Charlie Kirk’s assassination is a test for free speech

On Sept. 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk was assassinated for the political sin of showing up on college campuses across our country and taking and answering questions. These queries came from students and guests, whether they were allies, adversaries, or simply curious-minded Americans exercising their unalienable right to engage in civic discourse openly.

Charlie Kirk was martyred for the free exercise of his First Amendment rights. And the right to free speech, which he championed, was critically wounded in the attack.

Charlie’s influence was huge before he was shot. It appears to be growing by the day in death.

The aftermath marks a turning point in our nation’s “house divided” future.

Taking the torch

Let’s do as Charlie did masterfully and probe the mindset of the other — in this case, that of his assassins and of his like-minded enablers. It was Charlie’s way. It is the Socratic way. It is the Western civ, the American way.

Who will rid us of this meddlesome apostle of free expression?

Progressives don’t like to think of themselves as King Henry II, the man who uttered the fateful words that caused four loyalists to murder Thomas Becket. But where else can their constant denunciations of Republicans as “Nazis” or “fascists” lead?

A young man, who was being groomed to be a moral monster by our culture and the passions it unleashes, heard the dog-whistle call to arms, seized the opportunity of a public event in his home state, and allegedly did what was collectively seen by his ilk as necessary and proper.

To do so, he suspended morality, the rule of law, and human decency to serve what he and too many others see as a higher political purpose. Sadly, this moral madness is what is taught in our nation’s colleges. This is the ethic that guided the global left — paired now with America’s identitarian vanguard —to fundamentally remake America.

Their immoral reasoning not only led to the killing of Charlie Kirk, but it is also the rationale of messianic monsters through the ages. In the 20th century alone, under the guise of National Socialism and global communism, it led to the murder of 100 million people.

Social media has given it another Great Leap Forward. It is the justification for the show trials, the guillotine, the oven, the suicide vest, and the lone sniper.

This assassin’s creed is not for everyone. Only a few have the wherewithal to take this beyond-good-and-evil step. But those who do take things to their evil conclusion do so knowing that those with less nerve but shared adjacency on the ends will find in their partisan hearts that what they did was needed and therefore good, if not praiseworthy.

This is the recipe for political madness and is incompatible with our venerable experiment in self-government that we must now defend in common.

Turning toward the good

What does Charlie Kirk’s assassination portend for our country?

I see the potential of a natural turning point toward the good, the restoration of the First Amendment’s spirit, and a return of political, civic, cultural, religious, and economic toleration. That would be a big rainbow following a storm.

So far, there has been little call for retaliatory violence. So much for the “Hitler Youth” hand-wringing. There have only been completely peaceful prayer vigils. Unlike this assassin’s creed and its enablers, Charlie Kirk’s soul and mind would not allow such a demonic transvaluation of value. His true followers share that moral position. On this point, the partisan calls for moral equivalence don’t hold.

The good news for us, the living, is that Charlie is being honored in death by his followers in a way that gives us all a new political lease on life.

I first heard of his shooting from my 28-year-old son and 18-year-old nephew. They saw Charlie’s execution with their own eyes within moments of it happening and captured the core un-American inhumanity of it all. “A man is gunned down for the thought crime of debating on a college campus.”

“This guy is a family man,” they said. “He has a wife and two young children.”

What happens going forward?

Charlie’s influence was huge before he was shot. It appears to be growing by the day in death. I hope something good is happening in real time. I believe you can see, hear, and feel it.

It turns out that when a public figure with 35 million followers gets assassinated for the whole world to see for simply speaking on a college campus, those who never heard of him — or heard something, good or bad — will naturally check it out themselves.

A national re-examination

A national re-examination may be happening. The curious are finding an immediate and growing corpus that is deconstructing the demonic caricature made of him and are standing up for this smart, fast-talking, civil, and happy man in the very prime of his life.

Charlie’s wife, Erika, gave a speech filled with love and principle that brought tears to those with open hearts. This organization that Charlie dedicated half of his life to is not going anywhere but onward and upward.

RELATED: We all knew political murder was coming home

Photo by Trent Nelson/Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images

Since his assassination, Turning Point USA has received tens of thousands of applications to set up new college chapters. College mandarins in charge of greenlighting or gaslighting student organizations and regulating speech to their Orwellian liking should tread lightly going forward. The Justice Department will be watching.

Charlie is dead but not gone. His happy-warrior spirit and first-rate mind are already immortalized in the cloud. To the legion of young people whose hearts are broken and want to do more, you know that Charlie would want you to follow in his footsteps. The time for being a spectator was canceled with an assassin’s bullet. Today, it is time to stand up, show up, and be like Charlie. You know his mind and his method.

From heaven, Charlie is saying to all those who love him, “Prove me right.”

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.