By March Twisdale
Over the past few weeks, we have witnessed the perfect proof that social media can churn up a hurricane of inaccurate memes, cherry-picked quotes, and other sloppily shared content that utterly misconstrues the true breadth and width of a person’s very public and very well documented life.
As the world responded to the dangerous political assassination of Charlie Kirk – which was also the tragic murder of a beloved man, husband, and father – many became concerned. Was Charlie being intentionally maligned? This was followed by a question, “If so, have I been misled?”
And like that, a trope came into being, seemingly overnight. It goes something like this: “I thought I knew this man. Then, I saw how the world was responding. Confused, I sat down and binge-watched dozens and dozens of hours of his content – in long form, unedited – and now I know. I misjudged him.”
Why do so many Americans care so deeply about Charlie Kirk? It’s because America is struggling to bring the voices of the many into our government system. Many Americans feel unheard, and this is especially true of our nation’s working class. The people who build, maintain, protect, and grow our nation.
These people are busy! These people are why your life is so good. Why you have food on the table, a roof that doesn’t leak, toilets that flush, and any goods or services that ever traveled on a truck (that would be 99% of everything, by the way). They are busy with the good work of loving their family, their community, their coworkers, and their country.
And, they have concerns.
In recent years, a politically interwoven network of radical agenda items have coalesced around a specific political party. These dramatic social experiments and those supporting them have gained extraordinary political power very, very quickly. Perhaps worst of all, a concurrent campaign to silence contrary voices has been wielded with extraordinary success.
So many Americans feel incapable of speaking up. Parents wanting to retain loving relationships with their children, health care professionals wanting to remain employed, business owners fearing community boycotts, K-12 students fearful of backlash from teachers and administrators, and college kids hoping to avoid social ostracism from peers as well as the disapproval of deans, professors, and department heads.
Into this new frontier of modern-day censorship and thought-control came Charlie Kirk! To the relief of many, Charlie ignored the naysayers. He began to visit college campuses, with his “Prove Me Wrong” signage and a microphone specifically for those who disagreed with him. “Come to the front of the line,” he said, again and again, for years.
For this, Charlie received a tsunami of death threats, experienced physical violence on campus (and in other public spaces), and after years of character assassination, his life itself was ended by a single assassin’s bullet.
There was exactly one purpose for the landslide of slander, libel, defamation, muckraking, calumny, and character assassination of Charlie Kirk. It was an effort to reduce his voice, to stop him from talking, to … make him unheard. But, Charlie didn’t back down, and this is exactly why so many Americans loved and admired him.
On September 10th, the ideological war against Charlie Kirk escalated to the ultimate act of silencing. On that warm, sunny day, this beautiful and amazing man lost his life to political assassination, his wife lost her beloved and deeply committed husband, their children lost their father, and the American people lost one of the bravest voices of our time. He faced tremendous pressure to shut up, pack it up, go home, and instead – he chose to keep the dialogue open. He chose to live as a freely speaking, thinking, and worshiping American, in spite of the risks.
Here is a full quote from Charlie’s last interview, barely two hours before his assassination on a Utah college campus. That morning, Charlie joined Andrew K. Smith at the Restaurantology Summit by Savory, sharing insights on entrepreneurship and building a movement that endures. Andrew ended the interview by asking Charlie one last question: “What is a quote that you live by?”
Charlie answered with two quotes, one from the bible and one not, saying:
“The first is, not in the Bible, it’s “This too shall pass.” People think it’s in the Bible, but it’s not. It’s King Solomon’s phrase, which is really amazing when you think about it, because it’s good no matter what season of life that you’re in. If you’re going through the worst of times, this too shall pass, and things are gonna get better. If you’re going through the best of times, though – it’s really humbling – this too shall pass, and this will fade away, cause this will not last forever. So, I love that. It’s a time-transcendent truth that applies towards all periods, as an entrepreneur. It humbles you when you need it, it builds you up when you need it, it gives you hope when you need it, and it also give you a little dose of a gut check.
“One of my favorite verses though is Romans 8:28: which just says that, ‘God works all things for good for those who love Him.’ It’s a very freeing and liberating verse for those of us that are Christians, because we believe that when things could be really bad, God is working it for His good – His perfect and pleasing will. Which is a very hard teaching when you come across business closures or staff layoffs, but it’s very liberating that God is working all things toward an ultimate good. So I love that, and it kind of is very freeing that I don’t have to be in charge of everything, um, and there is a God, and I am not Him, and I surrender to His will.”
We love you Charlie. We see you clearly. We hear the totality of your words and thoughts. And, we will speak up for you, as you did all those years for us. We will open our mouths and speak. Bravely. Respectfully. Clearly. With dignity. For ourselves and those speaking with us.
