Charlie: The Morning After

What they don't understand is you cannot kill an idea

My eyes opened at 4 am, and I was still numb. The tears came as reality hit me again. Everything had changed.

In my over 40 years of life, I've lived through those moments when millions of us wake up and realize we're living in a different country than we were the day before. Yesterday wasn't just about losing Charlie Kirk. We lost something bigger.

The Man We Lost

Charlie was killed while doing the most American thing you can do: having an open conversation about ideas. He died the way he lived, speaking his faith boldly, encouraging young people to believe in a better America, showing that we should talk things out, not shoot them out. He was that rare person who could speak well and actually listen too. He welcomed people who disagreed with him instead of trying to shut them up.

That's exactly why someone chose to kill him. He was winning the argument, so a coward decided to end it with a bullet.

A 31-year-old husband and father is dead, not because he did something wrong, but because he did something American.

What We're Facing

Now I sit here in the dark with just my table lamp on, asking myself: How has our country changed? The answer isn't pretty.

Political violence has been getting worse for over a decade. Some people will try to say "both sides do it," but you'd have to be blind or lying not to see where most of the recent violence is coming from. The left has been using more and more extreme language, changing what words mean to justify things that can't be justified.

When they say words are "violence," when they call political disagreement "genocide," when they say opposing them is "erasure," they're setting up a world where actual violence seems reasonable, even necessary.

This didn't happen overnight. It started in colleges where students learned to scream down anyone they disagreed with instead of debating them. The media picked it up and spread it around many times, excusing it or worse, justifying it. Then, politicians at the top started saying democracy was ending and insinuating (pretty clearly) their opponents were the next Hitler.

Here's the awful irony: Charlie was killed at a college campus while hosting exactly the kind of open discussion our country was built on. He invited people to challenge him. He was respectful to people who disagreed. He showed how it should work. But the media still called him "far-right" because they've moved so far left that believing in God, family, and country looks extreme to them.

A Door We Cannot Let Open

Let's be honest about what happened and name it for what it was: political violence from the left that is escalating dangerously. We've already seen two assassination attempts on Trump, and now Charlie is dead. This isn't a "both sides" problem, and we can't minimize the truth with false equivalencies.

I fear that this assassination has opened a door that others will now walk through. When political violence succeeds once, when it gets the result the perpetrator wanted, it invites more of the same. There's a dangerous and extreme element on the left that has been building toward this moment for years, and Charlie's murder may have just given them permission to act.

We're not talking about heated rhetoric anymore. We're talking about bullets aimed at anyone who dares to challenge their worldview effectively. And the scariest part is that many on the left will find ways to justify this, to say Charlie "had it coming," or that his ideas were so dangerous they had to be stopped by any means necessary.

That's not America. That's not who we're supposed to be.

What They Don't Understand

But here's what Charlie's killer didn't get: You can't kill the truth with bullets.

Some people might say Charlie was silenced yesterday by a coward who couldn't win an argument, so he chose violence instead. They're wrong. Charlie wasn't silenced because the things he stood for—that people matter, that families matter, that faith matters, that America can be good—these things are bigger than any one person.

His influence lives on in everyone he reached, everyone he encouraged, and everyone whose mind he opened. When we speak with courage, our words keep going long after we're gone.

So here's what I'm saying: I will never be quiet. I will never stop speaking the truth, because that's what freedom means and that's what Charlie stood for. For Charlie, we need to be bold, speak louder, and tell the truth with both courage and kindness.

What Comes Next

The last time America had this much political violence was in the 1960s and 70s. It was ugly, and people died. We're at a choice point: we can repeat that mess, or we can learn from it and do better.

The sun is coming up on a "new" America—the question is what kind? I can't tell you what's going to happen, but I can tell you this: our country has been through this before and made it through. We've survived not just because our system is strong, but because we're still a people who pray.

Right now, I'm thinking about Erika and her two babies, who have to figure out how to live without their husband and dad. I pray God comforts them. I pray for our country and for every American that we'll choose the harder path of talking to each other instead of the easy path of just hating each other.

The morning light is getting stronger. Charlie Kirk lived what America is supposed to be about and died for it. Now it's up to us to prove his death wasn't for nothing, that the things he believed in are worth fighting to keep.

You can hurt someone's body with a bullet, but you can't kill an idea whose time has come. Charlie's voice is now part of something bigger. All the people who chose truth over lies, courage over fear, hope over hate. That gets stronger, not weaker.

Rest in peace, Charlie. We'll keep going.

P.S. I just realized today is September 11th