On Wednesday, a man, a son, a husband, a father, a patriot, a faithful Christian and child of God, a human being was gunned down in cold blood as he did the one thing he fought his whole life to preserve: the free and open exchange of ideas in America, to debate them, to either try and find agreement or to respectfully agree to disagree, shake hands and walk away to do battle in the court of public opinion another day.
Turning Points USA founder and Salem Media Group radio talk show host Charlie Kirk, who was just 31 years old, can't do that anymore. Though his message undoubtedly will live on for decades to come in all of us, he'll never again be physically able to do things we sometimes take for granted in this life, like tuck his two young children into bed at night and kiss his wife, a young mother, before he heads off to his next public speaking engagement.
For many, Kirk's untimely death, the result of an assassin's bullet, hit hard right away. For others, like me, it didn't hit until after a restless night's sleep as the shock and finality of a young life extinguished slowly settled in.
As I went about my morning routine, the house was mostly quiet. I poured my milk, got breakfast together for mom and me, and we said our pre-meal prayer, thankful for the food and for God allowing us to wake up and see another day in the greatest country on earth.
It occurred to me in that moment that the precious "little things" like that that we do every day without thinking were things Kirk could no longer do, all over the crime of daring to have a different opinion and being unafraid to speak on it.
I've been writing about politics since 2003, after I started my blog. A few years later, I also joined what was then known as Twitter. Though I was a small fry in the scheme of things, I received my fair share of nasty messages, including those from keyboard warriors who said they wished my mom had aborted me and hoped I experienced rape and was left in a ditch at some point in my life so I might know what it would be like to be faced with an unwanted pregnancy. There were also a couple of death threats along the way.
All of that was the primary reason why, for the longest time, I wrote under a pseudonym. That, and I was fearful my family could be targeted. I also worried I could lose my job.
But when "Occupy" wacktivists and a ragtag Democrat GOTV operation here in North Carolina tag-teamed to try to dox me several years ago as a way to try and intimidate me into silence, I beat them to the punch and began using my real name.
And I began talking even louder.
And that is something in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's death that I can do and will continue to do, not just as a conservative writer but also as an American citizen who treasures her country and its ideals deeply.
Wednesday night, as things were still processing, Mom and I unexpectedly had a talk about what happened to Charlie Kirk. She had seen it on Facebook and asked me about it.
When I explained to her that he was a conservative icon who was murdered as he was discussing conservative ideas with a college crowd, she looked at me, her eyes wide, and then looked down.
I asked her if she was okay. She told me she was worried about me.
I took her hand, not just as her caregiver but as her daughter, and said, "I love you, Mom, and because of that, I have to keep writing and speaking my mind." She's taught my sisters and me our whole lives to stand up for what we felt was right, something that is as second nature to me at this point as walking.
I'm no Charlie Kirk. As conservatives, most of us will never have the reach Charlie Kirk had. And that's okay. The one thing we do have, big platform or not, is our voices and, as long as God allows it, our minds. And we owe it to those who came before us and who fought the good fight to live out our days - for as long as our bodies let us - trying to say and do what's right in the arena of ideas, to advance the conversation and the conservative cause so we can win the battle for America's soul.
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