Thoughts on Charlie Kirks Murder and the Death of Civility, by Pater

A quote often attributed to Lenin states that, “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Looking back over the bloodshed of these last few weeks of summer I can’t help but think that we have passed through a decades worth of change in a fortnight. The horror of Iryna Zarustska’s brutal murder on a commuter rail train in Charlotte, coupled with the calloused indifference of those who witnessed her slaying, revealed the cold depths of the racial animosity that has been cultivated by the Left in our nation for generations.

Five days later, at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, the nihilism of a man in rebellion against his very nature reached its culmination when he slaughtered innocent school children praying at Mass before turning the gun on himself. While our nation was still mourning the death of 8-year old Fletcher Merkel and 10-year old Harper Moyski, and just coming to grips with the tragic scene of a dying Iryna staring in bewildered horror at her killer, we were hammered with yet another atrocity when Charlie Kirk was gunned down in front of his wife and two small children at a campus rally in Orem Utah. His 3-year old daughter, terrified by the gunfire and screams, tried to run to her father for comfort, but he was gone. His killer seems to have been motivated by the same nihilistic animus as the Annunciation shooter, a man in open rebellion against his own God-given nature.

I watched the videos of Iryna and Charlies murder; not out of ghoulish idle curiosity, but as a witness to their passing. They both died horribly; Iryna, terrified and alone, bleeding out on the dirty floor of a city transit train, and Charlie, shot through the neck, a torrent of blood pouring out of the wound from his severed carotid artery, arms flailing from a total loss of motor control as he dropped where he sat. What I saw was horrific, tragic and pitiful, but the video record of their deaths also bore witness to their humanity and the injustice which had been perpetrated against them. Having a record of this is important, especially so with Iryna; without it she would have been just another faceless statistic barely mentioned in the local paper.

The video of their deaths made their tragedy present to hundreds of thousands across the internet in such a way that it was impossible to look away, ignore it, or pretend it didn’t happen; it was all right there before our eyes in graphic undeniable detail, demanding accountability and vengeance. All of it was horrifying.

Sadly, their individual deaths proved to be one small facet of a far greater horror that has come to light through their passing. The lengths that some went to bury the story of Iryna Zarustska’s murder were bad enough, even going so far as to try to remove references to her murder from Wikipedia. Worse still is the goblin-like glee that tens of thousands on the left have publicly expressed at the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The ghouls celebrating his violent death and praising his murderer aren’t just from the cultural fringes either; many public officials, medical professionals, teachers, and even military officers have also been implicated through statements made on their social media accounts. What’s more, the Left’s call for violence hasn’t been sated with Kirk’s blood; there have been calls for the killing of his wife and children, commentators Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro, President Donald Trump, and author JK Rowling, among others.

Witnessing all of the violence and animosity that has wracked our country over the last few weeks, some may find it difficult to believe that there is also a great good being worked in our nation. Never in my lifetime has the depravity and vindictiveness of the Left been seen in such sharp relief by so many. For years the decent hardworking nose to the grindstone class in our country has worked their jobs, built their homes, loved, married, and raised their families, all the time pretending that the difference between them and the tinkering progressives in the cities and universities was just a disagreement on the means to achieve a common end. There may not have been agreement on how to get there, but it was assumed both sides acted in good faith and always had the common interest at heart.

Over time the left continuously increased its demands as it eroded the mores of our nation, but out of politeness and civility folks were willing to tolerate these new mores of the Left, even if they didn’t agree with them. The change the Left demanded has continued steadily from the legalization of murdering full term infants to the cultural tolerance of sodomites, to homosexual marriage, to men dressed as women undressing in the girls high-school locker room. And still we mostly went along with it, always out of politeness and an earnest desire to meet our political opponents in good faith, present our arguments, and let reason carry the day. This is no longer the case.

When Charlie Kirk was murdered, polite civility died with him, and not a moment too soon. For too long we as fathers have suffered from a timidity of spirit that has stifled our rightful authority in our homes and in our communities. Naturally, authority not exercised is no authority at all, and this dereliction of duty has had far reaching consequences in our families and in the larger culture. In the name of supposed civic virtue we have tolerated depravity and violent criminality that the men of earlier generations would have destroyed with fire a long time ago.

We have consistently avoided conflict and set aside our morals, turning a blind eye to the destruction of our nation until rot and death have so permeated our culture that it is no longer possible to turn away from it. We must confront the evil in our midst or be consumed by it. The murders of Charlie Kirk, Iryna Zarustska, Fletcher Merkel and Harper Moyski demand justice and righteous vengeance. It is no longer possible for good men to stand aside and let this evil flourish, for by our inaction we condemn ourselves and join the legions of the damned. We must act.

At the most basic level, we can do this each day in the little things by refusing to acquiesce to the lies of the Left. We can stop pretending that the father who’s letting his wife dress their son up as a little girl deserves any level of polite respect when we see him. We can stop pretending that two sodomites adopting a child is anything short of child abuse. We can stop pretending that there is justice in our courts when the damned black robe clerics continue to release violent felons time after time after time until they murder an innocent woman, and even then the judges conspire to release the murderer from prison on the pretext of being mentally incapable of standing trial.

I would like to close with a quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn which perfectly illustrates our duty as Christian men and fathers,

“Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me. The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”

With the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the raging blood lust of the left it is apparent we  have finally reached a point where politely ignoring our differences is no longer possible. We must become passionate witnesses of the Truth, and for that we will be hated. Own it and act with courage. Godspeed you gents, keep the faith, we’ve got a long fight ahead of us.