Posted on 09/24/2025 8:19:36 AM PDT by Starman417
I saw Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow speak at his memorial on Sunday. She was magnificent. She promised to keep Charlie’s mission going. I pray that she is able to. But those are some big shoes to fill…
One never knows for sure beforehand, but I think Charlie Kirk’s assassination may be something of a tipping point in American politics and culture, or, at a minimum, an inflection point. Why? Because Charlie wasn’t a radical, he wasn’t a firebrand, he wasn’t a bomb thrower… No, Charlie was—in a relative sense—a lamb. And now, that lamb has been slaughtered.
While Charlie was a brilliant speaker, his true genius was his willingness to engage almost anyone and do so on their terms, using their own words. We’ve all seen videos of Charlie sitting at a table or standing on a podium at some random college, engaging with students or activists. Typically, Charlie would allow the students to ask questions or make an argument and then respond accordingly. Usually quite brilliantly, always politely.
In all honesty, I sometimes felt bad for his interlocutors, who were often young and brainwashed and had to stand and have their arguments dismantled in front of their peers. While it may have done them some good in the long run, for that moment, it almost certainly didn’t feel like it.
Charlie was easily one of the bravest men on America’s political and cultural battlefield. Why? Because he made it his stock in trade regularly to go into the lion’s den, armed only with a microphone and a brilliant mind for defense. And when I say lion’s den, I mean academia, where the left has been minting young communists for half a century.
When I was in college in the ’80s and ’90s, when a sliver of normalcy still remained and the cancer of politics had not infected every element of life, there was no one doing what Charlie was doing. Thirty years later, when the left had transformed every aspect of American life, from sports to media to scouting to Halloween—and, especially, education—into a political minefield, Charlie went in and engaged with students and professors on their home turf. He usually came away the victor. He did so utilizing a combination of facts and the Socratic method that left the person with whom he was engaging wondering what had just happened, and often humbled.
Charlie was extraordinarily effective, both in engaging with the public and also, and perhaps more importantly, motivating young people on campuses across the country to follow his lead, to stand up and engage in debate from a conservative, patriotic, Christian perspective, something that had largely been erased from most universities by the early part of the 21st century.
The vehicle for Charlie’s evangelism of conservative principles was Turning Point USA, an organization he co-founded in 2012 at the age of eighteen. A little over a decade later, TPUSA is one of the most important organizations in the American political landscape, having over 800 college and university chapters across the country and running programs and summit events every year.
Over that time, Charlie and TPUSA have been responsible for inspiring millions of young people to throw off the radical leftist straitjackets that academia sought to keep them in. Indeed, looking at the shift of young people, particularly young men, to the right, it’s clear that he was one of the movement’s most important catalysts in propelling Donald Trump back to the White House in 2024.
Charlie Kirk was attractive, engaging, effective, and brave. And the left killed him for it because violence is all that the left has to offer. As Charlie demonstrated every time he took to a podium to speak or a table to debate, words, eloquently delivered, with passion and supported by facts, can be a powerful weapon in the battle of ideas and policy. The left had no good answer to Charlie. Sure, they have passion, and they sometimes have eloquence, but they rarely have facts or reality on their side, and even less often, common sense.
For the left, because Charlie was such a successful shepherd of young men and women, he had to be eliminated.
Whether it’s rioting and burning down cities across the country, using mob tactics to intimidate speakers and politicians, or literally killing their opponents, the left in America has lost its battle for the mind of the American man...and woman. In the world of ideas, the left has lost the debate and has nothing left to offer but violence, and the killing of Charlie Kirk is the ultimate example of exactly that.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
“tipping point in American politics”
What delusion. In special elections yesterday in both Charlie Kirk’s AZ and in Atlanta’s norther suburbs the Democrats out-performed and did better than usual. The Republican candidates under-performed.
So far recent events have motivated the left and not the right. Especially of note recent events have not motivated the right to wage an effective ground game. In Atlanta’s northern suburbs the Democrats out-performed because they had an effective ground game.
When one side has a ground game and the other doesn’t, the voters feel neglected, ignored by their own alleged friends.
As long as one man can “marry” another man, we are on the wrong path. Nothing matters until we fix this.
I hear 'ya brother.
Democrats won in heavily Dem districts - dammit.
Wake me up when Republicans control the House, Senate, and Presidency....
Wake me up when Republicans control the House, Senate, and Presidency....
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Wake up!
I was mainly being a bit sarcastic with Eeyore, AKA “spintreebob”.
Sorry. I can agree about the sarcasm in that case. Trump has them in line pretty much, though.
Dem won in Dem AZ district. Rep won in GA Rep district. The subject isn’t who won or lost. The subject is the change in margin...the trend.
The Dems gained more in the Dem AZ district. If that continues the statewide races are less winnable for Republicans. The Dems gained more in GA district. If that continues the statewide races are less winnable for Republicans.
He is GA it was most noticeable that the Dems worked for their candidate. The Republicans sat on their fat a....s and did not campaign.
In my experience, my door-to-door effort in off-year elections was very valuable to acquire knowledge of voters for the major elections.
Quit the religious proselytizing. You’re sounding like Islam.
We can recover without signing into any religion. Just embrace the Judeo/Christian values embodied in the Constitution. That is enough.
If the “recovery” is styled as religious, every conservative will walk away from it. Walk beside us, we Americans, not in front.
Just heard Dennis Prager use a saying from lumberjacks to describe Charlie Kirk’s ongoing and future impact on the world.
“You never really know the height of a tree, until it falls.”
Democrats out-performed
Reminds me of 2020
But there was at least one person walking around the circular benches under the massive oak tree in the college quadrangle interpreting quotes from Chairman Mao's little Red Book for all to hear.
George Floyd and Charlie Kirk had the same birthday, October 14. It is like a good vs. evil day!
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