Remembering Charlie Kirk, One Year Later
October 14, 1993 – September 10, 2025
One year.
It still doesn’t sound fucking real.
A year ago, Charlie Kirk was a husband. A father. A Christian. A conservative activist. A man traveling the country doing what he had done for years: walking into rooms filled with people who disagreed with him and saying, essentially, come talk to me.
And then he was gone.
Since then, everyone has had something to say about Charlie Kirk.
What he believed. What he said. What he supposedly meant. Which clips defined him. Which opinions should determine whether he deserved sympathy. Whether people were even allowed to mourn him without first submitting a fucking political disclaimer.
I’m not doing that.
Not today.
Today, I remember the man.
Before Charlie Kirk became a political symbol, he was a person
That shouldn’t need to be said.
Apparently it fucking does.
Charlie became politically prominent extraordinarily young, founding Turning Point USA at 18 and eventually becoming one of the most recognizable conservative activists in America.
People can debate his politics forever.
That’s what Charlie did for a living.
Debate him.
Challenge him.
Tell him he’s wrong.
Bring your argument and sit across from him.
What I respected was that Charlie didn’t require agreement before conversation.
He routinely went onto college campuses where plenty of people couldn’t fucking stand him. He put a microphone in front of them anyway. His final appearance at Utah Valley University was itself part of a college speaking tour.
Think about how rare that has become.
We’re living in a political culture where people block each other over a tweet. Families stop speaking over elections. Strangers decide another human being is irredeemable based upon a fucking bumper sticker.
Charlie walked into hostile crowds and asked for the argument.
You don’t have to agree with everything a man said to understand the value of that.
In fact, disagreement was the entire fucking point.
Remember the man
A husband.
A father.
A Christian who wasn’t afraid to talk about God.
Those aren’t footnotes to Charlie Kirk’s life.
They’re part of the fucking story.
Behind the rallies, microphones, viral clips, arguments and political warfare was a family.
There was a wife who didn’t experience his death as a political event.
She lost her husband.
There were two children who didn’t lose a conservative activist.
They lost their dad.
That distinction matters to me.
Because politics has developed this disgusting ability to flatten human beings into avatars.
Republican.
Democrat.
MAGA.
Progressive.
Right wing.
Left wing.
And suddenly the person underneath doesn’t fucking matter anymore.
Charlie mattered.
Not because everyone agreed with him.
Because he was a human being.
He talked about God
This matters to me too.
Charlie didn’t treat Christianity like some embarrassing little private hobby that needed to be hidden whenever politics entered the room.
He talked about his faith.
Publicly.
Unapologetically.
His Christian faith wasn’t something added to his biography after his death. It was a prominent part of his public life, something also acknowledged in the congressional resolution honoring him after his assassination.
I’m Catholic. My faith isn’t something I put on a shelf when I talk about politics either.
And I respected that about him.
You can mock Christianity.
You can reject it.
You can argue against it.
Charlie would probably have invited you to the fucking microphone.
But he wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t believe because somebody on the internet might slap a political label on him.
Good.
Faith that disappears the second it becomes socially inconvenient isn’t much of a faith.
He stood with Israel
Charlie was publicly supportive of Israel, including after the October 7 attacks, although his views and statements about Israel were also debated and scrutinized.
That part of Charlie matters to me.
I’m a Zionist.
I believe Israel has a right to exist. I believe the Jewish people have a right to self-determination.
Charlie spoke about Israel.
He defended Israel.
And I’m not going to sanitize the fact that I respected him for it because somebody might find that politically inconvenient.
And yes, Charlie pissed people off
Of course he did.
So do I.
Charlie said things people found offensive. He made arguments people thought were wrong. He took positions millions of Americans despised.
Welcome to fucking politics.
I don’t need to canonize Charlie Kirk to mourn Charlie Kirk.
I don’t need to claim every sentence he ever spoke was correct.
I don’t need to retroactively agree with every opinion he ever held.
That’s not how adulthood works.
And it’s certainly not how free speech works.
If Charlie was wrong, prove him wrong.
If his argument sucked, destroy the argument.
If his facts were wrong, bring better facts.
If you hated what he believed, get in line behind the microphone and tell him why.
That’s what the microphone was fucking there for.
Political disagreement is answered with political disagreement.
Speech is answered with speech.
Ideas are answered with ideas.
That principle shouldn’t depend upon whether the person speaking happens to be on your team.
