Dear Charlie

Until now I have never found it necessary to formalize my beliefs, to state exactly what I believe and why I believe it. There is a glut of unwanted and redundant opinions from far too many people online, and I don’t intend to add to that. The purpose of this message is strictly so that if anyone asks where I was, what I thought, and what I knew to be true on September 10, 2025, may these words bear witness.

(Disclaimer: this is not a refutation of the obscene, deplorable, and disgusting defenses and justifications I have seen posted online by friends, peers, and strangers alike. For a comprehensive refutation please refer to this YouTube video that breaks down every point much better than I ever could. I’ll link an audio version at the bottom of this article as well. Not that any of this needs defending. )

I pray that this was not a watershed moment, that this was a one-off incident of obscene violence, but I’m not so sure. This wasn’t about Charlie Kirk personally; as grotesque, violent, and tragic as this was, if it was truly about Charlie, they would have targeted him in a restaurant, on the street, or even his home. No, instead this is about what he represented, and who he represented. Charlie Kirk was not an extremist in the least, he was not a Nick Fuentes, or an Andrew Tate, he didn’t operate on the margins or appeal to fringe subcultures, he stood firmly center stage, and in just 13 years built the largest student activism group in American history. He built, he created, he influenced, and he overcame great hurdles to do so. He didn’t come from wealth or privilege, he was an everyman like you and me, who defended reasonable, rational ideas. He stood on three simple principles: faith, family, and freedom; something every single American stood for no more than 15 years ago.

A brief video I put together that catechizes Charlie’s views on the LGBTQ community (with a special guest appearance)

It’s not what you say, it’s just about who says it; who’s team you’re on. Charlie Kirk was our ambassador, the man conservatives sent to make peace, platform dissenters, and find common ground. He was moderate, he was peaceful, and now he’s dead. Charlie famously said that once people stop talking, bad things happen. He was often labeled a fascist, and if reports are to be believed, this was the reason he was executed. Instead of arguing, I’ll pose to you a question: you have two men in a room, one has two microphones, one he holds and another he offers to anyone who will take it. He extends an open invitation to anyone anywhere at any time to make a fool of him and his ideas. So generous is he that he films and offers to publish that film to an audience of millions. So confident in the rights and liberty of every man to challenge him and prove him wrong that he risks his life in defense of these rights and liberties. The other man, instead of debating, engaging, or sharing his viewpoints, shoots and kills the first man, silencing his voice. Who is the fascist? The man with the microphone or the man with the gun?

“If you believe in something, you need to have the courage to fight for those ideas - not run away from them or try to silence them” - Charlie Kirk

Charlie Kirk wasn’t just murdered; he was placed in front of hundreds of his loyal fans and many dissenters, with a wife and two young children at home, and brutally executed by a bullet through the neck. This wasn’t a random senseless act of gun violence, but a planned, targeted assassination with the intention of sending a grotesque and brutal message: censor yourself or die. May every person defending or even celebrating this murder watch the brutal video of this 31-year-old, God-fearing family man, take his last breath. While you watch, think of the young kids who will grow up without a father, wondering what crime was heinous enough to rob them of the joys of having a dad to love and cherish them. The charge? Death. For simply giving his opponents a chance to speak. I defy anyone to find a position Charlie held that deserved even a fraction of the punishment he received. No matter how upsetting or disagreeable you found him to be, tell me how he “had this coming” as I saw many former friends and people I used to look up to post online. These people—not fringe Antifa members or radical communists, but ordinary, respectable people you’d encounter on the street; neighbors, friends, peers, and coworkers—found some way to justify this brutality. “Well he shouldn't have died but he held some objectionable opinions" I saw one peer write. “We can guarantee free speech but we can’t guarantee freedom from consequences” I saw another. Is that how free speech works? Is it dependent and protected only as long as it’s under the umbrella of the acceptable zeitgeist? Should Obama have been executed for saying marriage is between a man and a woman? Biden? Absolutely not, and if such a thing happened everyone, myself included, would universally condemn it. Charlie would have too.

