Mourn, O Israel
Days before he was murdered, Charlie Kirk wrote “Jesus defeated death so you can live.” Though all murders are senseless and despicable, and though even if Mr. Kirk were a monster (and he emphatically was not), we should yet be broken hearted, nevertheless we are promised that “The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart” and to “cast all [our] cares upon him; for he careth for [us].” The Prince of Peace, He’s called. But not a Prince of injustice or inaction. So catch the criminal, prosecute him, and say, with me, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Charlie Kirk speaking publicly in 2025. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.
Charlie Kirk was shot in the throat yesterday. To the right, this seems like the third political assassination in as many weeks, nevermind that Iryna Zarutska’s murder wasn’t politically motivated and that the murders at Annunciation Catholic Church were the work of a madman and only marginally his mad philosophy. Nevermind even that two months ago, the Democratic Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, Melissa Hortman, was murdered in her bed by an assailant with an explicit partisan hitlist. Ever since the assassination attempt of Donald Trump (if not the George Floyd riots), the right has felt that the left intends to kill it.
This feeling is jagged now. Everyone on the right, from the center right to the traditional right to the classical right to the new right, feels it. Meta thomist on Twitter asked late last night, “Why is this affecting us so much?” Maybe it’s just because Mr. Kirk was actually assassinated; he is dead. But Galloway Woodworks replied, “Charlie was the last big voice on the right who thought we settle our differences through honest debate and discussion. And he got shot for it.” I intend, in this commemoration, disorganized as it will be, to rally those of us who still hold fast to Mr. Kirk’s view and to his love of the American Experiment. But how do we rally in this valley of darkness?
I think in times like these of the Book of Lamentations: “Her adversaries are become her lords, her enemies are enriched: because the Lord hath spoken against her for the multitude of her iniquities: her children are led into captivity: before the face of the oppressor.” (For the best musical version of this that I know of, go here.) The only difference with how the right has felt for a solid generation is that we do not (at least most of us do not) believe we suffer “for the multitude of [our] iniquities.” I’m certainly not about to make that argument today.
Charlie Kirk was younger than I am. He leaves behind two young children and his wife of four years. He was described as a Christian Nationalist, and I don’t even know how true that is. When he broke upon the scene circa 2016, I didn’t like how he spoke about our country and our problems, and so I rarely watched him. I saw a couple videos just this past month that made me think better of him. Maybe he changed how he thought or spoke; maybe I changed how I thought or heard; but since his assassination I have watched many videos of his and liked what I saw. Whatever else he did or believed, he built perhaps the most potent political organization on the right and almost certainly the most powerful one in decades—and he built it upon talking respectfully to people in public about politics.
This all feels weightless in Death’s long shadow.
I have no knowledge about his killer or his killer’s motives, though that the assassination could be for reasons other than political does beggar belief. I have no knowledge of what events may now catch fire because of this spark. I am no prophet and, to the extent I try to be, I’m usually wrong. But I have a fear. I have a fear because (whether you can make an argument they are not political), these three political murders have set rage in the hearts of many I know on the right, including many who are even-keeled.
The thing is, they’re not wholly wrong. Attempts to criminalize speech and prayer, the judicial system used against religious sisters and secular politicians, right-of-center NGOs targeted by administrative agencies, business owners targeted by crusading state governments, cities burned, filth in classrooms, children mutilated, children murdered in abortions enthusiastically encouraged! And all of this funded by the state to target (or so it can seem) one political tribe. They (not that there is generally a “they”) even tried to kill the Republican nominee for president! Sometimes one wants to “Cry ‘Havoc!’ And let slip the dogs of war.”
The problem is, as Actaeon learnt, loose dogs may not hunt only where bid. I was glad to see Adrian Vermule make that point.
Not that I think the others deny this. Lomez today (September 11th) wrote, “I want to make something very clear: reciprocal violence is bad morally and bad politically and there is absolutely no scenario in which a tit-for-tat bottom-up escalation can or will ever end in anything but misery for everyone.” That instinct is good, but the simmering rage and fear remains.
Besides Lamentations and Greek Myth, political assassination makes me think of Shakespeare and, more often than not, Julius Caesar. I’ve already quoted from it. Mark Antony is the one who cries “Havoc,” and he’s also the man who lets slip those war dogs. Right after Caesar’s murder, he is left alone on stage with the body.
O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever livèd in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy
(Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue)
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war,
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds;
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men groaning for burial.”
(Folgers Edition, 3.1.280)
It’s at this point in the play when the servant of Octavian, Caesar’s foster son, arrives to talk with Antony. And this is where some history is helpful. (I seem to have added the Roman Empire to things I am thinking about today, as is befitting my sex.) In history, Octavian generally goes by another name: Caesar Augustus. Not only is he the first undisputed Roman Emperor, he would, within the space of about a decade, take power in Rome and then declare war on Antony and Cleopatra in Egypt to consolidate that power. Domestic fury cumbered quite a bit more than just parts of Italy.
Forgive the jumping around today, but it’s thematically appropriate if nothing else. Besides Aeneid, Virgil wrote a book called the Ecologues, a pastoral poem, the fourth of which concerned the birth of a boy, a savior, who would come to rule the world. At the time, the poem was self-evident praise of a Caesar so great he called himself Augustus. The Medievals thought differently: “And it came to pass in those days, that that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus.”
Days before he was murdered, Charlie Kirk wrote “Jesus defeated death so you can live.” Though all murders are senseless and despicable, and though even if Mr. Kirk were a monster (and he emphatically was not), we should yet be broken hearted, nevertheless we are promised that “The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart” and to “cast all [our] cares upon him; for he careth for [us].” The Prince of Peace, He’s called. But not a Prince of injustice or inaction. So catch the criminal, prosecute him, and say, with me, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
God save our Republic. And eternal rest grant unto Thy servant Charlie Kirk, O Lord.
