Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. (Reuters/Marco Bello)
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Talk show host and conservative political activist Charlie Kirk was so dangerous to liberals, he had to be silenced. And he was, yesterday, at a speaking event at Utah Valley University.
Kirk was truly evangelical, going onto liberal college campuses and speaking about conservatism. He regularly would take questions from hostile members of the audience and would give convincing, unflinching answers from the political right. He often appeared under a banner that said ‘prove me wrong.’
I didn’t agree with all of Charlie Kirk’s strategies. His group, Turning Point USA, was a fundraising behemoth. In some places, Turning Point would raise money that would have otherwise gone to Republican candidates or to local fundraising groups. And there were times when Kirk’s group got involved in Republican primaries, endorsing candidates that could not win general elections. He was an ideological purist.
Yet what Charlie Kirk was absolutely right about is this: the political right cannot give up on large parts of the culture. To allow young people to be unabashed liberals, only to win some of them back when they become taxpaying adults, is a losing strategy. Conservatism isn’t something you grow into as your hair turns grey. The left’s ideas about abortion, LGBTQ rights, COVID policy, the political wing of Black Lives Matter, radical social, and tax the rich are wrong – and they should be challenged, even in hostile environments.
Charlie Kirk was felled by an assassin’s bullet – shot in the neck as he appeared onstage in Orem, Utah. He is survived by his wife, and his two children, a 3-year-old daughter and a 1-year-old son. An important voice has been taken from us. He was 31.
Chris Conley
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