As somebody who was born four floors above and four years after JFK’s murdered body was rushed into the ER in futility, who was immersed in knowledge of his assassination throughout childhood, and who has studied it extensively, along with the killings of RFK and MLK, I know a bit about political violence. We seem to be back into that sort of terrible era again with two attempts on Trump, a couple of state-legislator killings by a sicko in Minnesota, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk last month. [This occurred on my flight to Hawaii for Kilauea Episode 33…more on that later.]

Charlie leaves behind a lovely young widow, Erika, and their two little kids, all because some deranged radical didn’t like his ideals. Must it be this way?

Political violence is evil, absolutely intolerable, and has no place in civil society. Disagreements and grievances should be aired through rational debate and discussion, with logic, reason, facts, and the humility that comes with not having all the answers. That is a nonpartisan statement.

So far, I’ve seen posts from men, women, people of different faiths, nationalities, backgrounds and appearances, mourning the loss of Charlie Kirk. Let their voices ring truest—none I’ve read yet more well-written under intense personal grief than Dennis Prager’s (below), who knew Charlie as a brilliant mind, faithful servant of God, and also, husband and father to a young family.

As an American, as a Jew, and as Dennis, I am devastated at the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The truth is, as I write these words, I can’t believe I am writing them. I am in the denial stage of mourning. As an American, we have lost the most articulate spokesman for America and its unique value system—a country founded to be free, based on Jerusalem and Athens, the Judeo-Christian value system and the Greek emphasis on logic and reason. Charlie was a uniquely gifted individual who, in his teens, created the largest movement of young Americans committed to preserving and growing America and its ideals. He tirelessly went from campus to campus, from Oxford to Utah, dialoging with any student who wished to debate him. Using his vast reservoir of facts and his exceptionally speedy and articulate mind, he gave them what seemed to be unlimited amounts of time, and then calmly eviscerated all their anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Judeo-Christian positions. I watched an inordinate number of these exchanges and thanked God that Charlie Kirk was there to do this work. America’s youth in particular have lost a moral and intellectual leader, one who would, perhaps, have one day become their president. As a committed Jew, I thank God regularly that a non-Jew, a committed Christian, became one of the few great public spokesmen on behalf of Israel and the Jewish communities outside of Israel. Few Jews could match Charlie’s knowledge and eloquent arguments on behalf of those two entities.

As Dennis, I have lost a very close friend. Charlie repeatedly visited me in the various hospitals that I have been in since November 12 of last year, when I suffered a catastrophic fall which has left me paralyzed. When members of the nursing staff heard that Charlie Kirk was visiting me, my room became the most popular one in the hospital. Charlie brought me the manuscript of his forthcoming book arguing that everyone—Christians as well as Jews—should observe Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, just as he and his family had begun to do from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. It is a measure of our close relationship that he dedicated the book to me. His brilliant exposition of these arguments provide clear evidence for the non-necessity of a college education for most young Americans.

My heart breaks for his young widow, Erika, and for his two children, who have lost as great a man and a father as children can have. And for Charlie, who did not live to see them grow up. For one of the first times in my 20 years with my wife, Sue, I have seen her sob uncontrollably. The Prager home is in deep mourning, as are the homes of countless Americans. The loss to us personally and to the country generally is immeasurable.

Commentator Ivyonna Corrine had a brilliant post too, which I’ll also reproduce below, corrected for punctuation and grammar:

It’s wild to me how quick people are to slap labels on Charlie Kirk without actually knowing what he stands for. He’s been called racist…but where is the evidence? Go back through his years of speaking at college campuses, podcasts, interviews, debates, you won’t find him using racial slurs, degrading a race, or promoting hate. Not once. What you will find is him debating issues like immigration, education, the economy… and culture. Those are policy discussions, NOT racism.

Calling him racist because you don’t like his politics is lazy. It waters down the meaning of the word and takes away from the fight against actual racism. If someone truly believed he was racist they would be able to show proof. But they can’t, because it doesn’t exist. All they have is name calling.

