Charlie Kirk’s legacy of grace triumphs over hate — His bravery is what America needs most

Beautiful, gracious, courageous, and good Erika Kirk gave the most powerful, bravest speech we will ever witness at the memorial service to her husband in a packed stadium in Glendale, Ariz.

We see clearly why Charlie Kirk chose her to be his wife.

“My husband Charlie, he wanted to save young men just like the one who took his life. 

“On the Cross, our Savior said: ‘Father forgive them for they not know what they do.’ ”

Looking up at a giant image of her husband overhead, through sobs, and swallowed anger, Erika Kirk said: “That young man, I forgive him.” 

The crowd rose to its feet and roared its admiration for the widow standing in front of them in a white pantsuit, her long blonde hair shining like a Viking warrior woman.

“I forgive him because it is what Christ did,” she said. “It is what Charlie would do. 

“The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the Gospel is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.”

‘Made him immortal’

It was the message the country needed to hear, one that guarantees Charlie Kirk’s legacy will flourish, his sacrifice will soften hearts and good can prevail over evil.

“You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller thundered on stage earlier. “You have made him immortal . . . Now millions will carry on his legacy. You cannot defeat us, you cannot slow us, you cannot stop us, you cannot deter us. We will carry Charlie and Erika in our heart every single day and fight that much harder because of what you did to us. You have no idea the dragon you have awakened.”

Far from silencing Kirk, 31, with a bullet to the throat, the horribly public assassination unleashed with turbo force his vast legacy of words and videos and the grassroots conservative youth movement he built from scratch to change even more hearts and minds across America and the world. 

Since his death, views of his videos are in the billions and his social media accounts have added 10 million new followers.

Kirk’s last interaction with CNN antagonist Van Jones gives us a small indication of how the magic is happening.

On Saturday, the liberal former Obama adviser revealed the text messages Kirk sent him the day before he died, after their heated public spat over the murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska.

Kirk reached out in a disarming direct message on X: “Hey Van, I mean it, I’d love to have you on my show to have a respectful conversation about crime and race.

“I would be a gentleman as I know you would be as well,” Kirk added. “We can disagree about the issues agreeably.”

Jones admitted he was “shocked” to get the message and wasn’t sure about sharing it. 

But after all the hate and celebrations over Kirk’s murder, he decided it was “important” to share the truth about the young man’s heart.

“I’m watching the whole country talk about civil war, censorship, justifying murder,” Jones told CNN. “He was not for censorship, he was not for civil war. He was not for violence. He was for dialogue, open debate . . . When our public dispute started going sideways . . . he pushed for more civility, not more stridency or venom.”

How typical that one of the last things Kirk did was reach across the aisle and offer grace. 

It’s a pity Jones’ fellow travelers like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez don’t share his decency. She took to the House floor to label Kirk “dangerous, ignorant, uneducated.” 

Rep. Ilhan Omar said Kirk’s legacy “should be in the dustbin of history.”

Late-night host and Dem mouthpiece Jimmy Kimmel was suspended from ABC after perpetuating the deliberate lie that the assassin was a MAGA gunman instead of a left-wing activist who despised Kirk and engraved transgender and Antifa-style messages on his bullets.

‘We are the majority’

But podcaster Bennie Johnson, former TPUSA production director, says Kirk would have enjoyed the Kimmel comeuppance.

“Charlie spent his life trying to build an infrastructure where conservatives could have culture war victories because this is a moral nation that is center right and we are the majority but we have no voice in media or entertainment. What happened with Jimmy Kimmel was the majority of the country getting loud and drawing a line.”

Kirk’s detractors are moral pigmies. Sunday’s memorial service showed how irrelevant they are to America’s future. 

“For every hateful voice celebrating his murder, there are a thousand people mourning it and fighting for his legacy every single day,” Kirk’s friend, Vice President JD Vance, told the crowd.

“Charlie suffered a terrible fate [but] it is not the worst fate. It is better to face a gunman than to live your life afraid to speak the truth,” he said.

We already see that Van Jones is not the only person whose heart was softened in the wake of Kirk’s murder.

Fewer than half the Democrat contingent of 213 voted for the House resolution honoring Kirk but instead of focusing on the 58 stone-hearted refuseniks and their lily-livered colleagues on the fence, we can look to the decent 95 who bucked the tide and voted “yes” as a sign of hope that good hearts might prevail in the end.

Even The New York Times wrote a compassionate, fair-minded piece about Erika, who is taking her husband’s place as chief executive of Turning Point USA.

‘Blood of the martyr’

Kirk’s organization has been flooded with tens of thousands of requests from schools and universities to start a new chapter or join an existing one.

“The blood of the martyr is the seed of the Church, and Charlie’s message has been heard by millions and millions who would otherwise never have heard of it,” says Kirk’s right-hand man and Turning Point spokesman Andrew Kolvet.

Kolvet revealed that Kirk’s surgeon said it was an “absolute miracle” that the bullet that killed [Kirk] got lodged in his spine and didn’t exit his body and kill someone else. [His] bone was so healthy and the density was so so impressive that he’s like the man of steel.

“Even in death, Charlie managed to save the lives of those around him,” he said.

We hear so much about the alienation of a small unhinged cohort of Gen Z but Kirk is the role model and inspiration for countless young men and women who thirst for a meaning and purpose that he laid out so clearly in hundreds of thousands of words in books, articles, and speeches, and thousands of hours of video he left behind.

“You should never underestimate what one man can do with a good heart,” a clearly moved President Trump told the crowd after Erika’s speech.

“He’s a martyr now. None of us will ever forget Charlie Kirk. And neither now will history.”

It was destined for Kirk’s legacy to be to change people’s hearts with his wisdom and Christian charity and willingness to engage in courteous discourse.

In death his goodness is contagious.