It feels surreal that someone so young, powerful of mind and spirit, full of life and warmth, could be ripped away from us by the seething hatred that seeks to silence all that is decent. Many of us had to pause, asking ourselves if it could truly be possible that someone so desperately needed in our time could be taken from us.
But sadly, the reports are real. Conservative activist, patriot, and founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, was fatally shot while speaking at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025.
Charlie Kirk had the makings of a great man — noble, brilliant, and capable. A loving husband, a devoted father of a son and daughter, brutally slain, tragically killed. And in his death, he seemed to prophesy his own oft-cited words: “When discourse ends, violence begins.”
The date itself carries a chilling weight. September 10 — the day before the infamous 9/11 — was fitting for a man who appeared at the very brink, the eleventh hour of darkness descending on our future. Yet it was also the anniversary of the Battle of Vienna, when Christian forces turned back the Ottoman Empire and preserved Western civilization. This was not a random date, but a date sanctified in blood — deliberately chosen by Islamists who knew its meaning.
And that is where Charlie stood: on the ramparts of our own time, fighting for the soul of America in its eleventh hour. Fighting for family life. Fighting for values, principles, and integrity. Fighting for free speech, for the unborn, for the independent life formed in the womb.
A Tribute to an American Voice
Charlie Kirk embodied a distinctly American phenomenon. Raised in the American church with a love and respect for Zion, he became a symbol of God’s place on earth in our time. His oft-cited warning—“when discourse ends, violence begins”—was not merely rhetoric but prophecy, reminding us of the dangers when truth is silenced.
Like Washington, he carried courage — the unshakable resolve to stand tall when others bent under pressure. Like John Adams, he wielded the brilliance of oratory — words forged in truth, sharpened into weapons of clarity. Like Jefferson, he bore a style and presence that filled the stage, carrying the weight of ideas with elegance and conviction. And like Lincoln — self-schooled, sharpened by his own hunger for knowledge — he rose above circumstance, teaching himself, shaping himself, until his mind was honed to a cutting edge few could match.
His star burned with an intensity rare in our age. Had Providence granted him length of years, it would have burned ever brighter into his 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s — illuminating the path for successive generations, who would have grown from his wisdom, been lifted by his love for humanity, and emboldened by his moral courage.
His voice, his wisdom, his maturity were far beyond his years. They marked him indelibly as a man chosen for moral impact — a force raised up to turn the tide of nihilism that has snuffed out our joie de vivre and traded sanctified sensuality for hollow sexuality, covenant for chaos, life for despair. Like Lincoln, he knew the cost of conviction. Like Washington, he bore the mantle of command. Like Adams, he argued with fire. Like Jefferson, he carried the radiance of vision.
In a time of confusion, he stood as clarity. In an age of cynicism, he stood as conviction. In a culture of compromise, he stood as covenant.
We do not only see him for what he was, but for what he symbolizes: an American voice of faith, conviction, and love for God’s covenant with Israel and the West.
As a Jew, as a father of sons serving in the IDF, I have been watching a tsunami of hate smash against the shores of the Western world. Thunderous waves rise from the West, from the Left, and incursions from the Right—everyone coming at the Jews.
And in the midst of that storm, Charlie Kirk stood like an apostle of Zion.
He smacked down the Israel-bashers. He upended the Christ-killer contingents. Charlie was a true friend of the Jewish people, seeing them as brethren, not as the caricature of the “perfidious Jew.” That is a uniquely American phenomenon—rooted in faith, conviction, and love.
Charlie — so wholesome you could see it in his face — carried in his heart a love for the innocent, and he defended all that was good and pure. He never went to college, but like many great men he was self-taught. And not only did he hold his ground debating at Oxford, he fenced with the dexterity of an Olympian swordsman — striking down false narratives and poisonous ideologies from Oxford’s coddled, narcissistic, self-anointed intellectuals. They could not hold their ground, nor could they hold a candle to his light.
