Years ago I read a book for writers about character development that described how one thing in particular can drive a previously peaceful person to the point of committing murder.
It was the experience of having a self-image shattered.
The example given was a woman who has long worked in a professional office and is expert at managing everything with efficiency and excellence. And then new people bring in technology about which she knows absolutely nothing. Suddenly, the person with a self-image of “superior manager with knowledge and ability” is faced with the terrifying reality that none of that is true any longer.
Snap.
I remembered that as I watched videos of Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk calmly debating smug campus liberals, methodically leading them through reasoned discussions that routinely ended in an implosion of their view of themselves as superior beings with exclusively correct opinions. Only a stunned expression remained.
Turning Point USA was founded in 2012 at a time when prominent conservatives invited to speak on university campuses were routinely canceled, harassed until they withdrew, or heckled off the stage by a mob of protesters.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), released a report in 2014 about what they called a “worrisome trend” undermining free and open discourse at universities, “the increased push by some students and faculty to ‘disinvite’ speakers with whom they disagree from campus appearances.” FIRE said the disinvitation pressure most often came from “the left of the speaker,” a category created to account for the fact that while most of the unwelcomed speakers were conservatives, even liberals were canceled for being insufficiently leftist.
FIRE compiled a list of 192 “disinvitation incidents” involving campus speakers over 15 years, with the number surging in 2007 and then continuing to rise.
Into this lion’s den walked Charlie Kirk, unafraid to speak, debate or engage students in thoughtful conversations. His speeches and organizing work empowered students who held conservative views but had been silenced and sidelined. Turning Point USA grew to have more than 850 chapters on college campuses. It describes itself as a “movement for promoting freedom-loving, American values.”
A “right-wing organization,” the New York Times called it on Wednesday, after Kirk was murdered by a sniper on the Utah Valley University campus where he was speaking with students.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said it was “a political assassination.” President Trump said, “For years, those on the radical Left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
Here’s one example: the Southern Poverty Law Center, a far-left nonprofit organization that has had a “hate map” on its website “to track hate since 2000,” lists Turning Point USA as a hate group, putting it on the same list as such outfits as the American Nazi Party, the National Socialist German Workers Party, Third Reich Books, United Klan Nation and the Ku Klos Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Also on the SPLC’s “hate map” is PragerU, a nonprofit co-founded by radio talk show host Dennis Prager to create content to “educate millions of Americans and young people about the values that make America great.” And seven chapters of the Pacific Justice Institute made the list. PJI describes itself as “a legal defense organization that specializes in religious freedom, parental rights, and other civil liberties.” The Southern Poverty Law Center calls it “an anti-LGBT hate group.”
Lots of parents’ groups are on the SPLC’s “hate map.” The list includes eight chapters of Parents Involved in Education, nine chapters of No Left Turn in Education, 17 chapters of Parents’ Rights in Education, and 251 chapters of Moms for Liberty.
Similarly labeled by the SPLC as “antigovernment” hate groups are the Constitution Party, the Eagle Forum, the State of Jefferson Formation, and three chapters of Gun Owners of America. The David Horowitz Freedom Center is on the list as “anti-Muslim,” and eight chapters of Gays Against Groomers are tagged as “anti-LGBTQ.”
“I don’t care if you want to go wear a dress by yourself, go ahead, knock yourself out,” Charlie Kirk said at one of his campus events, “but if you’re going to force me to use pronouns that aren’t true, teach my kids things that are materially or biologically false, then we have a serious problem.”
The individual he’s debating tells him, “It’s not a safe world for trans people.”
“It’s not a safe world for those of us who criticize trans people,” Kirk answered. “We are fine with ‘live and let live.’ They want to say ‘live and let us rule. You must use our pronouns. You must allow us into your locker room. You must allow us into your sporting competition and if not you’re a bigot and we’re going to penalize you.’”
Kirk was also critical of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” mandates. He opposed abortion and said often that young women should marry and have children.
That’s not hate. It’s a repudiation of values held up as correct by people who have always thought of themselves as superior moral leaders.
Think about the shockingly vicious comments made about Charlie Kirk by so many people, online and on television, after he was murdered in cold blood. How many of those people had their superior self-image shattered by his calm reasoning, by the growing number of young people who admired him for it, and by the realigning political majority in America that has moved so far in his direction?
Snap.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley
