Charlie Kirk is dead. The conversation must live

We all know that the more prominent the politician, the more security is needed to ensure their safety — and the safety of those in their presence.

My first glimpse into all of that was during my past life in electoral politics, when in late October 2014 our local GOP campaign office was visited by then-Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner, R-OH. Being second in the line of presidential succession, Boehner brought along a whole cadre of security, including bodyguards who looked like they were recruited at a cage fight.

The then-Speaker’s security team required numerous parking spaces to be temporarily blocked prior to his arrival. One patron of a nearby business got a bit huffy, moved the cone on their own and attempted to park in the space. That did not end well for the patron.

In October 2016, while manning that year’s campaign office in Cedar Rapids I got a visit from two U.S. Capitol police officers who needed to examine our building in advance of an appearance from then-House Majority Whip Steve Scalise. Three months later, I saw one of the same officers again — this time, on the TV screen. Dressed in plainclothes, the officer was in the audience sitting among notable political figures (including Bill and Hillary Clinton) at the first inauguration of President Donald Trump.

The most serious threat to Boehner’s life during his career as Speaker was self-dealt — he is a notoriously heavy smoker. Scalise hasn’t been as lucky. He was gravely wounded in 2017 when a man carrying a list of several Republican congressman opened fire during a Republican team practice for the upcoming Congressional Baseball game.

While I watched the live coverage of Rep. Scalise being tended to on the field, all I could think was that the man lying on a gurney and facing imminent death was the same man who not eight months earlier had skipped past a table of beverages and instead rummaged through our campaign fridge to help himself to someone’s bottle of Snapple while the office director chuckled.

“We can’t take him anywhere,” Scalise’s staff whispered.

The high-ranking member of Congress had shown us his quirkier side, and we liked him for it. But we didn’t need to see him get medevaced to the nearest hospital to remember that. Just like we didn’t need to smell the pungent cigarette smoke on Boehner or see Donald Trump get clipped on the ear by a bullet meant for his head to remember that they’re human beings.

We live in a time where people are increasingly willing to forget that their candidates and elected officials are human beings.

Kirk, dead at 31, rose to prominence engaging young conservatives

Charlie Kirk wasn’t a candidate or an elected official. He was an activist. His work was as cultural as it was political. Opting to forego college at the advice of a mentor, Kirk founded Turning Point USA at the age of 18 with a mission of organizing young people to embrace the principles of conservatism.

His timing was arguably fortuitous — when he started Turning Point USA in 2012, conservatism as a whole had been dying out among young people as millennials had turned in droves to Democrats, inspired by the younger, cooler Barack Obama’s message of hope and change while Republicans’ answers were … John McCain and Mitt Romney.

TPUSA grew rapidly. So did Kirk’s public profile as a highly influential young conservative who was growing a movement for other young conservatives. His influence earned him close friendships with conservative politicians and elected officials and afforded him intimate access to the White House.

Label shared by many conservatives

But because he was conservative, Kirk also earned the label that so many other notable conservatives have found attached to their names in the media: CONTROVERSIAL, that notorious advance warning that the person whose words you’re about to read or hear is someone with whom you may disagree.

(When and how the media decides to describe a person or a concept is in and of itself controversial, but I digress.)

In hindsight, Kirk figured out long ago what it took a lot of the rest of us to realize — young people hadn’t been completely turned off by the conservative principles he was championing so much as they had been intimidated out of discussing them in academic settings and campus environments that have become unabashedly left-leaning from the bottom to the top — the student body, the faculty and the administration.

Colleges reject conservatives

Nothing illustrates that better than the process of applying for a local TPUSA chapter. Despite having chapters in over 3,500 high schools and colleges today, local chapters continue to be rejected as recognized student organization at some institutions — even in Iowa — due to the viewpoint of the organization’s members.

Despite over 3,500 TPUSA chapters in colleges and high schools nationwide, Drake University in Des Moines has denied recognized organization status to a prospective TPUSA on three separate occasions due to the leaders’ viewpoints. One of those denials was in 2019, determined only weeks after the same student leaders approved a far-left group called “Drake Comrades.”

Kirk championed courage to speak

Kirk’s movement was about bringing young conservatives out of the woodwork and reengaging in the conversation. It has worked. Perspectives recently deemed too intolerable to hear are working their way back into the conversation. Part of that is due to free-speech-focused legislative action. Much of it is due to students doing what Kirk had championed from the beginning: Having the courage to speak up and participate.

Kirk practiced what he preached. He kept the conversation going by giving anybody who approached the microphone a chance to publicly speak and debate the issues of the day with him while large crowds of supporters — and opponents — gathered to watch and listen.

He was a passionate advocate for free and open exchange of dialogue — and an active and earnest participant.

And for it, he was shot dead in front of a horrified crowd.

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Free speech is not dead

If there is one truth that Kirk lived, breathed and embodied, it is this: He knew the democratic process thrives on the free and open exchange of opinions and ideas.

As we saw throughout his career, those exchanges are particularly fruitful when notable figures visit college campuses. People attend those events to engage in dialogue that challenges and enrich their own views.

But they're not going to go if those events are dangerous. People won't go to political rallies if they suspect the possibility of getting hit by a stray bullet meant for the man of the hour. They won't be in the audience to see a notable speaker if they think they could witness that person getting shot dead right before their eyes.

If people don’t show up for rallies and debates, neither will the notable speakers. The rallies and debates won’t happen.

That’s how you shut down free speech.

That must not be allowed to happen. But I don’t think it will. Not as long others are willing to step forward and keep the conversation alive.

Kirk knew that there was an inherent danger to expressing conservative positions and debating sensitive issues in front of large crowds. Now that the extent of that danger has been seen worldwide in the worst way possible, an urgency exists to not let it happen again.

Meanwhile, a whole new generation of young conservative men and women with talent and intellect and passion — and voices of their own — has emerged. There’s also a platform for engaging young conservatives that didn’t exist before.

Whoever steps onto that platform knows who they have to thank. Charlie Kirk is dead, but a generation of conservatives who now know the importance of speaking out — more than ever after Wednesday — are alive. And so is the political discourse of today.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com