The assassination of the young conservative leader Charlie Kirk will go down as one of the most shocking events in our political history. It lays bare the extent and depth of the divisions confronting the nation. It cut down an idealist who took his cause, and that of millions of Americans, into our campuses where all too often conservative causes have been excluded. To many he was a heroic figure just beginning his climb.

Born at Arlington Heights, Illinois, in 1993, Kirk had the makings of a natural leader. At age 18 he helped found Turning Point USA, which has become one of the most influential conservative groups in the national debate, and served as its executive director. It is an irony that as he was slain today — by a single shot fired from a distance — he was preparing, the Times reported, to speak at Utah Valley University on, among other things, the Eighth Amendment.

That is the article of our constitutional Bill of Rights that forbids excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments. These kinds of principles and laws are the things that animated Kirk and that he sought to put at the center of his political crusade. Kirk, 31, was at the campus kicking off his “American Comeback Tour.” He was hosting what he called a “prove me wrong” table, where audience members debate the activist in a public setting.

It speaks to the depth of America’s political divide that even an attempt to mark the moment with silence on the floor of the Congress fell to partisan rancor. After the Speaker proposed a silent prayer for Kirk, Representative Lauren Boebert interrupted to demand a “spoken prayer,” Politico reports. “Silent prayers get silent results,” the Colorado congresswoman insisted, leading to a tumult of shouts and jeers among the solons. 

Kirk’s death is all the more tragic for his attempt as a political activist to emphasize the aspirations and ideals of young Americans. In his remarks at the 2024 Republican convention at Milwaukee, Kirk stressed his outreach efforts to “a lot of young people on campuses,” as well as in “our events, on my radio show, podcast, and social media.” Kirk joked to the convention audience: “Said differently, I visit college campuses so you don’t have to.”

Kirk explained to the delegates that “I hear a lot from young people about their hopes, their dreams, and their fears.” As he saw it, “young people are idealists. They respond to vision.” Kirk was not one to pull his punches. In his telling, young Americans were disappointed by the “vision of the Biden-Harris regime” in which “you’ll own nothing and be happy.” Instead of owning a home, he suggested, too many were relegated to renting a “studio apartment.”

Kirk conveyed his view that President Trump offered younger Americans “a rescue mission to revive your birthright, one your grandparents and those before them gave everything to hand down to you.” It was a message, he reported, that was resonating, which is “why young men are the most conservative that they have been in 50 years.” Addressing young voters, he averred: “You don’t have to stay poor” or “feel aimless and unhappy.” 

In Kirk’s telling, “America’s future is a series of choices.” He called “our current state of slow motion national decline” a “choice.” We don’t yet know who was the gunman, but in his evil choice of violence he was the opposite of Kirk, who urged young voters “to choose to no longer be spectators” and “to do the work to save America.” These are wonderful sentiments, and tens of millions will be praying for Kirk and the ideals for which he gave his life.