He’s had thousands of open conversations on college campuses with people of every background, and guess what? The majority of those exchanges end with respect, even if they disagree. He’s been called sexist, but why? Because he’s pro life? Because he believes men and women are different? Having a conviction about protecting unborn children or recognizing biological differences doesn’t make you sexist. It means you are willing to stand for life and truth even when it’s unpopular.

He’s been called homophobic/transphobic, but again, where’s the proof? Saying “men can’t become women” is not hate on his part. It’s biology. Protecting kids from being pushed into irreversible decisions isn’t hate. It’s compassion. He has debated LGBTQ+ issues face to face without name calling, without hate, with facts.

He’s been called a fascist/Nazi, which is honestly laughable. Fascism silences speech. Charlie has spent his entire career defending free speech. Nazis took away rights, and Charlie advocates every day for the protection of rights in the Constitution. The comparison doesn’t even make sense.

He’s been called a bigot or accused of spreading hate, but what is hateful about encouraging young people to think critically, question government, and protect their freedoms? If you actually listen, he debates respectfully, and even when people scream at him he holds himself fully. That’s not hate, that’s self control.

And he’s been accused of spreading misinformation, but here’s the thing: every time people try to “fact check” him, the debates usually end with the person walking away because they can’t answer his questions. He brings data, statistics and constitutional backing. That’s not misinformation, that’s inconvenient truth.

At the end of the day, Charlie Kirk was not racist. He was not sexist. He was not hateful. He was bold. He was outspoken. And he was unafraid to say the things that needed to be said in a world where people get canceled for speaking how WE FEEL and the truth. He’s allowed his thoughts, just as in America you are too. So if you’re going to label him at least label him correctly: unapologetically American.

Let voices like these drown out those demonic cackles of celebration sprinkled over social media. The overtly diabolical celebrators are obvious. Block and move on if it helps, but do pray for the expulsion of their demons.

Perhaps more insidious are the passive-aggressive folks—some even labeling themselves as fellow Christians—who assigned Charlie such wholly unfounded labels as Ivyonna covered, based on weak and out-of-context interpretations and assumptions, but not actual hard evidence, who haven’t read his literature nor seen multiples of his videos, who talk often about tolerance, love, kindness and empathy without showing those qualities toward Christian conservatives, and who are showing two faces.

When people reveal themselves from behind the mask of virtue signaling and faux tolerance and “empathy”, pay attention. Observe, be watchful, and pray for them. A mask of kindness and empathy, hiding a mindset of the very opposite, reveals itself in such times as these. Charlie wasn’t perfect. None of us are free of sin. That includes me. I certainly recognize sin when I see it, and I see a lot of stones being cast Charlie’s way from behind those “kindness and empathy” facades.

To all fellow conservatives/libertarians who are infuriated, feeling helpless in the face of this and other recent violence, tempted to lash out: I get it. This enrages me as well. But remember who Charlie followed: Jesus. And remember how Charlie both followed and set a great example in taking obvious risk to go into hostile atmospheres to engage through dialog and ideas. Never resort to true hate (not the same as the false equivalency of hate and disapproval continually posited by the left), destruction or retaliation in kind. Be better than those psychopathic ghouls and mouth-foaming zealots of the left who readily could be found celebrating or rationalizing evil, across social media in the days following the killing. They need urgent psychological treatment, and most of all, they need to find the Lord, who ultimately will be the final judge of all events and people.

Finally, for 50 years, I’ve read and watched great speeches by political figures from antiquity through the men on Mount Rushmore, to Churchill, Reagan and beyond. This, from Utah Governor Spencer Cox, has come out of nowhere to take its place among the very best, not only for the transcribable text, but for the raw and unvarnished sincerity plainly apparent behind the wise words. For context in posterity, I linked not just to the video, but a local news story containing it.

We all could do well to heed. As I’ve stated in some recent comment: Freedom of speech under threat of violence is not freedom at all.

Rest in Heaven, Charlie. We can honor his legacy, and that of other nonviolent agents of change like MLK and Jesus, by fighting bad ideas not with violence and destruction, but with better ideas.