It feels like just yesterday that America lost Charlie Kirk.
I remember every detail vividly.
Charlie and I were in daily contact that week, as he prepared for his next national campus speaking tour.
I was part of an intimate Zoom meeting he had organized the night prior to its first stop, at Utah Valley University.
Less than 24 hours later, it was the site of his murder.
Everything about the assassination was astonishing: the unconscionable security failure from the campus police and Charlie’s detail, the fact he was killed while modeling robust and respectful debate, the utterly depraved nature of the act, and the apparent transgender-related motive of the accused killer.
I broke down in tears when I heard the news. One year later, it still feels like a bad dream.
Charlie died as a martyr for free speech, a bedrock ideal of the country he loved so much.
He was a thought leader, an institution builder and a grassroots-mobilization visionary.
The cranks and kooks overrunning the online Right today are a sad testament to the void he left behind: Charlie, the guardian of the floodgates, was the conservative coalition’s indispensable man.
I feel Charlie’s glaring absence every day.
And one year later, it’s clear that far too many Americans still haven’t learned the right lessons from his martyrdom.
The first of these: the essential importance of free speech.
When Charlie was killed, he was sitting under a canopy emblazoned with his slogan, “Prove me wrong.”
All he ever wanted to do was have a conversation — especially with the liberals who disagreed with him.
Charlie exposed lefty logical fallacies and shattered socialist shibboleths, but he always did so with poise, grace and a winsome smile on his face.
A society that cannot abide polite conversations about the pressing issues of the day is a society that cannot endure.
That’s especially true when the faction of society (SET ITAL)most(END ITAL) unwilling to abide such a conversation is its would-be future leaders — namely, university students.
Americans established our system of free speech because we care about the truth.
We protect free speech because we believe open debate helps us discover what the truth actually is.
That’s the whole point of Socratic dialogue — named after another wise man who died because he asked tough questions.
But if you reject truth, as so many in the woke mob do, you must reject free speech too.
One year later, has anything changed? It doesn’t seem so.
In the final year of his life, for example, Charlie was outspoken in warning about the dangers of radical Islam.
Today, as Abdul El-Sayed runs for Senate in Michigan and New York City commemorates the 25th anniversary of 9/11 with Mayor Zohran Mamdani at its helm, America is being forced to have that conversation.
The response has been telling: Lots of hysterical leftist cries of “Islamophobia,” and little meaningful exchange of ideas.
The militant Left would still rather shut down dissident speech — by any means necessary.
The second lesson of Charlie’s loss: the sanctity of human life.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk — like the attempts on President Donald Trump’s life and the cold-blooded killing of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson — was welcomed with glee by many on the far Left.
It was a grisly reminder of the leftist violent streak that goes back as far as the guillotine of revolutionary France.
One might have thought that this year, the 250th anniversary of that great American affirmation of the right to life as the first of all “self-evident” truths, would prove an opportune time to step back from the ghoulish brink.
If anything, the opposite has happened.
The Lindsay Clancy criminal trial in Massachusetts has exposed just how far some Americans have gone in their complete rejection of the value of human life — and their macabre celebration of death itself.
For weeks outside the courthouse in Plymouth, Massachusetts, throngs of adoring Clancy fans gathered to cheer her on.
They welcomed her defense attorney like a prizefighter entering the ring, or a rock star walking out on stage.
Except Clancy isn’t Mike Tyson or Paul McCartney — far, far from it.
She is a heinous murderer who killed her three children in the coldest blood imaginable.
But that wasn’t convincing enough for the jury, which deadlocked.
It seems many of our fellow Americans no longer care about the truth, or value life.
Rather, many are content to live by lies — and to glorify no longer living at all.
Charlie Kirk, on the other hand, resisted that depravity.
Even in death, he can still teach so much — at least for those willing to listen.
To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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