Death and disagreement are inevitable. Love and hate are choices. We will all die. Before we do, what choices will we make?
Today, political disagreement leads the harbinger of death to its victims. Ideological differences are now the sword with which our political adversaries are cut down.
With the insensible murder of Charlie Kirk, we must ask ourselves what choices will we make as a society. Will we choose respectful discourse founded in love and respect for one another or choose hate and its constant companion, death.
With each politically motivated act of violence from two attempts on President Trump’s life, to the murder of Minnesota state legislators, to Kirk’s assassination, we watch in horror. That horror sinks to unimaginable depths when lurking in those dank waters are those who believe an insensible act of violence is justified if the culprit is from their tribe.
Too many voices in the Legacy media and its rabid inbred cousin, social media, responded to the death of Kirk with glee. By now we’ve all seen them and in them the menacing blood-stained teeth of hate.
Excoriating those in the media and politics who worked relentlessly to dehumanize Kirk and marginalize his movement falls on deaf ears. We live in a time of feral loathing hidden behind words such as “empathy” and “inclusion”. Words whose meanings are lost on those who so often repeat them.
Despite the claims of so many on the Left, “both sides” aren’t guilty of fanning the flames of violence. No national right-leaning figure has called any Democrat “Hitler,” “a fascist,” “a nazi” or “an oligarch.” These terms have been and are being repeated by the media and Democrats even now.
The “both sides” argument is where the Left goes to hide from their responsibility. This is a phrase they use, without evidence, to suggest political violence is a shared method of coercion.
The ugly terms they deploy are all that remain in the Left’s quiver of arrows. Absent any thoughtful arguments, they aim them at their political enemies with no concern for the consequences.
Kirk’s effervescent personality and keen intellect helped him become as influential as any socio-political thinker of our time. He did so by always inviting opposing viewpoints and responding to them with respect and kindness.
Kirk was not “right-wing” or “racist,” or “misogynist” or a “homophobe.” He was a free, logical thinker who rooted his manner of debate in the Socratic method. He set himself at odds with an opposing movement of progressive moral relativism. A movement that has as its aim the destruction of civil society, the family, and our beloved country.
When they could not defeat his arguments by logic they tried to defeat the man by his death. In his martyrdom he and his movement are raised to greater heights and a nation is galvanized to an awakening of purpose and enlightenment, not to a reckoning of ideological warfare.
Demonizing Charlie Kirk stoked fear in the minds of those whose grasp on reality is tenuous and it pushed one of them to act in a terrible way. His enemies cultivate hate and reap death.
Who we vote for has never and will never justify an assassin’s bullet.
Kirk’s genius in thinking and words won’t be buried in the cold damp earth with his body. Like his soul, his ideas and message soar higher and reside in the hearts and minds of all free thinking, nation-loving Americans. His murder didn’t kill a movement, it elevated it.
On the right, we believe in ideas over intimidation, enterprise over entitlement, freedom over fear, and truth above all things.
Charlie Kirk once said, “Conservatism is not about hating change; it’s about preserving what is good and proven.”
In a free democratic republic, disagreement has proven to be both good and necessary. Competing ideas make for better solutions. Suppressing dissent causes increased dissension not harmony. We must speak to one another respectfully and without the animus of hate.
Progressive Leftists have concluded their victory can only be obtained by stifling disagreement, controlling thought, limiting speech, and dehumanizing their opponents.
Conservatives believe our ideas are better and that the best way to prove it is to allow the Left to express theirs. We do not fear or demonize their movement, instead we are determined to defend what is “good and proven.”
The choices we make right now in the aftermath of a senseless act of violence, that deprived a wife of her husband, his children of their father, and a nation of his brilliance, are critical.
Responding in kind will not solve anything. Stooping to the level of our opponents only means now we’re all rolling around in the filth and the muck. An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.
We will continue Kirk’s and our fight to save this nation through reasoned discourse and superior thinking. We will do it for love of country and for our fellow citizens, no matter what their political affiliation may be.
We can be better to one another; we can seek understanding and common ground. We can stand together or we can fall apart.
The choices we make will be our legacy.
Stephen Piccirillo © 2025