Charlie was best known as a debater. His rhetorical skill conjures to mind the great American orator William Jennings Bryan who said in his noble speech titled The Cross of Gold:

“This is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty - the cause of humanity.” - William Jennings Bryan

Bryan, who died almost 100 years to the month before Charlie, spoke at a time of great social upheaval in industrial society and the rise of centralized banking and governments. Charlie, in turn, who spoke during the ushering in of the information age and the rise of social leftism and post-modern nihilism. They carried the same message: the cause of humanity. Charlie Kirk will be remembered as the great orator of the information age.

Charlie died facing a university student like hundreds before him, but who this time, asked him his final question. I invite you to watch the video the man put out, clearly weighed down and horrified by the violence and tragedy of being Kirk’s last opponent. The topic was on the recent shooting in Minnesota, and the point the student was making was that mass shooters who identify as transgender represent a smaller proportion relative to their population than straight, white shooters. In his own words, the point he was making was that the left was peaceful. No sooner had he asked his question than Charlie’s body was on the ground. Charlie Kirk remains undefeated in public debates.

“In the wake of Charlie's assassination, many people are demanding that we redouble our devotion to the "free marketplace of ideas." The call seems at first glance courageous and noble. In reality, it is reckless and impractical. We had an open marketplace of ideas; the Left shot it up.

Not only have extreme leftists committed violence in the marketplace of ideas; more scandalous still, mainstream left-wing voices have cheered and made light of the violence. There can be no open marketplace—of ideas or anything else—under such conditions.

Marketplaces require rules, confidence, and common media of exchange. They require, in other words, order. Liberty requires order. One cannot be both free and undisciplined, for instance, or free and ignorant. We know this philosophically, and we also know it intuitively. It's why we don't let toddlers vote.

What we require now is the reassertion of order. We must insist upon the acceptance of basic truths and moral goods, not as the asymptotic goal of endless debate but as the axiomatic foundation without which debate cannot occur. We must foreclose certain antisocial behaviors and suicidal ideologies. We must, to borrow a phrase from Chesterton, stop "the thought that stops thought."

In practical terms, this means we must stigmatize certain evil ideas and behaviors, and we must ostracize people who insist upon them. More practically, this means that people who persist in such disorder should lose their social standing. In certain cases, they should lose their jobs. There must be consequences.

With any political reform, it is wise to err on the side of caution. The offenses that merit such ostracism should be particularly egregious. A good place to begin would be with those who celebrate the murder of an innocent man.”
- Commentator Michael Knowles via X

I’m not sure how we will recover from this. We now exist in a culture defined by our differences. There exists in America classes of people who hold absolutely nothing in common, who will justify and defend the brutalization of an innocent political opponent. The only solution is to do what Charlie did.

My charge to each and every person reading this is to speak up, hide your face and voice no longer, debate, argue, challenge the narratives, make peace, spread the truth, and don’t stop under any circumstances. Most importantly, be willing to die for it; Charlie was. He died for the right of his dissenters to disagree so vehemently that they had to kill him to get rid of him. The only way they knew how to silence the truth was to put a bullet through the only man courageous enough to die for it. A man is defined by what he does when he stands to gain nothing and lose everything. Charlie Kirk didn’t just die for his right to speak, but for his opponents, everyone who hated him and who now spit on his grave. He died for your right and my right. I would rejoice to have a fraction of the influence and double the enemies that Charlie did. I hope to God that I can be half as effective as Charlie Kirk. And when I die, may all of hell rejoice that I am out of the fight, may my enemies dance on my grave and may my words live forever. No one was as successful and influential as him, and no one will likely ever be again, but we must live by the same principles of courage and faith, family and freedom, and to make no peace with evil. Godspeed and God bless.

-Phineas B. Kelly

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” - Ephesians 6:12

Kirk family givesendgo https://www.givesendgo.com/inlovingmemoryofcharlie

Refutation of the arguments from fascists defending public executions