Charlie Kirk has Fallen – A Martyr for American Patriotism

Arizona has emerged in the past decade positioned squarely on the frontlines of what was popularized by Pat Buchanan in the 1990s as “The Culture War,” a simmering, low-intensity conflict that could be better described as a “Cold Civil War.” It was in the bastion of Phoenix in 2018, where Charlie Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA, headquartered the organization. It is from here that he led from the front and stepped boldly onto the battlefield of ideas at Universities and Colleges nationwide to wage this ideological combat. He was leading from that battlefield for hearts, minds, and souls in Orem, UT, at the Utah Valley University campus, when an assassin’s bullet killed him. And it was in Arizona yesterday that the Arizona State University chapter of Turning Point USA was compelled to cancel its upcoming meeting due to security concerns.

With his assassin still at large, Arizona and the rest of the nation awakened Thursday to grapple with the aftermath of many commentators are calling the most nationally significant assassination since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the cold truth that the safety of peaceful, conservative discourse can no longer be guaranteed.

In a statement posted to Substack, Dr. Owen Anderson, the TPUSA faculty advisor for Arizona State University’s TPUSA Chapter, wrote within an hour of Kirk’s assassination:

“For years, I have watched ASU faculty call Charlie Kirk a white supremacist and whip up hatred against him. The ASU Barrett Honors College refused to let him speak at that college because its faculty called him a white supremacist.

I am the TPUSA faculty advisor for the student club at ASU. We had to cancel our regular meeting tonight out of safety concerns.

I have emailed my dean to ask his plan for guaranteeing the safety of conservatives at ASU. But this is after years of asking him to help stop the radicalization of our faculty meetings and courses.

I will keep you updated on what ASU says.”

Dr. Anderson and his ASU Chapter, which has faced growing and ever more vitriolic on-campus opposition over the past decade, can hardly be blamed for reasonable security precautions in the immediate hours following the assassination of the group’s co-founder. But the cancellation and subsequent silence from ASU on very real concerns for their conservative students’ safety speaks powerfully.

How can the Republic endure when calm, reasoned, peaceful discourse is met with murderous gunfire? 

In the early hours of Thursday, prominent conservative comedian and talk show host Steven Crowder explained to his audience in depth why he ceased hosting table events at university campuses in his now-famous, and similar, “Change My Mind” events. The answer was simple: security, and the ever-increasing threat profile of radical leftists. Journalist and host of TimcastIRL, Tim Pool, expressed that he is canceling future outdoor events as well for the same reason. 

Other hosts, conversely, such as Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro, have publicly discussed continuing and even intensifying University appearances moving forward, albeit with serious security concerns.

Both men, of great popularity among conservative audiences and reviled by the left, employ security details costing them hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Crowder stated that his security expenses in recent years were “at least $2.5 million.” Both men have been “doxxed,” having their personal addresses compromised, necessitating expensive relocations, and both have been repeatedly “SWATted,” with law enforcement bursting into their homes and studios with guns drawn. 

Crowder and Pool are just two examples. There are many. TPUSA event attendees have long been subject to harassment and assault by leftist rioters. One could recall the “Battle of Berkeley,” a series of violent riots surrounding a speech by The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro at UC Berkeley on September 14, 2017, or the murder of Patriot Prayer activist Aaron Danielson in August 2020 in Portland, and the violent attack on commentator Tomi Lahren at a TPUSA event at the University of New Mexico in 2022. 

Most recently, of course, the repeated attempts on the life of President Donald Trump, the first of which took the life of firefighter Corey Comperatore, are the most prominent examples. And then there are billions of dollars of damage in arson and destruction of property since 2016.

As noted by Crowder, the assassination of Kirk was “Awful, evil, avoidable, and enabled” by University and college academics and officials, an enthusiastically complicit mainstream media, as well as elected officials who sympathized with the left politically and socially. This incident, Crowder observed, isn’t the first. It’s just the first attempt that has succeeded against a prominent conservative.

He explained:

“Fight like hell takes on a whole new meaning. Now, just like people have said, you know, they’re not after Trump, they’re after you. He’s in the way. The same can be said for Charlie Kirk. The same can be said for anyone. Anyone who goes out and risks life and limb to express a political opinion, and the other side acts with impunity. They act with impunity. Presidents, of course, both… both sides highest profile person on earth. Show me the last time, let alone multiple times, that a liberal commentator was murdered and assaulted, cuz our side doesn’t do that. And you shouldn’t do that, but you should have no tolerance. It’s real life out there. It’s real life out there, guys. And in the real world, there are psychos. Or as the left refers to them, useful pawns. Useful pawns.” 

Commentator Sara Gonzales of The Blaze commented angrily Thursday, calling back to a 2024 comment from Whoopi Goldberg following the failed assassination attempt against President Trump, “They want to dehumanize us, so they can demonize us. They want to demonize us, so they can kill us. The mainstream media is 100% complicit in Charlie Kirk’s death.”

As conservative voter advocate Scott Pressler asked in a post to X: “How do you coexist with people that want to murder you?”

Charlie Kirk has fallen. A Christian, a patriot, a father, a husband, a son, and yes: a martyr whose death could well be remembered as the most enervating casualty of the cold civil war between the left and the right in America, a slowly, painfully intensifying conflict that has been quietly drawing blood, taking and destroying lives for years, suddenly thrust into sharp, public view in the shocking, brutal murder of one good Arizona man. Not the first casualty on the battlefield, no, but potentially the one that history will remember most.