It has been four months since Charlie Kirk was assassinated in front of a crowd of 3,000 college students. As time passes, though our grief remains, our appreciation has only grown for the ability of a man who did not attend college to make such an impact on our public discourse. The founder of Turning Point USA gained more traction on campuses and helped shape the 2024 presidential race more than many professors, celebrities, and political pundits. This influence was due not only to his wit, command of statistics, and sharp rhetoric, but also because he began his arguments with the created order. In other words, he argued from natural law—what people intuitively know to be true. This starting point often softened the hostility and suspicion that characterize too much of contemporary political discourse.. Over time, his public work showed the staying power of natural law.
Charlie’s love for natural law is not a matter of speculation. He explicitly attributed his worldview to it as a guest on Alex McFarland’s podcast one week before his assassination:
And the idea of the natural law is that normativity is woven into nature. And that it represents itself in the moral, in the aesthetic, and also the discursive, which really is how we dialogue and we have reason. What does that mean for a younger person? They have to die to their own fleshly impulses and their lower appetites and realize that there’s a way they ought to live, which really is at the core.
That description matches his speeches, debates, and an earlier Fox News opinion article, where Kirk explained how John Locke’s use of natural law in his political philosophy shaped the authors of the Declaration of Independence. Kirk drew on the Declaration’s reference to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” to argue that people possess pre-political rights not derived from governmental consent.
Charlie traded on the good faith purchased by a rich, natural law discourse rooted in God’s creational order. Free speech and religious liberty, the twin freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment, cohere only because of that order, by which God preserves basic rights so people can pursue genuine flourishing and, ultimately, Truth. Human nature is calibrated towards this search for Truth. Free speech is the condition for testing truth claims and then patterning our lives accordingly—an alternative to coercion in an age increasingly uncomfortable with open debate. Charlie was the best of us at deploying free speech in the public square to gather people around shared moral goods and to test rival claims by what is true, good, and beautiful.
Even critics who rejected Kirk’s conclusions often acknowledged his willingness to engage rather than dismiss. From that foundation, he used natural law to bridge gaps on seemingly insurmountable issues, inviting opponents to consider the logical relationship of their positions to human flourishing. In contrast to cancel culture, contested dialogue became a unifying act; “Fair enough—we have clarity, not agreement” often concluded these exchanges.
Natural law shaped Charlie’s outlook by supplying a shared moral grammar for discussions over a range of issues—life, family, nation, abortion, sexuality, and more—all grounded in creational norms. His arguments resonated with a generation inundated with nonsense. He leaned into hot topics with civility that marked his speech, platforming his opponents rather than shutting them down and allowing a genuinely free contest of ideas.
A tree will be known by its fruit, and a public figure will be known by his legacy. After Charlie’s murder, there were no riots, burned storefronts, or flipped police cars. Instead, there was grief, prayer, and solidarity—all acts befitting a life dedicated to flourishing and unity consistent with the natural law. Charlie’s legacy is a community whose first instinct in suffering is worship and forgiveness rather than the outrage our age has catechized us to expect.
Charlie’s blood cries out from the ground with a better word than retribution, and his widow answered that call beautifully at his memorial service. Erika Kirk adorned her grief with the gospel in front of tens of thousands in person, and millions more online, when she forgave “that young man” who killed her husband, the father of her two children: “I forgive him because of what Christ did, and because it’s what Charlie would do.” This is a clear fulfillment of natural law, which originates, is upheld by, and culminates “in the person and work of Jesus Christ.”
Charlie was well known for inviting charitable disagreement in public discourse: “When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence.” The tragic irony that he was assassinated while engaging in free and open debate does not undermine his point; it proves it. Violence stopped Charlie’s voice, but it opened the mouths of a generation of natural law thinkers who now stand on his shoulders and carry forward his vision of a society, under God, free to flourish.
