TGS Live: My Dream for America after Charlie Kirk

Last Friday, I hosted a livestream featuring Nikita Petrov, Robert Patton-Spruill, and call-ins from viewers. Once again, our topic is the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. To be perfectly honest, before his horrific murder, I don’t think I understood the nature and breadth of Kirk’s influence as a Christian conservative icon and organizer. I get it now. I can see that he wielded enormous influence over a generation of young people the right had written off as unpersuadable liberals.

Charlie spoke to and for the dissatisfaction many youngsters on our campuses felt with the shibboleths they were made to utter, the acts of simpering self-effacement they were made to perform, and the legitimate views they were pressured not to express. Perhaps he was not the first to recognize the silent grievance and anger these rituals were instilling among Gen Z and Millennials, but he was the first and most effective figure to reach out to young, persuadable, alienated skeptics in their native idiom and media. Whatever you think about Charlie Kirk’s message, you cannot deny his efficacy, nor the personal connection so many felt they had with him.

Still, he was a public figure. And like any public figure, living or dead, he has no constitutional protections against criticism, even if that criticism is in poor taste. The events of the last week has seen his most vociferous defenders—including those with official government positions, like the vice president and the attorney general—recommending drastic measures against those who would criticize him. In this episode, I talk through the tension between the urge to memorialize a major political figure and the right of his critics to express their views, even in obnoxious ways. I have a dream of my own for the political leadership of this country, and I articulate it herein.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Rob, I cover many issues: I talk about my own cancelation by the Manhattan Institute, warding off the tyranny of the majority, the worrisome comments of truly powerful people like Elon Musk, JD Vance, and Pam Bondi, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s intervention in the Kirk debates, and what I dream the leader of our nation would say (and still can say) as the post-assassination temperature continues to rise. I talk with callers about the dynamics of backlash, plausible deniability, and the spiritual impetus to ease political tensions.

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