Amid the thousands of takeaways of the brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk, arguably the most important one is the one everybody recognized right away: They killed Charlie not because he was a frightening arch-conservative but because he was, in the main, just a normal guy.
For all his uncompromising conservative beliefs, Charlie was one of the most approachable, obliging conservative voices of the last 50 years of U.S. politics. He was the guy who would talk to anyone. His entire schtick in the conservative sphere was literally talking to people, respectfully and fairly, in public forums. He lived up to that great ideal of citizenship promoted by Theodore Roosevelt: He was not "a mere passenger" but one who "did his share in the work," cheerfully and eagerly.
That is, perhaps, why his death has been so joyously celebrated among so many progressives and liberals. Charlie was unquestionably conservative, unapologetically and vocally, but he was also someone who could engage and interface with progressives and progressive belief, discuss them, debate them, and most importantly even change minds on them. His willingness to both listen and speak to people he disagreed with — to seek out public, respectful political dialogue with people with whom he shared no political beliefs at all — made him a unique public figure in U.S. politics, and a profoundly effective one. Of course progressives hated him.
That is what progressives and far-left ideologues fear most:
Us. The normal conservatives. The men and women who live out their lives with faith, patriotism, devotion to family, hard work.
The Left has a standard list of boogeymen and high-profile targets — outspoken media voices, evil business tycoons, whoever is currently the Republican frontrunner — but their greatest enemies are much less visible:
The mom who's active at PTA meetings.
The grandfather who speaks up at a town hall.
The young man or woman who eschews student debt and gender studies in favor of starting a family and starting a business.
The homeschooling family.
The Catholic elementary school community.
The church group.
The neighborhood association.
This is us. It's our family members, neighbors, friends. It's undoubtedly who Charlie Kirk would have been, had he not pursued his wildly successful career of direct involvement in politics. Just a guy. Like us.
That is why his murder is such a profound wake-up call for the rest of us. Whatever else the pundits say, Charlie was killed not simply because he was extraordinary — though he was — but also because he embodied, and lived, the kind of healthy normalcy that the Left fears the most, the kind of normalcy that easily changes hearts and minds. He was a loving father who doted on his two children whenever he saw them. He was a devoted husband who plainly adored his wife and whom his wife plainly adored. He was a devout Christian. He was happy pretty much all the time. These are the marks of a good, honest, normal life.
Charlie, in other words, was one of us. The shot that killed him was, in fact, a shot at all of us. It should not be mistaken for anything else. And we should respond to this threat not with fear or panic but by staying the course. Live your life — your good, normal life — eagerly and without apology. Model your American, conservative, family-oriented values for the world to see. Become an active member of your community and work to change it, to make it more conservative, better, safer, more normal. Speak up. Be vocal. Be unafraid.
Above all, work to change minds, like Charlie did. Embody and espouse your conservative values, but wherever possible, meet liberals and progressives on their turf, engage with them, talk to them, debate them. As Charlie showed us, it's entirely possible to instigate a major shift in politics based on those simple actions alone, to bring more and more people over to the side of sanity, of rationality, of normalcy.
As details have emerged about the shooter's violent leftwing ideology, particularly in connection to transgenderism, expect the media to try to switch up the news cycle to other topics. This is, after all, what they have done time after time, hoping the public will forget.
Don't let them do it. Don't let them bury this. Keep talking about it with each other. Keep attending events. Keep praying. Keep encouraging one another. Keep holding the people who celebrate murder accountable in your local communities.
While you do these things, remember Charlie Kirk when he was at his best: With his wife and kids, a happy family man, loving and loved, living a very good life. This is the good life lived by millions of us. It's worth living, worth defending, and worth fighting for, as Charlie did.
Go and do that.
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.