He was a singular tour de force, turning back hearts and minds against the relentless indoctrinations that sought to sever family values, despise heritage, and enthrone every bizarre and corrosive ideology — until the young became unrecognizable to themselves and to their ancestors. Such is the bitter fruit of a generation poisoned by the hundreds of billions of petrodollars poured into our universities.
Charlie cut through this fog. He exposed the well-financed programs unleashed under Obama and Biden — propped up by EPA slush funds and hundreds of millions funneled through USAID into every leftist media outlet with ink to spill. He named the corruption without fear, and he disarmed the young until they were forced to trade fiction for fact, illusion for truth.
Charlie’s voice was a wall of fire against those tides.
The story of my grandmother’s holy father, a scholarly and spiritual man, who with his wife and four sons was buried alive, set a fire in me from my earliest years. I wake up thinking about the Jews, and I go to sleep at night thinking about the Jews—our safety, our place in the world, and what will become of my children. Will they face the same hatred my great-grandfather faced, decades before Hitler? God forbid.
In this burden, Charlie brought me comfort. To see him jousting with false narratives, pseudo-theology, and communist diversions—so often filled with lust for the Jew—was to see a man fighting on my behalf, on behalf of all of us. He did it with grace, calm, clarity, thoughtfulness, and kindness—even toward those who did not deserve his kindness.
The Jewish people have lost a righteous defender, greater than many can even imagine. Charlie had total unity between heart and mind—that is the soul. And because of that unity he could speak with the insight, clarity, conviction, and strength of a prophet. In a world where greed and lust for honor silence most men,
Charlie was true to his heart, true to his God, and true to humanity. He could not be bought with Qatari money. He could not be intimidated by threats. He was willing to walk into the furnace to do God’s will. Many will envy him. Few will choose to be him. For to be a man such as Charlie, to try and restore us to a more noble time, comes with sacrifice—and the path of sacrifice often opens to martyrdom.
I am torn apart and broken by the vitriol in the Western world. Little brings me comfort. But Charlie did. He was uniquely positioned to go to battle for the Jewish people like David, because he could speak authoritatively as a Christian—through his knowledge of the Bible, his experiences in the Holy Land, and his understanding of the moral values of the IDF and of Israeli youth, who are forced by circumstance to mature quickly, to grow stoic in the face of mayhem, chaos, murder, and war.
It takes one to know one. And Charlie knew. He saw how God was working His prophecies in our lifetime. Oh, if only leftist liberal Jews could be so good, so wise, so full of common sense—to see that God’s hand prevails in all things, and that the empirical claims of Torah have come true in the lives of our grandparents, our parents, and our own.
As the founder and leader of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk led a powerful movement on college campuses — a movement that equips American youth, victims of 50 years of academic, cultural, and theological lies, to counter those lies with biblical truth. Antisemitism to Kirk was not a fringe nuisance — but a civilizational threat.
He sowed moral clarity, not moral relativism; truth, not trendy victimhood, brought Israeli speakers to campus, encouraged Christian students to proclaim:
“I stand with Israel because the Bible commands me to,”
“Israel is not a mistake — it is a miracle.
“You cannot accept the Bible and reject Israel.”
“Jerusalem is the capital of G-d’s chosen people.”
“Israel’s rebirth is prophetic fulfillment.”
“Christians must never betray the Jewish root that nourishes their faith.”
And said of himelf: “When I went to the Holy Land, I came in contact with the living God. I cannot imagine walking those ancient streets without Israel.”
May his memory be blessed.
Randy Settenbrino is a writer, artist, and public intellectual whose work bridges theology, philosophy, and psychology. He is a passionate advocate for Israel and Jewish-Christian solidarity, and the founder of the Historic Blue Moon Hotel—recognized by National Geographic as one of the 150 most unique projects in the Western Hemisphere. A father of two IDF soldiers, he and Nevut Lone Soldiers International are holding a special benefit dinner at the Historic Blue Moon Hotel on Sunday, September 28th at 6:30 PM, to honor IDF soldiers. To attend, write info@bluemoon-nyc.com