Rick Delgado (67:13)
Yeah, there's a lot to get to. We tried to find. And I'll tell you what, I'd like to do an hour too, if the audience can. The audience out there would like to do it. If you have a remembrance of Charlie Kirk, maybe your first time you saw him, some specific video that you saw of him debating or a speech or you were at an event, tell us about it in the chat. And I'd like to, because I said yesterday all I really wanted to do was be able to take calls, let the audience speak. And I kind of feel the same way again tonight. You know, the emotions of the day, obviously no one could have prepared for that, what we just saw. But with this guy getting caught and then kind of watching how that's on everything that happened and then that speech tonight. But Skeet man says heavy week, but maybe a major, no pun, turning point for America. So if you have something, share it with us in the chat and we'll monitor all the chats. And if we see it, we'll, we'll try to get to. Speaking of that. Charlton Allen today has a. An article entitled A Turning Point for America, question mark. Is it a turning point for America? Charlie Kirk, he says, struck down not by fate but by political hatred. Murdered beneath a tent on a college green where the air should carry ideas, not the screaming of an assassin's bullet. His killing at Utah Valley University was not the silencing of one man alone. It was an assault on the principles he lived for. Civil discourse, free speech, constitutional accountability. In the American tradition of argument waged with words, not weapons. Charlie Kirk was the happy warrior, a figure once familiar in American politics, now uncommon. He argued without apology, confident in his cause, yet willing to test it in the open square. Turning Point USA was his creation. Not a militia of grievances, but a student movement driven by optimism, humor, and the conviction that America was worth defending. To young conservatives marooned on hostile campuses, he gave voice. He gave fellowship and a steady anchorage. Very rough waters. Now that voice has been stolen, and with it, one of Charlie's own warnings returns to haunt us. He saw more clearly than most that an assassination culture was taking root on the left. He cited polls where shocking numbers of liberals admitted they would justify murder in politics. He warned it was the natural outgrowth of tolerating violence and mayhem in public life. He knew it was a ticking time bomb. That bomb exploded in Orem, Utah. Charlie Kirk's assassination must mark a national inflection. Turning point in America. Can we recover the civic virtue in times past, such a vital part of the American ethos without which a republic cannot endure the belief that citizens may disagree even passionately, without resorting to violence? Or will we surrender to the hellscape where voices are silenced for their point of view, where the bullet replaces the ballot, where terror replaces talk. Our founding fathers understood this risk. They built institutions to channel conflict into speech, association, redress, ballots and laws, not bloodshed. Lincoln, facing another bitter divide, reminded the nation that, quote, there is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law. The same holds true now when assassins strike down voices because they cannot abide by the argument. They do more than silence individuals. They desecrate the constitutional republic itself and if unchecked, will destroy it. Too often, the mob now marches online not to argue, but to ruin, not to persuade, but to intimidate. Its trade is fear. Its object is silence. Its end is violence. This is not an isolated act. It follows Butler. It follows Mar Lago, both attempts to kill a former and future president. It follows an arson attempt during Passover aimed at the Pennsylvania governor and his family as they slept. It follows the slaying of a Minnesota legislator. It follows the Steve Scalise baseball shooting, the near miss at Justice Kavanaugh's home, the cold blooded slaughter of a health executive. The assaults on ice officers doing their jobs. Each time the refrain is sometimes heard. This is not who we are. But too many of us know better. Worse, too many have cheered even lionized assassins and assailants. Whether they failed or succeeded, some on the left have urged violence so long as it falls on ice officers or their political foes. And online, the chorus swells, dehumanizing, scapegoating, reveling in bloodlust. From such poisonic rhetoric, can anyone feign surprise when violence follows? As the Western Journal reported on Wednesday afternoon, the editors at the far left outlet Jezebel added an editor's note to one of their stories. The story was published on September 8th. Jezebel condemns the shooting of Charlie Kirk in the strongest possible terms. We do not endorse, encourage or excuse political violence of any kind. But as the Western Journal observed, not enough apparently to delete or apologize for the Monday story that was titled we'd paid some Etsy witches to curse Charlie Kirk that was still remaining on the website. Published just two days before the assassin struck, it reveled in hexes and malice against a living man with a wife and two young kids. We are past denial. Political violence is now reoccurring fact of American life. Unless it is completely repudiated, decisively, unequivocally, in far more than a season, it will become normalized. Charlie Kirk's impact was outsized. He proclaimed conservatism was not the domain of the aging generation, but could take root in the hearts of high schoolers, college sophomores, young professionals. His conservatism was not dour, but joyful, not reactionary, but constructive and forward looking. He insisted that our liberties were no relic of parchment, but the living lifeblood of a self governing people. They mocked him, tried to cancel him, tried to dehumanize him. Undeterred, Charlie Kirk's reach widened, his impact deepened, his message sharpened. In every sense, he was the rising star, his zenith still years, perhaps decades away. And for that he was cut down cruelly. Make no mistake, this was political terror, political repression, political murder. The question now is whether Charlie Kirk's death will prove to be a turning point, to borrow the name of his landmark organization, or a warning unheeded. All right, we'll get the guys reactions to that. Plus we'll get to a lot more video of what Charlie loved to do best. And that was debate. We'll do all that when we get back. Live from Studio 6, Big.
