Why Do Some Leftists Celebrate Charlie Kirk’s Death?

Most Americans are rightly horrified by the assassination of Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk, but some on the Left have not only refused to lament his death but suggest he deserved it.

A health care worker in Virginia lost her job after reportedly posting, “Good riddance,” and “What a piece of s—.” A member of the North Carolina Democratic Party’s State Executive Committee reportedly responded to Kirk’s death by saying, “fascists, authoritarians, and wannabe dictators MUST see that the people will dance on their graves whenever they die.”

Anyone who knew Charlie Kirk immediately grasps the disgusting nature of these lies about his character, but this hatred grows out of the Left’s echo chamber, which demonizes conservatives. This echo chamber has arguably transformed our culture war into a cold civil war.

A Cold Civil War

What would a cold civil war look like?

It might look like normal professionals greeting one another with smiles and handshakes in person, while working behind the scenes to advance their agendas and silence opponents in whatever spheres of influence they have.

It might look like members of the administrative state working to frustrate the agenda of a sitting president and prop up a false narrative against him.

It might look like K-12 teachers instructing boys and girls that they can change their sex or telling black and brown kids they should hate an “institutionally racist” America, rather than teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic.

It might look like investors requiring companies to endorse climate alarmism and gender ideology in order to receive capital. It might look like big foundations cutting conservative and Christian charities off from donations simply because they oppose the Left’s agenda.

Does any of this sound familiar? It should. This is the America we had been living in until President Donald Trump took office for a second time this January, and it’s the America we are horrifyingly close to returning to, should the Left take power again.

Egregious Overreach

In recent decades, the Left has engaged in a form of routine defamation, branding the most anodyne opposition to its radical agenda as a form of racism, sexism, homophobia, or even Nazism. Do you want to require voters to present ID to cast a ballot? You’re literally murdering democracy. Think people should follow the law when they come to live here? You’re a racist.

As millions of illegal aliens entered the country under President Joe Biden, and labor unions openly spoke about naturalizing aliens to increase “worker power,” the institutional Left demonized anyone who suggested this might be an attempt to import new voters.

How dare you believe your lying eyes over the official narrative?!

How Did We Get Here?

Democrats thought they could hold power forever through the “Emerging Democratic Majority:” as minority voters, women, and young urban professionals voted in lockstep. President Barack Obama thought he could get away with using the administrative state to push transgender identity, the “Black Lives Matter” movement, and climate alarmism with no consequences.

When Trump proved him wrong and started reversing his “progress,” the Left suffered a nervous breakdown. Comparisons to Hitler only ratcheted up. In 2020 upon the death of George Floyd, this spilled over. Many on the Left thought things were so bad, they had to make everything political to push back against the evil.

Because the Left dominates key institutions like academia, the legacy media, and entertainment, it’s a lot easier for people on the Left to avoid conservative arguments and never really consider alternative points of view. That enables many on the Left to not just think conservatives are wrong but to see them as stupid, evil, knuckle-dragging buffoons from the dark ages.

The problem is, the fundamental beliefs on which they build their ideology are wrong—and destructive. Americans are right to push back.

When Charlie Kirk did so through reasoned debate, he got a deafening answer—at the end of a rifle.

Generational Cycles

Demographer and historian Neil Howe has prophesied that America is on the cusp of a great defining crisis. He looks at generational changes and notes that it has been about 80 years since the end of World War II. This means few Americans remember the last civilizational crisis, and our culture has become more divided over the past few decades.

Howe’s generational cycle predicts an “awakening” before a crisis, and the awakening ahead of our crisis was the 1970s—the growth of secularist hippies and a new evangelical movement. Those who movements have matured into the Woke forces and the conservative counterrevolution.

As Generation Z finds it more difficult to find jobs, get married, and own their own homes, young Americans are increasingly searching for ways to give their lives meaning.

Charlie Kirk is a martyr for free speech and reasoned debate. To honor his legacy, Americans must consider the fundamental truths he championed and respond to this violence with principled civility.

Yet this civility will only have a chance if the Left stops lying about mainstream conservatives and actually treats its opponents as debaters, not Nazis.

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