Take the torch forward. Charlie Kirk’s assassination resonates with a kind of timeless horror, not just as a brutal, ideological killing of a “good and faithful servant” – devoted to Christ and lifting hearts – but for other reasons.
Those reasons dog us, refuse to quiet themselves. They lie just below the surface, just out of sight, but are swirling still. We know Charlie’s killing was an attempt to suppress his message, to block free speech in America, to suppress core freedoms.
Days later, I look out my window at trees alive with fluttering green leaves, soon to go bright, mesmerizing us with God’s grandeur, later to carpet the forest floor.
Making sense of what makes no sense, reconciling the horror of a leader’s loss – a moral leader’s loss – is not easy. It has happened before, but it is never easy.
Beyond the Bible, there is no manual for understanding how to bring closure, some positive outcome, from an assassination rooted not in madness but hate.
Many verses in the Bible console. Words from those who have suffered a similar event do that too. They remind us we are not alone. These things happen, evil like a viper strikes, but it also galvanizes generations to fight it.
When Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, hundreds of sermons put fresh conviction in the hearts of Americans. One noted: “The only consolation we have is, in some mysterious way, the death of Abraham Lincoln will work a greater result than his life…The best result we can foresee is the merciless extinguishment of the sentiment” behind the assassination.
This same resolution is heard in Charlie Kirk’s wife, Ericka: “The evildoers responsible for my husband’s assassination have no idea what they have done…If you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea. You have no idea what you have just unleashed across this entire country.”
Likewise, the night Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, Robert F. Kennedy spoke to hundreds from a flatbed truck: “We can move in that direction as a country, greater polarization…filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand…to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand…compassion, and love.”
Referencing his own brother’s assassination, he quoted Aeschylus…
“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.“
“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another…”
He asked for prayers. He was assassinated two months later. But those deaths, JFK, MLK, and RFK, created revulsion for political violence until the 2020s.
What is different now, and what demands elevated commitment to what Charlie Kirk was doing, is the political left’s willingness – in large numbers – to celebrate violence. They have pushed it, boldly reverted to it, and tried to justify it.
Celebrating the death of a good man – is pure evil. Why does this event linger? Because it represents an epiphany: Forces are at work in America that reveal truth, that disdain Christianity, and that hate those who practice both, like us.
What worries me is not the long term. God prevails in the long term. What worries me now is the dehumanization that is being met only by a few. The left pushes violence, coldness of heart, and silence. Like Charlie, we must speak out.
They misunderstand history. They are acting like the Brownshirts in 1930s Germany and the Bolsheviks in early 1900s Russia, trying to impose fear. When a nation loses its compass, the rest follow – security, prosperity, humanity.
The people who celebrate Kirk’s death, the ideological left, are evil. They aim to undermine the Bill of Rights, Christianity, Judaism, and Western Civilization. That is why Charlie Kirk was killed – and why we must stand now. We cannot let those forces silence us. Knowing we must do this is an epiphany for some. But let us gather our strength on Charlie’s example, and take the torch forward.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, Maine attorney, ten-year naval intelligence officer (USNR), and 25-year businessman. He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (North Country Press, 2018), and “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024). He is the National Spokesman for AMAC. Today, he is running to be Maine’s next Governor (please visit BobbyforMaine.com to learn more)!
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