie Kirk was murdered, shot dead for holding a public debate on whatever topics the students of Utah Valley University wanted to talk about. I spent the rest of the day in the waiting room of Timpanogos Hospital, first hoping for a miracle and then coming to grips with the miracle that did not come. I had little to do except reply to the dozens of messages pouring in, asking how I was holding up.
Over and over, I shared how I honestly felt: I was heartbroken, but beyond that, I felt ill, sick to my stomach not just over the friend I had lost in the most horrible way imaginable, but over what it meant for the country Charlie loved so dearly.
America’s freedom of speech is nigh-absolute. It was a right Charlie cherished and endlessly exercised
My body’s instinct didn’t err. One year after Charlie’s murder, it is clearer than ever that his death was calamitous not merely for his particular political or religious faction, but for the nation.
By the time of his death, Charlie was more than a mere political actor. He was the most articulate voice selling America’s youth on an entire alternative way of life. He told young men to get fit, go to church, get a serious job, and marry their girlfriends. He told women to prioritize marriage and family ahead of their careers. He told everyone to shun the temptations not only of drugs and sex but also screens, sloth and nihilism. He preached a vigorous, explicitly Christian gospel without the tinge of either hypocrisy or fanaticism that lays so many other preachers low.
Everything else said of Charlie was true. He was a tremendous organizer, a dogged coalition-builder and immensely talented at putting on flashy, attention-getting events. But all these other skills sat atop the core fact: Charlie Kirk was a tremendously good man, with a good life, and he wanted to make it possible for others to have that same life.
In the last weeks before his death, Charlie sounded the alarm repeatedly about the growing enthusiasm for political violence spreading among the young. The murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson filled him with dread, as did the TikToks celebrating it, the tweets lauding Luigi Mangione’s bravery or good looks, and the polls showing 41 percent of young Americans found Thompson’s murder at least somewhat acceptable.
America needed reform and revitalization, Charlie said, or it would disintegrate into fratricidal violence while online spectators cheered. America’s choice, in his words, was “Mangione-ism or MAGA,” but even this framing made it more partisan than necessary: Charlie genuinely cared not simply about Republican election wins but about translating those wins into reviving the American family and providing new opportunities for the young.
Tyler Robinson could have debated Charlie on that point. He could have approached the microphone and challenged any one of Charlie’s views, whether on transgenderism and sexuality, on religion, on capitalism, or anything else. He could have argued that electing socialists was the only way to revive opportunity for the young. Had he come well-prepared he might have become a brief viral star in his own right, as others who confronted Kirk did.
Charlie would have enjoyed the clash, because Charlie Kirk, above all, believed in the American way. Other countries, in other times, might have their political struggles end in blood. France had its guillotine, Communist states their purges, Latin America its dirty wars, but in America for 250 years, with only a single brief aberration, we have hashed out our differences peacefully. Our freedom of speech is nigh-absolute. It was a right Charlie cherished and endlessly exercised.
“When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence,” he said at one of his campus debates. “Because you start to think the other side is so evil and they lose their humanity.”
A year ago, Tyler Robinson chose to stop talking. Instead, in response to Charlie’s “hatred,” Robinson took his grandfather’s heirloom rifle, drove four hours to Orem, and shot him dead, because the thought of simply arguing the other side was a travesty too much to bear. And out of his rifle poured not just death, but all other kinds of evil.
For those of us who loved Charlie, his death makes him a martyr and an icon. But for those who hated him, his death has become a triumph and a punchline. While hundreds were gathered outside TPUSA’s campus in Phoenix for a prayer vigil one year ago, a resident of the neighboring apartment block went onto his balcony to play Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” as loudly as possible, as well as “Bella Ciao,” the song whose name was found engraved on one of Tyler Robinson’s rifle cartridges.
A person I had known for years, but grown apart from over politics, reached out for the first time in years – to gloat over the murder.
At Turning Point USA’s Women’s Leadership Summit in Texas this summer, a demonstrator outside donned a papier-mâché Charlie head to cartoonishly reenact his death in front of his attendees. Hasan Piker, the most popular streamer on the left and a man Charlie was scheduled to debate just days after his assassination, mocked Charlie’s demise by singing “We Are Charlie Kirk” on stage at an event.
Across the web, jokes about Charlie’s gruesome demise are a perennial favorite of progressives who might otherwise put up yard signs saying “Kindness Is Everything.” People happily dredge up old soundbytes to give a paper-thin justification as to why this is all acceptable – but it is obvious that the joy comes first, the excuses later.
Charlie’s murder was the first politically seismic assassination in America since the 1960s. But even the infamous slayings of that turbulent decade didn’t stoke an enthusiastic fanbase. There was no culture of routinely celebrating politically-driven slayings.
A dark and evil turn in American politics has become that much more thinkable
Armchair psychology (and the Purge series of horror films) posits that people need “release valves,” ways to vent rage or resentment lest it build up and explode. This is a lie. Small amounts of evil do not prevent larger bursts of it. Quite the opposite. Just as those who lie about small things will lie about great things, small works of evil damage the soul, corroding the person until graver and graver wrongs are more comprehensible, acceptable, inevitable. Charlie’s death, and the celebration of it, mean that millions of Americans have seen a young husband and father, who believed absolutely in winning through elections and superior argument, die a horrible death and then have his foes whoop and holler over his corpse. In truth, it matters very little if this is rooted in true hostility or a particularly nihilistic attempt at humour. Either way, a dark and evil turn in American politics has become that much more thinkable.
As everyone knows at this point, other evils came from Charlie’s death besides celebration. For the past year, a collection of podcasters, pundits and influencers have stoked conspiracies about Charlie’s death. In the guise of “investigation” and “asking questions,” they have accused Israel, the Trump administration, Turning Point USA staff and Charlie’s own wife of colluding in Charlie’s murder and a cover-up of the truth afterwards.
The most unbalanced influencers may really believe what they say. But the leading ones, who carefully hedge their words to avoid a lawsuit, clearly know they are wildly accusing innocent people. Why? Some of them quietly despised Charlie while he was alive and saw an opportunity to obliterate his life’s work by crushing his organization and his family.
Some saw the love that poured out for Charlie and his family and felt the envious desire to appropriate that love, or else snuff it out. But the simplest explanation is the most compelling: there was money and attention to be had by doing it.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said that the line dividing good from evil ran through every individual human heart. But in fact, it runs across all of society as well. A powerfully good person can elevate the hearts of everyone around them – the good become great, and even the wretched are shamed into better behavior. Charlie was one of those powerfully good people – and without him, evil has advanced that much further everywhere.
There is only one solution to this: for Charlie Kirk, the martyr, to leave a legacy that can offset the incalculable loss of Charlie Kirk, the man. We have the blueprint for this. America’s fledgling republic succeeded where others failed because George Washington’s selfless example set the tone for every president after him. And of course, in Christian history, lone martyrs are said to have created thousands of believers through their deaths.
The day of Charlie’s death, testimonies poured in from fans and supporters who told us that Charlie had inspired them to be baptized, to get married (or to stay married), to have children they would not have otherwise. Church parishioners across the country described a surge of attendance at Sunday services they hadn’t seen since 9/11, if ever. Catholic priests told me about a rise in confessions, even though Charlie himself was not Catholic. At Turning Point’s Chapter Leaders Summit in July, one attendee after another said they were there, specifically, because Charlie had inspired them.
No one-off debate or essay or viral video will heal the evil that was unleashed one year ago today. Only faith, patriotism, optimism and love can do that. The world needs the virtues of Charlie Kirk – and it has a powerful example to look up to.
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