The Legacy of Charlie Kirk

“Jefferson lives!”

Those reportedly were the last words spoken by Thomas Jefferson’s partner in drafting the Declaration of Independence, John Adams, before he died on July 4, 1826. Hours later, Jefferson passed away as well.

In light of the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on the campus of Utah Valley University Wednesday, I think it’s important to take a moment to reflect on the lives of folks like this through the prism of what endures after they leave us.

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Besides my work for The Daily Signal, I am also a radio talk show host and the manager of my own radio station. Late in 2021, the longtime midday host whom my station carried, a fellow named Rush Limbaugh, passed away.

We knew it was inevitable because Rush had been sick for a while, and I had already done a thorough search for someone that I felt could come close to carrying on the mantle of conservatism that had been passed down from Russell Kirk to Barry Goldwater to William F. Buckley to Ronald Reagan and then to Rush.

I certainly knew who Charlie Kirk was—the station I operated broadcast to two large college towns in Virginia, and I was quite impressed with the inroads that Turning Point USA had made with college students. However, I had no idea that he was doing a radio broadcast from noon until 3 p.m. Eastern each day.

With that show, he brought in a younger audience, had an “in” with college kids, and was an articulate voice for the Enlightenment principles of conservatism. What a win-win it would be to get him on the station!

It took some convincing for the station bosses, as “Big Radio” had its list of candidates to replace Rush. But when I played for management a speech that Rush had given about his esteem for Charlie, I was given the green light, and we put Charlie on in Charlottesville and Blacksburg—homes to Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia and Virginia Tech.

As the years went on, the growth of Turning Point USA and Charlie’s radio show were intertwined, and it seemed that this was—apologies to the soda company that came up with this tagline—“the voice of a new generation.”

What was gratifying to me was seeing how quickly the Left’s “long march through the institutions” could be undone simply by engaging the ideas of the authoritarian Marx in open, collegial debate, as became Kirk’s hallmark right up until the end.

Apparently, an audience member at the speech in Utah Wednesday had asked Kirk if he knew how many mass shooters America had seen in the last 10 years. “Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk reportedly asked in reply, and then he was shot.

At this point, Kirk’s assassin is still at large. One can only wonder why someone would target a man like Kirk, who condemned political violence and chose instead to promote political discourse. Virginia state Delegate and podcaster Nick Freitas may have put his finger on the answer when he posted to his Instagram account: “He was effective.”