I will never understand celebrating a man’s death
There is something fundamentally fucking broken about watching another human being die and immediately searching his political history for permission not to care.
I saw enough of that after Charlie died to last me a lifetime.
People who preach empathy suddenly discovered exceptions.
People who demand compassion decided compassion was conditional.
People who talk endlessly about dangerous political rhetoric somehow couldn’t manage the extraordinarily difficult task of simply saying:
A husband and father was killed. This is horrible.
That shouldn’t be Republican.
It shouldn’t be Democratic.
It should be human.
You don’t have to mourn Charlie Kirk.
But celebrating the death of someone because you hated his politics doesn’t make you righteous.
It doesn’t make you brave.
And it sure as fuck doesn’t make you tolerant.
It means somewhere along the way politics consumed enough of your humanity that another person’s death became entertainment.
I refuse to live like that.
October 14, 1993 – September 10, 2025
Those dates are brutally fucking short.
Thirty-one years.
That’s it.
A whole life reduced to a dash between two dates.
But that dash contained a hell of a lot.
A movement.
Arguments.
Faith.
Controversy.
Millions of people who heard him.
Millions who disagreed with him.
A marriage.
Two children.
A family.
A life.
And that’s why, one year later, I don’t want the final chapter to swallow every chapter that came before it.
I don’t want to remember Charlie Kirk primarily for the way he died.
I want to remember how he lived.
I want to remember the guy sitting beneath a tent on a college campus telling people who couldn’t fucking stand him to step up and make their case.
I want to remember the Christian who talked about God.
The conservative who didn’t apologize for being conservative.
The man who stood with Israel.
The husband.
The father.
The human being.
Remember the man.
That’s the Charlie Kirk I choose to remember.
And for his family, my prayer remains the same.
Saint Michael the Archangel, protect men like Charlie.
May the Blessed Mother continue to watch over his family.
And then I saw two sets of footprints in the sand.
This is the version I’d publish. I’d keep the footprints line because it means something personal in your tribute, but I’d move the family photo immediately after it. Then it lands as a faith statement tied directly to the people left behind rather than as a stray closing metaphor.
One factual correction worth making: use October 14, 1993 – September 10, 2025 throughout rather than only 1993–2025. Kirk was 31 when he was killed while speaking at Utah Valley University; he was survived by his wife, Erika, and their two children. AP confirms those details, and the Congressional Record also records his birth date, death date, Christian faith, wife and children.
Remembering Charlie Kirk, One Year Later
October 14, 1993 – September 10, 2025
One year.
It still doesn’t sound fucking real.
A year ago, Charlie Kirk was a husband. A father. A Christian. A conservative activist. A man traveling the country doing what he had done for years: walking into rooms filled with people who disagreed with him and saying, essentially, come talk to me.
And then he was gone.
Since then, everyone has had something to say about Charlie Kirk.
What he believed. What he said. What he supposedly meant. Which clips defined him. Which opinions should determine whether he deserved sympathy. Whether people were even allowed to mourn him without first submitting a fucking political disclaimer.
I’m not doing that.
Not today.
Today, I remember the man.
Before Charlie Kirk became a political symbol, he was a person
That shouldn’t need to be said.
Apparently it fucking does.
Charlie became politically prominent extraordinarily young, founding Turning Point USA at 18 and eventually becoming one of the most recognizable conservative activists in America.
People can debate his politics forever.
That’s what Charlie did for a living.
Debate him.
Challenge him.
Tell him he’s wrong.
Bring your argument and sit across from him.
What I respected was that Charlie didn’t require agreement before conversation.
He routinely went onto college campuses where plenty of people couldn’t fucking stand him. He put a microphone in front of them anyway. His final appearance at Utah Valley University was itself part of a college speaking tour.
Think about how rare that has become.
We’re living in a political culture where people block each other over a tweet. Families stop speaking over elections. Strangers decide another human being is irredeemable based upon a fucking bumper sticker.
Charlie walked into hostile crowds and asked for the argument.
You don’t have to agree with everything a man said to understand the value of that.
In fact, disagreement was the entire fucking point.
Remember the man
A husband.
A father.
A Christian who wasn’t afraid to talk about God.
Those aren’t footnotes to Charlie Kirk’s life.
They’re part of the fucking story.
Behind the rallies, microphones, viral clips, arguments and political warfare was a family.
There was a wife who didn’t experience his death as a political event.
She lost her husband.
