I have to say that I’m pretty sick of hearing and reading about Charley Kirk. The hagiography on the Right and the desperate spinning from the Left, which fears, with considerable justification, that the activist’s assassination will be a devastating tipping point that will doom their prospects in the 2026 election, are both relentless. The Kirk memorial service i is being compared to a state funeral, and that diminishes the tradition and the status of state funerals. Whatever Kirk was, he was not a national public servant. He wasn’t Charles Lindbergh either. The Democrats approached this level of creating exaggerated status when they held a Capitol Rotunda viewing for a Capitol police officer on the pretense that he was killed by the mob on January 6, 2021. He wasn’t, but the charade was all part of the coordinated effort to demonize Republicans, just as the deification of Kirk, a partisan organizer, is a Republican effort to show that the American Left approves of and encourages violence as a political weapon. (It does, you know.)
The obvious comparison is with George Floyd, but like most obvious comparisons, it’s not valid. To begin with, there really are good reasons to mourn Kirk. George Floyd was a blight on society, if an insignificant one. His ambiguous death was brilliantly exploited despite the fact that it signified nothing except that some cops aren’t very good at their jobs (we knew that). Floyd’s death didn’t result from racism or bigotry. Sure, the lifetime petty crook and drug addict’s life “mattered,” but it didn’t matter enough to him to do something positive with it. Also, to state the the most vivid distinction, conservatives didn’t use Kirk’s murder to go on a destructive nationwide “mostly peaceful demonstration” spree resulting in billions of dollars in damage, over 30 deaths, and the disruption of daily life for Americans who had nothing to do with Floyd’s demise.
There were two notable smears of the late Turning Point USA founder yesterday by the Axis of Unethical Conduct that deserve Ethics Alarms attention.
In a Congressional floor speech two days ago opposing the House resolution decrying political bias and honoring Kirk, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez called Kirk “ignorant and uneducated.” It was an unusually obnoxious outburst even for AOC, for two reasons. First, she endorsed the myth that not having a college education automatically means one is illiterate and of inferior intellect. This was never true, and it is less true now than ever. Colleges have virtually ceased to provide training in independent critical thought and are absurdly over-priced; meanwhile, the means to become knowledgeable, literate and articulate are available to anyone with the discipline to pursue those goals and having access to the internet—as Kirk himself demonstrated. At the same time, we have ample examples of public figures with elite credentials whose public statements constantly reveal gaps in their knowledge that one could drive the metaphorical truck through. President Trump comes to mind.
My favorite part of AOC’s rant, however, was when she said, “We should be clear about who Charlie Kirk was: a man who believed that the Civil Rights Act that granted Black Americans the right to vote was a ‘mistake.’” You know, when you are accusing someone of being ignorant, you should always have your own facts in order lest you appear to be an idiot. The Fifteenth Amendment, passed in 1870 almost a hundred years before the Civil Rights Act, granted blacks the right to vote. Criticism of the Civil Rights Act is a libertarian staple (Rand Paul has indulged in it, following his father’s example) and it is historically and culturally (and ethically) tone deaf, but at least Kirk, unlike AOC, had read the law.
Then there was the Washington Post—Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!—sticking a description of Kirk saying that he “made numerous disparaging remarks about Black people” in an article that wasn’t about Kirk, but about his widow. This is a perfect example of how the news media embeds Big Lies and propaganda: the public keeps reading and hearing these false characterizations and they become “facts.” Making critical remarks about specific black individuals based on their statements, conduct or demonstrated character is no more racist than my opining that Robert DeNiro is an asshole means that I’m anti-Italian.
There have been several efforts to document what “disparaging remarks” Kirk made that could be fairly characterized as racist. One is his criticism of the Civil Rights Act discussed already, which is philosophical and not “disparaging” in any way. Here is the full list of the other supposedly racist remarks:
“If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.”– “The Charlie Kirk Show,” January 23, 2024
Comment: That is a criticism of affirmative action, and one that black professionals have acknowledged as a serious problem with that no illegal policy.
