Friday, September 12, 2025

Dialogue Died with Charlie Kirk

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/the-dialogue-died-with-charlie-kirk/?mc_cid=d60691897b&mc_eid=3cbf6e7152

The Dialogue Died with Charlie Kirk

Charlie Kirk with wife Erika and their two young children.

Charlie Kirk on Instagram, May 2025

If there is one takeaway from this assassination, it is that conservatives must get up from their armchairs and stop being nice. You cannot talk to those who hate you.

The bullet that fatally wounded Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old conservative activist, was a wake-up call for conservatives everywhere, not just in America. It was perhaps our last wake-up call: if the left can assassinate a young man whose only weapons in politics were wit, humor, and an upbeat outlook on the future—then what is left for us to talk to them about?

If there was one man in American politics who represented dialogue and respect, it was Charlie Kirk. A speaker and political educator, he traveled America for Turning Point USA, the organization he co-founded, and visited college campuses. He spoke about conservative political ideas and principles, and he made a point of engaging with the audience—especially those who disagreed with him—in fascinating sessions of questions and answers.

Thanks to his low-key style, his respect for his political opponents, and his unrelenting focus on dialogue, Kirk became one of the best-known conservative activists in America. He had even built international name recognition. But more than that, he was the epitome of the conservative desire to expose young, fertile minds to a broader perspective of opinions than what their high school teachers and college professors provided.

Charlie Kirk was immensely successful at what he did. He has been credited with winning over enough young voters for Trump to help tip the 2024 election in Trump’s favor.

Which is precisely why he was assassinated.

The FBI has had persons of interest in custody, though at the time of writing, they do not appear to have the shooter. However, that does not mean we cannot conclude why Charlie Kirk was shot. He died for his very successful conservative political activism. The public setting, the subject of the event, and Kirk’s widely known ideological leanings suggest a political assassination, even an act of terrorism, aimed at sowing terror and fear among conservatives—and to silence them.

In this regard, today’s murder in Utah resembles the attempt on President Trump’s life on July 13th last year (the second attempt on his life never got to the point where the presumptive shooter could target Trump). In both cases, the shooter sought to silence a prominent right-of-center public figure precisely because they were conservatives.

Conservatives need to draw the right conclusions, especially from Charlie Kirk’s death. We need to acknowledge to ourselves, and recognize together, that even if we are not at war with the left, they are at war with us.

Even if we do not consider them our enemies, they consider us to be their enemies. Even if we simply think of the Left as our political opponents, the Left think of us as their personal enemies. Their ideology prescribes exactly this approach to politics: from Lenin’s declaration that the Communist Party is the embodiment of the working class to Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, the Left has learned—generation after generation—that conservatives are not opponents. They are enemies and should be treated as such.

We need to recognize that the Left by definition considers us unworthy of having a dialogue with. We need to reciprocate that point. We do not need, and should not want, a dialogue with the hard Left.

Many conservatives will intuitively reject this idea. To them, a dialogue with your opponents is the only way forward in a civilized society—after all, wasn’t that what Charlie Kirk was all about?

Yes, Charlie Kirk wanted a dialogue with his opponents. But his assassination proves that those whom he considered his ideological opponents in reality were his enemies.

Enemies will not hesitate to use violence. They assault, destroy, and stop at nothing to silence anyone who does not share their views.

Enemies do not respect. They hate, and they go to war with whoever they hate.

Charlie Kirk experienced this hatred throughout his 13 years with Turning Point USA. He saw it grow, spread, heat up, and come closer. When he refused to be silenced, and when he continued to persuade young Americans to not uncritically buy left-wing ideas, the hatred that was burning in his enemies finally ended his life.

It is often hard for people in America, as well as in Europe, to accept that hatred can burn so hotly in our politics. We know hatred can kill, but the most egregious experiences that Europeans have had with politically motivated hatred have been with Islamic mass-casualty terror attacks.

Americans are a bit more familiar with political hatred. The two attempts on President Trump’s life were highly unusual, but somehow not beyond the realm of the imaginable. Extreme hatred has killed presidents and presidential candidates before, from John and Robert Kennedy to the attempt on President Reagan’s life.

At the same time, most Americans did not expect political hatred to claim the life of a man whose most prominent political character trait was dialogue. Somehow, it was unimaginable that there would be enough hatred toward conservatives to end the life of a man whose foremost weapon was his sharp mind and vigorous but respectful rhetoric.

And yet, the evidence is before us. As others have already pointed out, the Left is at war with conservatives; they have made us their enemies, and therefore they hate us. It is time we stop denying this—and here comes the great irony with Charlie Kirk’s death: we need to stop trying to respectfully engage with those who consider themselves our opponents.

Yes, the great cruel irony with the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the master of dialogues, is that the Left has shown us, in both the murder and their reactions to it, that the time for dialogue is over.

We need to stop trying to have a productive dialogue with those who hate us. It will lead us nowhere and accomplish nothing. It is time that we take seriously the level of hatred that the Left has for us conservatives, in America as well as in Europe. This means three things.

First, we need to ignore the rhetoric of the most fervent haters. It is pointless to talk to someone who does not believe you have the same rights as a human being as he does.

Second, we need to double down on reaching the fence-sitters, those who are open to hearing what both sides of the ideological rift have to say. In doing so, however, we need to unrelentingly expose the haters on the other side. We need to constantly remind those who are open to dialogue that the fanatics have made violence and hatred their political methodology. We need to contrast our civilized society against their nightmare, which is based on oppression of dissent, no matter how minute.

Third, we need to present our vision of conservatism, liberty, and peace as the very stark contrast it is to the malign mayhem represented by those who call themselves our enemies. We must take every single opportunity to expose the haters for who they are, what they want, and who will pay the price for their destructive authoritarianism.

May Charlie Kirk rest in peace. May Our Lord Jesus Christ bless his wife and his children.

And may we conservatives finally wake up and understand that brandy-fueled armchair conversations and conciliatory smiles to our political enemies are things of the past.

Sven R Larson, Ph.D., has worked as a staff economist for think tanks and as an advisor to political campaigns. He is the author of several academic papers and books. His writings concentrate on the welfare state, how it causes economic stagnation, and the reforms needed to reduce the negative impact of big government. On Twitter, he is @S_R_Larson and he writes regularly at Larson’s Political Economy on Substack.