Free Republic

Charlie Kirk: May He Rest in PeaceCharlie Kirk had a gift for embracing his critics, for refuting their arguments, for harnessing their hatred. He loved debate and he loved ideas. He believed in discussion and openness, and urged this country to open it up so that everyone had a place, not just those who agreed with codified claims of mainstream media. Kirk ran a nationwide debating society, building it from its founding to a huge national presence. His talent for debate, more than any other force in the country, was responsible for President Trump winning the Gen Z vote in...

Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Marks a New EraI first heard Charlie Kirk speak on a bitterly cold February night in 2018 at the University of Michigan. I went to the event out of curiosity, nudged by friends active in campus conservative life. At the time, I saw myself as a different kind of conservative—graduating early, serving as a campus ambassador for a proper, center-right Washington think tank that prized bipartisan respectability. Kirk, just a few years older than I, was the bomb-thrower who never went to college. I was skeptical of where the Right might be headed; Charlie was steering the...