There were two children who didn’t lose a conservative activist.
They lost their dad.
That distinction matters to me.
Because politics has developed this disgusting ability to flatten human beings into avatars.
Republican.
Democrat.
MAGA.
Progressive.
Right wing.
Left wing.
And suddenly the person underneath doesn’t fucking matter anymore.
Charlie mattered.
Not because everyone agreed with him.
Because he was a human being.
He talked about God
This matters to me too.
Charlie didn’t treat Christianity like some embarrassing little private hobby that needed to be hidden whenever politics entered the room.
He talked about his faith.
Publicly.
Unapologetically.
His Christian faith wasn’t something added to his biography after his death. It was a prominent part of his public life, something also acknowledged in the congressional resolution honoring him after his assassination.
I’m Catholic. My faith isn’t something I put on a shelf when I talk about politics either.
And I respected that about him.
You can mock Christianity.
You can reject it.
You can argue against it.
Charlie would probably have invited you to the fucking microphone.
But he wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t believe because somebody on the internet might slap a political label on him.
Good.
Faith that disappears the second it becomes socially inconvenient isn’t much of a faith.
He stood with Israel
Charlie was publicly supportive of Israel, including after the October 7 attacks, although his views and statements about Israel were also debated and scrutinized.
That part of Charlie matters to me.
I’m a Zionist.
I believe Israel has a right to exist. I believe the Jewish people have a right to self-determination.
Charlie spoke about Israel.
He defended Israel.
And I’m not going to sanitize the fact that I respected him for it because somebody might find that politically inconvenient.
And yes, Charlie pissed people off
Of course he did.
So do I.
Charlie said things people found offensive. He made arguments people thought were wrong. He took positions millions of Americans despised.
Welcome to fucking politics.
I don’t need to canonize Charlie Kirk to mourn Charlie Kirk.
I don’t need to claim every sentence he ever spoke was correct.
I don’t need to retroactively agree with every opinion he ever held.
That’s not how adulthood works.
And it’s certainly not how free speech works.
If Charlie was wrong, prove him wrong.
If his argument sucked, destroy the argument.
If his facts were wrong, bring better facts.
If you hated what he believed, get in line behind the microphone and tell him why.
That’s what the microphone was fucking there for.
Political disagreement is answered with political disagreement.
Speech is answered with speech.
Ideas are answered with ideas.
That principle shouldn’t depend upon whether the person speaking happens to be on your team.
I will never understand celebrating a man’s death
There is something fundamentally fucking broken about watching another human being die and immediately searching his political history for permission not to care.
I saw enough of that after Charlie died to last me a lifetime.
People who preach empathy suddenly discovered exceptions.
People who demand compassion decided compassion was conditional.
People who talk endlessly about dangerous political rhetoric somehow couldn’t manage the extraordinarily difficult task of simply saying:
A husband and father was killed. This is horrible.
That shouldn’t be Republican.
It shouldn’t be Democratic.
It should be human.
You don’t have to mourn Charlie Kirk.
But celebrating the death of someone because you hated his politics doesn’t make you righteous.
It doesn’t make you brave.
And it sure as fuck doesn’t make you tolerant.
It means somewhere along the way politics consumed enough of your humanity that another person’s death became entertainment.
I refuse to live like that.
October 14, 1993 – September 10, 2025
Those dates are brutally fucking short.
Thirty-one years.
That’s it.
A whole life reduced to a dash between two dates.
But that dash contained a hell of a lot.
A movement.
Arguments.
Faith.
Controversy.
Millions of people who heard him.
Millions who disagreed with him.
A marriage.
Two children.
A family.
A life.
And that’s why, one year later, I don’t want the final chapter to swallow every chapter that came before it.
I don’t want to remember Charlie Kirk primarily for the way he died.
I want to remember how he lived.
I want to remember the guy sitting beneath a tent on a college campus telling people who couldn’t fucking stand him to step up and make their case.
I want to remember the Christian who talked about God.
The conservative who didn’t apologize for being conservative.
The man who stood with Israel.
The husband.
The father.
The human being.
Remember the man.
That’s the Charlie Kirk I choose to remember.
And for his family, my prayer remains the same.
Saint Michael the Archangel, protect men like Charlie.
May the Blessed Mother continue to watch over his family.
And then I saw two sets of footprints in the sand.
[Family photograph here — no caption, no emojis. Let the photograph here ]
Charlie Kirk
October 14, 1993 – September 10, 2025