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** Charlie Kirk’s Legacy: The Contest of Ideas
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Dear John,

Charlie Kirk was murdered Wednesday in front of thousands of Utah Valley University students who had come to hear him, cheer him, and challenge him. It was the first stop on his fall “American Comeback Tour,” though he had been visiting college campuses all year — including right here in California.

Kirk founded Turning Point USA to rally America’s youth around liberty and free markets. His success was remarkable. In state after state, on campus after campus, crowds of energized students packed his events. Conservative students came out to hear their beliefs articulated, validated and sharpened. Liberal students came to make their case in opposition.

On campuses suffocated by leftist indoctrination, Kirk’s presence offered something different — a glimpse of what higher education once promised: a genuine contest of ideas.

At every stop, Kirk directly engaged individual students. He’d set up on campus under his tent displaying the slogan, “Prove Me Wrong.” Students would step to the microphone and ask him — face-to-face — their toughest political, cultural and religious questions. Kirk answered with candor, addressing students by name, and explained common-sense conservative principles in unapologetic terms.

This week, Kirk was assassinated — while wearing a white t-shirt emblazoned with the word “FREEDOM” — in front of some 3,000 students and others on the campus of Utah Valley University, the largest public university in Utah. He was just 31, a husband and father. As we write this, police have arrested a 22-year-old suspect in the shooting. Some on the left have grotesquely celebrated the murder, an act that recalls their praise of the man who shot health insurance executive Brian Thompson dead in Midtown Manhattan.

But far more Americans have responded, as you’d expect, with grief and horror, including prominent California Democrats.

“We should all feel a deep sense of grief and outrage at the terrible violence that took place in Utah today,” Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement ([link removed]) . “Charlie Kirk’s murder is sick and reprehensible, and our thoughts are with his family, children, and loved ones.” “I’m absolutely disgusted by today’s attack on Charlie Kirk,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass ([link removed]) said in a post on X. “Political violence in all forms is unacceptable and reprehensible. We must all reject it.”

But there was a kind of nosy clanging in their denunciations. Contrast their generousness of spirit — or “graciousness,” in the old-fashioned sense of that word — with Newsom and Bass’s comments about President Trump just days before the shooting. Last week, in response to a Newsom lawsuit, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that federal agents have a right to detain — to stop and ask questions of — people they suspect are in the U.S. illegally. Newsom responded to the court’s decision with the kind of language that seems likely to destabilize already unstable persons. His entire statement is worth reading for its hyperbole and reckless disregard for public safety:

Trump’s hand-picked Supreme Court majority just became the Grand Marshal for a parade of racial terror in Los Angeles. This isn’t about enforcing immigration laws — it’s about targeting Latinos and anyone who doesn’t look or sound like Stephen Miller’s idea of an American, including U.S. citizens and children, to deliberately harm California’s families and small businesses. Trump’s private police force now has a green light to come after your family — and every person is now a target — but we will continue fighting these abhorrent attacks on Californians.

“Racial terror,” “targeting Latinos and anyone,” “to deliberately harm,” “Trump’s private police force,” “a green light to come after your family,” “every person is now a target,” and "these abhorrent attacks on Californians”? That’s the sort of language that would trigger (pun intended) a low-information person to reach for the closest weapon at hand. And hoping that we don’t understand the constitutional process by which all Supreme Court justices are nominated, Newsom dismissed the court majority as “Trump’s hand-picked Supreme Court majority.”

That wasn’t Newsom’s first lighting of the torches. In a June speech he titled “Democracy at a Crossroads,” Newsom declared, ([link removed]) “Democracy is under assault right before our eyes — the moment we’ve feared has arrived.” Last month, at a POLITICO Live event, the governor “questioned whether there would be future democratic elections at all,” Politico reports ([link removed]) .

“Wake up,” Newsom told the audience. “We’re losing this country in real time.”

Never mind that those claims are either laughably stupid or outright lies. In either case, they’re designed to light up an infuriated base — Democrats for whom, polling shows, ([link removed]) want Newsom to express more rage and less nuance. We leave it to you to determine whether that language is likely to inspire more or less civil debate of the sort that Charlie Kirk created right up to the moment of his assassination.

This is a pivotal moment for America. In addition to the tens of thousands of young Americans who flocked to Kirk’s events and his more than 5 million followers on X, Kirk’s daily podcast, “The Charlie Kirk Show,” had as many as 750,000 daily listeners. Now, countless young Americans of all political stripes have witnessed his gruesome assassination replayed over and over again on social media.

Generation Z is watching to see what happens next. It’s up to us to comfort and direct them. We can start with recent history. If you were upright and sucking oxygen in the 1960s, you recall the string of political assassinations — of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther KIng, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. You recall the violent anti-war protests, campus riots, and attempted assassination attempts of President Gerald Ford — twice in California in just one month, September 1975.

“In 1970 alone,” the FBI reports, ([link removed]) “an estimated 3,000 bombings and 50,000 bomb threats took place across America. Violent left-wing radicals like the Weather Underground bombed a series of government buildings, including the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon, in the ‘60s and early ‘70s.”

We not only survived that period. We thrived. Stepping back from the brink of a wider war among Americans, voters in 1980 elected Ronald Reagan — a candidate who had run on faith in the American people, our constitution, and freedom. The economy boomed, freedom expanded, and America reclaimed its role as a global leader. When he ran a second time, it was with a slogan that captured Reagan’s faith in America and Americans’ faith in his message: It was, his re-election campaign declared, “morning again in America.” And not just America: When the Soviet Union began its slow-motion collapse in 1989, it was not merely because of America’s military strength but because of the strength (and attractiveness) of our ideals — ideals expressed by a president who would likely have admired Charlie Kirk.

A friend once offered this update on a familiar aphorism: “God never closes one door without opening another,” he said, “but the hallways are hell.” Today might feel very dark, maybe even hellish. But buoyed by faith, maybe we rededicate ourselves to the daily work of advancing American principles. If we are faithful in that work, if we are a joyful invitation to defend America, what comes next is as inevitable as an open door at the end of a dark hallway, the return of morning in America.
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** Radio Free California #406: ‘I Yell Because I Care’
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On this week's podcast with CPC president Will Swaim and CPC board member David Bahnsen: Legendary California Democrat John Burton is dead but his malignant influence lives on. The U.S. Supreme Court allows federal immigration stops to continue in California. Dems warn that “Abundance” could leave Californians with nothing to complain about. Listen now. ([link removed])

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** ICYMI: The Economic Development Paradigm – City-Created Problems and Taxpayer-Funded Fixes
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