“If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States Marine?”– The Charlie Kirk Show, December 8, 2022
Comment: An obvious reference to the absurd priority that Biden administration gave to springing WNBA star Britney Griner from a Russian prison, and not
“Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.”– “The Charlie Kirk Show,” May 19, 2023
Comment: This is exactly what the “Knockout Game” was. Facts are not racist.
“If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder, is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?”– “The Charlie Kirk Show,” January 3, 2024
Comment: This was a daily occurrence dealing with D.C. government agencies during the reign of Mayor Marion Barry, who rewarded his loyal voters from “the ‘hood” by making sure as many got government jobs as possible whether they had any skills or not.
“If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”– “The Charlie Kirk Show,” July 13, 2023
Comment: Joy Reid herself said she was admitted to Harvard through affirmative action, and proceeded to prove it on her MSNBC show every day. Kirk’s rhetoric was needlessly inflammatory, but he was candidly describing the fallacy of DEI policies.
Verdict: To read the media reports, social media and the transcripts of speeches like AOC’s, one would conclude that Kirk was David Duke redux. I’ve written more racially controversial statements than those, many more, and none of them were racist either. But if “denigrating” George Floyd, Jasmine Crockett or Barack Obama is racist, then I suppose the Axis of Unethical Conduct thinks I’m “asking for it” too.
Ethics Alarms 
Comparing a literally unknown capital policeman who died of natural causes to Charlie Kirk is a pretty poor comparison. Roughly half the country respected him and more than half had at least heard his name. He was more well known than the current VP before he was elected in 2024. He has been described as the most influential figure of his age group.
Serious question, how many videos of his debates have you watched for more than 2 minutes at a time? If you have the time he recently debated the Oxford Society for going on three hours. Well worth the watch.
I think you are wildly over-estimating Kirk’s popularity and the public’s awareness of him before his death. I knew who he was but paid little attention to him, and I work at covering this stuff. On the other side, the cop was a public employee and the NY Times had made him out to be a martyr and a hero…the comparison is both figures were/are elevated in status for political gain.
My impression is that Charlie Kirk is mostly well known by the younger age categories, Millennials and Gen Z due to his activities at college campuses. He is also a personal friend of VP JP Vance, and has been a significant help to turning out the vote of 18-29 age category during the Presidential campaign of 2024. In other words, he was significant political figure. Here is were the comparison with the police officer at Capitol Hill goes askew.
Charlie Kirk did not die in accident. He was assassinated for free speech and debate. He was killed for standing firm for the Gospel, and propagating a mainstream cultural and political view among conservatives. Given the reactions of the left on the social media cheering on Charlie Kirk’s assassination, conservative have come to the conclusion that the left wants the conservatives dead. We expect that more assassinations of prominent conservatives will follow. Therefore the massive attendance at Charlie Kirk’s funeral communicates the message: we are all Charlie. Here is were the comparison with the police officer at Capitol Hill goes askew again: that poor man was not murdered; he died a natural dead. The only person who died at January 6th at Capital Hill was Ashli Babbitt.
My view is that the assassination of Charlie Kirk may have a similar significance as the caning of Senator Sumner by Representative Preston Brooks in 1856, as I have argued in two previous posts. We do not know the significance of this event yet. Tim Pool expects a new Civil War, while others (Steve Turley) expect a glorious victory for the GOP and a devastating defeat for the Democrats. I am not discussing that now; this may require a separate post.
Calling the Charlie Kirk assassination an ethics trainwreck is like calling the Civil War an ethics trainwreck. First, I believe the assassination and its aftermath is much worse than a trainwreck. Second, there is a clear villain namely the Democrat Party and the left, while Charlie Kirk is the victim, and GOP and the conservatives as a whole stand on the correct side. This is a fundamental difference with a normal ethics trainwreck where everybody involved is an ethics dunce. There may be some of the GOP who made unfortunate statements (Pam Bondi, Marjorie Taylor Greene, James Lankford, Katie Britt), but none at the level of villainy such as Ilhan Omar, AOC, and many other prominent Democrats. Even Abraham Lincoln had to contend with General McClellan and General Burnside.
