The heaviness of yesterday's events is still weighing on America. My own shoulders feel heavy. Charlie Kirk was a good man, and what happened to him was an atrocity that we won't soon forget.
But if we're looking at things from the perspective of legacy, not forgetting anytime soon is a good thing. The hurt, pain, anger, and grief we're feeling aren't just useless emotions; they're the wet cement that will harden into a lasting legacy.
I can remember getting the news when Andrew Breitbart died. That day was a heavy one as well. Breitbart was a hero in the eyes of everyone, and he fought in a way that was so unique and alien to conservatism at that time that his loss wasn't just tragic to those who loved him; it was like losing our most impactful general in the middle of a war.
But in his death, Breitbart left behind a roadmap that we still follow to this day. Conservatives are happy warriors who are thirsty for the fray. We walk into the debate, we storm the issue and fight unrelentingly, not with violence or destruction, but with words that spawn directly from facts and truth. Today's conservative movement is made up largely of Breitbart's DNA, and his death solidified that piece of himself into our tactics; tactics that are winning in big ways today.
When the person who murdered Charlie pulled the trigger, he gave Charlie that same power.
The thing about martyrdom is that it takes a person from being a flesh-and-blood individual and turns them into an idea, and this makes someone like Charlie particularly prolific, because Charlie's greatest weapons were ideas. His ideas about freedom, morality, Christ, conversation, and culture were sharp and effective. These ideas cut our culture so deeply that they turned enemies into friends, skeptics into true believers, and gave those who were lost and struggling an ideological home.
They say Charlie was a warrior. Sure, he was, but I think in a lot of ways he was a cultural doctor and surgeon. He wielded a scalpel, not a sword.
Charlie's murderer tried to silence him, but the moment the gun went off, he only made Charlie louder. The lives he affected and changed didn't dim with his passing; they only got brighter. His ideas are now cemented in the American culture, and likely now, the Western world.
The killer wanted to take Charlie out, but he only ended up creating a million Charlies.
I take comfort in the fact that his killer, and all those who hate him, will now have to sit back and watch as the atrocity they're celebrating becomes the very event that breaks them. Charlie left behind a very well-defined battle plan. He demonstrated how to do it all the time. He was tireless with it. It's replicable by anyone with enough time, patience, and gumption.
Charlie won. His passing didn't silence him; it only made him louder through the myriad of people who will now step up and take it from here.
To be clear, there will never be another Charlie Kirk, just like there was never another Andrew Breitbart, but that's okay. Each of us is our own powerful force with something unique to add to the world, and this struggle between good and evil. Charlie, in many ways, built on Breitbart's legacy and created his own fantastic approach to changing things for the better.
Now we get to sit and try to build on what Charlie established, and who knows what we'll find when we do that? Who knows what we'll create? Who knows what tactic will be dreamt up by some young true believer that just wants to make America, and indeed the world, a better place?
That is, to me, a very comforting and even exciting thought.
Charlie went home, and I can't think of a place where he'd be happier. He's next to his Lord and Savior, whom he served dutifully, which was always his ultimate goal above all things.
But here on Earth, Charlie is more here than he ever was as his ideas permeate, spread, and grow.
Martyrs don't die.
