Mankind’s constant companion is violence.
Adam and Eve, banished from Eden, beget Cain and Abel. With their children was also born death, in the form of homicide. When Cain slew Abel, he invented the very idea of jealousy as motive for murder.
When God preferred Abel’s sacrifice to his own, Cain was so incensed he was driven to kill his brother. He did not seek the higher notion, the better way, instead his brother’s honor was cause for mayhem.
Cain came to believe that his brother’s thoughts and words, so superior to his own, deserved death. Jealousy led Cain to kill his own flesh and blood.
Cain came to hate Abel because he was better, more righteous, and deeply faithful to his God. These are attributes Cain might have aspired to as well, but instead he chose the lesser, the lower, the easier way.
Abel, for his part, never harbored any ill will toward Cain. In the face of Cain’s resentment, Abel persisted in his goodness with no regard for his brother’s anger. He must have felt the enmity and yet he did not waiver from the straight and narrow path. If he had, Cain’s anger might have relented. Abel simply did what he knew to be right.
Proving the adage that the more things change the more they stay the same, murder continues to be a blight on society.
Yesterday, Charlie Kirk became another victim of those that hate truth and goodness.
Kirk was assassinated on the campus of Utah Valley University by an unknown gunman, a descendant of Cain acting on the same animus of hate and jealousy.
Kirk’s gift of joyful debate and intellect routinely and consistently dismantled the arguments of those that appeared at his events to challenge him.
Yesterday’s event was titled, ‘Prove Me Wrong.” His detractors misunderstand the title as a prideful refusal to acknowledge other points of view when in fact it was an invitation to persuade Kirk by force of argument and logic.
Kirk traveled the country, primarily visiting college campuses, to engage spectators in conversation. Using his wit, he invited them to the microphone to express themselves. In return, he challenged them with logic. A logic he employed skillfully to expose their thinking as dogma installed by a doctrinal educational system.
Kirk asked them to think for themselves, even if that meant they still didn’t agree with him.
Kirk was a master of the Socratic method. A method that involves the cross-examination of students by their teacher. Kirk’s manner of inquiry routinely exposed the regimented and uncritical thinking of college students.
Kirk was neither a politician nor demagog. He was a brilliant man whose opinions and faith led him to embark on an effort to evangelize conservatism and Christ on college campuses.
Today an assassin decided all they could offer in response to Kirk’s cheerful brilliance was a bullet.
Kirk’s absolute defense of free speech meant he became a target for those who, like Cain, detest all that is good and right. He spoke truth to power about the border, abortion, the constitution, and American exceptionalism. He did so with an undeniable energy and sense of purpose that drove millions of young people to embrace his ideas about life, family, and politics.
There is no point in excoriating those in the media and politics who worked so tirelessly to dehumanize and marginalize Kirk’s movement and the man himself. That the rhetoric of some in those depraved vocations is intended to drive the insane to acts of incomprehensible violence is neither new nor surprising. We live in an era of unbridled hate disguised as “tolerance” and “compassion.”
A time when the beauty and rarity of Kirk’s genius is cause for loathing and jealousy.
In a free democratic republic, the frank and honest exchange of ideas is necessary. Seeking to silence one side out of disagreement camouflaged as “an existential threat to democracy” isn’t the antidote, it’s the illness and we are sick to the point of it becoming terminal.
Kirk breathed fresh air into the putrid air of politics as usual. He dared to believe in a country and its people as capable of being better, nobler, and more virtuous.
His wife and two young children mourn the loss of a husband and father. We mourn for the loss of the man, what he might have accomplished and how we all would have benefited from his work.
A bullet is not an argument. A man of faith and principle killed because he would not abandon the truth.
Charlie Kirk was the best of us, he was admired not because of his fame, how many followers he had, or how much money he possessed. We admired him because he was a good man, and there are far too few of them today.
Cain’s modern cousins will continue in violence if and until their masters in the media and government free them from the fevered dream that differences of opinion are worth killing over.
We must teach them that being tolerant doesn’t mean tolerating only people with whom you agree.
Charlie is joined with Jesus now having suffered a death like His, one where the suffering and sorrow is overcome by the promise of heaven.
We who remain behind will honor Charlie Kirk’s memory by carrying on his fight to unite and save our country.
Stephen Piccirillo © 2025
