My Charlie Kirk takeaway.

A tribute to Charlie Kirk is shown on the Jumbotron before a NASCAR Cup Series auto race, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025, in Bristol, Tenn. (AP Photo/Wade Payne)

When Charlie Kirk was cut down two weeks ago, I mostly stayed away from the topic in my commentaries. I was so appalled – so viscerally shocked – that I kept finding myself unable to come up with anything other than what everyone else was saying. I judged, for example, that it would have shed little additional light for me to call out the revolting things being said and posted to social media by the Left, including by people in the professional pundit class – “professionals” who should in theory know when to exercise discretion and put a sock in it lest the very worst of themselves be put on vivid display.

But with some time having now passed and after watching much of that amazing memorial service last Sunday in Arizona, I have at last distilled some thoughts that I feel comfortable sharing.

My big takeaway is this.

It’s clear that to a very high and culturally significant degree, high school and college-aged kids that were exposed to Charlie Kirk’s message liked it. It’s clear that what many young people in America have been getting from their teachers in school and from their time on social media isn’t filling the cup.

Little of what Charlie Kirk professed was new. A generation or two ago, we got most of what Charlie Kirk was out there saying from the teachers in our public schools. (My elementary school put on a patriotic program that wound up going on the road to Rotary and Kiwanis club luncheons before being recorded and aired by a local TV station.)

Most kids a generation or two ago went to church on Sunday and were thus exposed to Charlie Kirk’s message of spirituality and moral rectitude by their Sunday School teachers.

This all largely worked well toward the goal of raising kids to grow up into patriotic, morally centered adults.

The big takeaway from Charlie Kirk’s seismic impact is that it we are realizing anew that young people like being told that their country is great. They like being told that opportunity awaits them. They like being told that freedom is a gift from God and that it transcends politics and politicians.

They like coming to understand that they, themselves, (and not government), have sovereignty over their own lives. They like hearing that they are not helpless victims, either damned by or permanently limited by the immutable characteristics of their race and skin color.

They like the idea of a bright future, the picture of which Charlie Kirk so vividly painted.

And, as evidenced by the rise in church attendance that was already underway and has since grown following Charlie Kirk’s assassination, kids like the idea of a sovereign, powerful yet merciful God who loves them and wants the best for them.

This all stands in stark contrast to the dystopic bilge being peddled by the left. The fact that it so clearly resonates among young people is the best hope yet against the radicalism that has overtaken and now defines the Democratic Party.