It’s not just here in America. Charlie had visited South Korea a week before his death, and on the 13th there was a rally in his honor. Then you’ve got the huge rallies in the UK and Australia, which it seems were planned anyway, but I don’t think it unethical for them to invoke Charlie’s name, since he essentially died for what they were protesting for.
https://www.deseret.com/u-s-world/2025/09/16/unite-the-kingdom-rally-uk-worldwide-protests-charlie-kirks-assassination/
Another factor that’s keeping Kirk in the news are the various public figures who felt safe enough in their echo chamber to openly rejoice in his death, with their subsuqent firings making the news.
Lastly, the manner of the shooting itself, in broad daylight in front of a huge crowd, I think would put it in the public consciousness for a while no matter who it happened to.
A heads up on typos, in a couple of places you have his name spelled “Charley”, when I’m pretty “Charlie” is the correct spelling. And did you mean “no illegal policy” to be “now illegal”?
You don’t fill a stadium with a 100k people, on one week’s notice, if you’re not known by a significant portion of the population.
If you surf youtube at anything approaching consistency for conservative commentary, he pops up. And probably the same if you’re on the other side because you want evidence of racist or alphabet mafia phobia ammo against your opponent.
I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone more well known to both sides of the aisle outside mainstream press than Charlie Kirk. Joe Rogan is probably the only one more known.
Joe is HUGELY influential, but his name pops up only when there’s controversy surrounding something he said. Frankly, I think Trump being on Rogan won him the election.
How much Joe Rogan do you watch? I’ll Zelle you $5 if you say you watch him or any of his clips on the order of once a month.
I think Kirk was that well known, and why they’re filling the stadium in Phoenix today.
Hundreds of thousands of people marched for George Floyd who never had heard of him before the media madness The stadium turn-out doesn’t indicate how many of them are there for the event and movement who were barely aware of Charlie Kirk.
I agree that the Rogan appearance, like many other things, may have made the difference for Trump, but I have never listened to him, and probably won’t.
I think there’s a fundamental difference between the fomenting of racial division begun under Obama, and furthered by every false narrative of blacks being targeted for death by police, pushed relentlessly by politicians and media for a decade creating an undercurrent of fuel waiting to be ignited by just the right event to set it off, and a singular event that had no tie to anything but an ordinary day on campus ending with the assassination of someone who obviously was just like the rest of us. On either side, to the extent there are some rational people on the left, including the last guy to ask Kirk a question.
The Kirk thing is recognition of a moment in time and responding to it, not a decade of waiting for an excuse to riot and steal, and murder, with paid protesters and agitators to egg it on.
We Are Charlie.
For those over the age of 60, I doubt the significance of the worldview impact and the impact itself of Charlie Kirk will be determined by the end of their natural life span.
Joe Rogan used the new media, he brings various folks on and then has a discussion. Without a script, without a net.
Ethics is a human thing, it is messy and difficult in the moment. You have documented many of your ethics experiences over the years, sometimes you regret, sometimes you are proud of how you behaved. Do you think that Socrates, Plato, or any of the classic philosophers would have been looked at differently if we had 1000s of hours of their lives instead of the hundreds of pages of static text, which has been translated from over a thousand years?
“I have to say that I’m pretty sick of hearing and reading about Charley Kirk. The hagiography on the Right and the desperate spinning from the Left…”
agreed, try watching 10 minute clips of Charlie, not just the talking head spin’s or sound bites. Listen to him not about him, you might form a different opinion of how important his actions were and how angry folks are that he was assassinated.
That was a funeral service…just wow…five long hours…we will hear about Charlie Kirk for years to come. I hope that Jack has time to watch as I am curious by his opinion.
Our DVR ceased recording at four hours (I think that’s what Fox allocated and the memorial service ran long). So we missed everything after about minute five of Erika Kirk’s portion.
Zelda to Charlie Kirk Show, 9hours since it started reallly early….
https://rumble.com/v6z9cbs-live-now-building-a-legacy-remembering-charlie-kirk.html?e9s=src_v1_sa%2Csrc_v1_sa_o%2Csrc_v1_ucp_a