Charlie Kirk, In Memoriam

I have one short story to tell you about Charlie Kirk—my friend.  

He became a friend of mine because I interrogated him one time. Nineteen-year-olds are my specialty. I asked him some questions he couldn’t answer. And he was already becoming famous. And I noticed his reaction: he said, “What should I do?”  

And I said,

Well, you have to suffer. If you want to grow, you have to suffer. It’s hard to learn—into the night, crack of dawn in the morning. Start with the Bible. Read the classics. Study the founding of America. In those places you will find that there’s a ladder that reaches up toward God. And at the bottom of it are the ordinary good things that are around us everywhere. If we can call them by their names—they have being, and the beings of the good things are figments of God. You will find that article in Aristotle. You will find it in the Bible. You will find it in Madison and Jefferson. 

“How do I learn that?” he said, and I said, “You have to suffer. You have to study. You have to think.”  

I thought I’d never hear from him again.  

Within a month, he got ahold of my cell phone number, and he texted me a copy of a certificate of completion of a Hillsdale College online course. He would go on to do that 31 times.  

I keep a list in my head of the six or eight young people—and I’m very privileged, I get to know many inspiring young people—who are the best I ever saw. Charlie is the only one who was never a full-time student at Hillsdale College who was on that list. We will miss him dearly. He can’t be replaced.  

Do you know—a good thing is a thing that has being. An assassin is not a thing that has being. The assassin must give up his humanity to destroy something that has being. Charlie lives on. The assassin will die.  

My wife, who’s here with me today, and I have set up a scholarship in the hope that Charlie’s children will go to a good college. I have one in mind. And this May the 9th—Erika doesn’t know this yet—we are going to give Charlie and Erika the greatest respect a college can give: an honorary degree. Charlie, you see, has suffered enough. He’s gone to the Lord. He deserves his reward. 

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