This is not a dream.
It isn’t some nightmare from which we can awaken to find our friend alive and well.
No.
This is a hero’s tale - one of a brave knight on a perilous journey who entered the battle and fought gloriously until his last breath.
Our friend is dead.
That reality cannot be changed, no matter how much we wish it.
But, like all good fairytales, it is only the beginning of Charlie Kirk’s story. Like Arthur before he became King of Camelot working as a lowly squire for Sir Kay, 17 year-old Charlie was, not long ago, just an enthusiastic high school student who talked about politics and his love for America at local Tea Party meetings. No one ever expected him to be the man who rebuilt the entire Conservative movement by the age of 31.
No one thought he would save the world.
But he did.
Charlie had a framed Bible verse on his desk that he looked at everyday. It was Micah 6:8, “He has told you, O Man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Charlie knew what it meant to be a great man. He lived his life by Biblical standards - what we often think of today as the code of knightly virtues: Courage. Justice. Mercy. Generosity. Faith. Nobility. Hope. These are words that easily describe our fallen friend.
I always find it strange that everyone forgets how all great stories or quests begin. They don’t start in some pretty meadow or out of boredom or for fun.
They start with Evil.
With a problem, an adversary, a curse that must be overcome, an enchantment to be broken. The hero’s journey only begins when he chooses to venture into the deepest, darkest parts of the forest where dangers await around every corner. Where he knows the twisted branches of giant trees cast terrifying shadows, evil trolls lay in hiding and there is the legitimate fear of accidentally touching dragon’s scales in the darkness.
It is a dangerous path.
A narrow path. A lonely path. But it is the only path.
To change the world, you must first face it.
It’s never by accident or apathy that men become heroes. They have to choose it. They have to actively seek it out. They have to be so relentless in pursuing a higher goal - like serving God and saving one’s country - that not even the most horrifying apparition or tempting enchantress could deter them.
Their Courage comes from their Faith.
And Charlie’s faith was unshakeable.
He pursued Justice at every turn, but showed Mercy, Generosity, and Kindness of spirit to both enemies and friends alike. He was noble. He revered the Lord, sought wisdom, and treated the least of us the same as the greatest of us. It didn’t matter if you were a purple-haired college kid looking to argue ideologies or the President of the United States; to him, you were both created in the image of God. He stood for something far greater than any one man, idea or political party ever could.
He fought for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.
He reminded us that we are One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All because we are endowed with certain unalienable rights by our Creator and have been bought and washed by the blood of Jesus Christ.
Husband, father, son, mentor, boss, speaker, debater, genius - these all are finite in comparison to his true immortal identity as Follower of Christ. And in that, we can share in Charlie’s knightly virtue of Hope.
The man ran on Hope.
He wasn’t some black-pilled cynic or uninterested bystander like so many of our generation have been, but Hope’s Champion. Hope for a better country for his children, hope for the flourishing of mankind, hope for good to defeat evil.
This, too, came from his faith in God. That is what gave him the courage to pick up the mantle, to mount his horse, and to go, one treacherous step at a time, ever further into that darkly enchanted forest despite knowing it might cost him everything.
And it did.
But he went anyway.
Charlie knew the dangers, but was never deterred because he knew the cost of not going was far more grave. That failing to fight the battle against evil in our world would be the same as surrendering.
And knights never surrender.
They soldier on, pushing past the pain and fear, the setbacks and disappointments, the spells and phantoms, inching ever nearer to their Holy Grail.
Charlie would rather have been taken from this world fighting until his last breath for what was right than retreat from the fight and let the world crumble. Even though it surely would have been safer. Even though that might mean that his wife and their two precious children would have a husband and father at home right now.
But Charlie knew that safety was never promised to us. He knew that his life was in service to something so much bigger than himself that it - quite literally - changed the course of human history.
Without Charlie, President Trump would not have won by the margins he did in November 2024, America would be in the hands of the most evil Deep State individuals possible, and the world would no longer have its City on a Hill. There would be no Golden Age, no great beacon of Western Civilization, no immovable houses of Law and Order to cast our eyes upon and lift us higher.
There would be nothing left to fight for.
A great shadow would have covered the land and I, personally, don’t think we would have recovered from another four years of chaos and corruption under the oppression of woke, atheistic, liberal progressivism. We were at the edge of a very tall cliff and nearly went over.
So we fought. We chased ballots. We visited college campuses. We prayed.
Most of all, we talked to people.
Charlie taught us how.
We told them the truth and explained that there were two sides fighting for the soul of our nation - one that believed in Right and one that believed in Wrong. We explained that we were at the precipice of something fearsome and that this was it - this was our turning point.
Either we were to go down fighting for what was right or we were to willingly hand over the greatest nation on earth to her enemies.
Which would it be?
Charlie knew there could only be one way. He would stand his ground and not run away from the war, but give it everything he had until there was either victory or death.
In the end, it was both.
Here’s the stark truth about fighting any battle; it doesn’t matter that the right side wins. It matters that the right side’s right.
And Charlie was right.
About everything.
Even in death, nothing - not even the cowardly bullet of an assassin - can wipe away the legacy of a man who has lived a virtuous life. There was something brighter and stronger in his soul that burned hotter and faster than most of us even understand.
This white hot inferno of courage, kindness and hope glowed with a warmth that made you want to burn a bit brighter yourself. You wanted to be seared by its motivating spirit of virtue. Be burnt by its relentless optimism.
That’s just who Charlie Kirk was.
He moved us. He educated us. He reset the bar to its proper height (while joking about his own) and reminded us that greater things were - and should be - expected of us. This internal fire of his hasn’t been extinguished - quite the opposite. It’s become a wildfire, spreading from one person to the next, blazing with enough fuel to inspire generations to come.
God is on the move.
Charlie said it best when he wrote “Good men must die, but death can’t kill their names.”
No, death will not kill the name of Charlie Kirk.
It has instead etched it in stone for all of eternity beside others who have perished at the hands of Evil. His name will become a banner under which millions take the pledge to mount horses of their own and fearlessly follow in his footsteps, bearing the light that will break the dark curse over our land.
It is fitting that President Trump posthumously awarded our knight Charlie the Presidential Medal of Freedom this week. The medal is the highest award that can be given in our land by the President to a civilian who has made “an especially meritorious contribution to (1) the security or national interests of the United States, or (2) world peace, or (3) cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”
Charlie accomplished all three.
His legacy will be a revival, a reckoning, and a restoration on a scale he never imagined to what, like any good knight, he always wanted to be remembered for - unshakeable, courageous faith.
So onward, brave riders.
Further up and further in.
Tiffany Marie Brannon is a writer. She hosts the TMB Problems podcast.
