“Charlie Kirk was shot.” Those words pierced the moment as Theresa Carpenter and I took a break between recording podcast episodes last Wednesday, just north of Kansas City, Missouri. I asked the producer if he knew anything else, desperately hoping the shot was merely a graze, another miracle like we saw in Butler last year. He told me that the bullet impacted Charlie’s neck. I pulled up the news on my phone and found a video taken from the back of the crowd—a distant viewpoint that thankfully didn’t capture the gruesome details of Charlie’s final moments among us. The sound of a rifle fired from an elevated position was unmistakable. My heart sank, the inevitable outcome of this moment known to my senses before word of Charlie’s death was confirmed.
Theresa retired from the U.S. Navy as a public affairs officer a few days before. We had been planning for her trip to Kansas City to discuss our shared stories of fighting against entrenched military culture that stymies the ability of expert communicators from doing their jobs to the fullest. We began our second recording session a few minutes later with heavy hearts. When the cameras stopped rolling, we learned the news officially, a confirmation of what our experience as military veterans told us well before. It was very hard for me to record the third episode afterward.
Theresa and I had our photo taken together before getting to work. It was a moment filled with tremendous gratitude for the chance to be together and talk through what it’s like trying to be a conscience-driven public affairs officer in today’s military.
A time capsule of sorts. We haven’t smiled like that since. But in time, we will.
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I felt in a daze, my stomach heavy as production wrapped up for the day, and the studio went quiet. Despair washed over the entire building. With hindsight, I recognize the particular irony of two First Amendment advocates learning of the premeditated political assassination of a man who embraced open debate while recording for a show titled Finding Your Spine. Charlie found his at a young age, and the assassin took literal aim at it.
Celebrity deaths don’t normally affect me. I never understood the public reaction to Princess Diana’s passing during my teen years. Newsreels of widespread mourning over the passing of Elvis Presley never made sense. But this time, I was shaken. Why? I wasn’t one who closely followed Kirk’s work; though, I did go to his event last year at the University of Kansas. Charlie asked that those who disagreed with him be given the first chance to ask questions. With my own eyes, I saw him exhibit patience and respect to each one.
As Theresa and I drove to dinner, feeling the weight of the moment, we tried to make sense of our shared grief for someone we never met, a younger man whose work wasn’t particularly central to ours. It dawned then that those willing to boldly engage in rhetorical debate on hostile ground are few. Though at much smaller scale than the stage upon which Charlie debated, we endeavor to also be truth tellers. Our grief was partially a recognition that anyone who’s willing to make and stand by conservative argument in a culture diseased by neo-Marxist progressivism does so at personal risk. The death threat emailed to me the next day offered another reminder.
The message is clear: If you speak truth confidently, someone will wish for your demise. That’s a reality old as time. For all the posturing about enlightenment in our time, human nature remains barbaric, "totally depraved" as John Calvin so well systematically summarized from scripture. Yet in this moment, resolve to answer such politically-motivated brutality is strong. The bullet that struck Charlie also struck a dam, and the torrent is raging. People like me and Theresa are not cowed, but emboldened. The assassin hit Charlie, but missed the movement to turn America back to its Constitutional ideals. A great leader has fallen to become a legend now unbound by time.
These days are tough, made even more heinous by observing that thousands of fellow military veterans joined the chorus of celebration over Charlie’s death. Sworn to constitutional fidelity, they chose instead to embrace third-world banana republic tactics of political persuasion. Their legacies will be forever tarnished for such betrayal. Charlie served the country far more in his short life than they would in an entire military career.
I will never forget where I was on September 10, 2025, when the news came. But I’m far more interested in where the movement to reclaim a Godly, constitutional virtue will go, re-energized and emboldened by this historic reality check.
Je suis Charlie. Let’s Roll.
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