The disdain for Charlie Kirk’s death is remarkable to see. From entertainment figures and university professors to social media influencers and cable TV commentators, it’s hard to recall any time in our history when a man’s murder has been so cruelly celebrated. But this heartlessness isn’t limited to academia and coastal liberal enclaves. It’s deeply embedded among the grass roots of the Democrat Party.
I didn't know what to expect when I attended a meeting of local Democrats in my north Texas community Wednesday night. The county where I live voted for President Donald Trump by a 13-point margin last year. Crime and poverty are well below the national averages, while household income and home values are well above. I strolled into the meeting hall, filled with several dozen people, and took a seat.
As I waited for the meeting to start, an elderly woman at a neighboring table told her companions a joke about, “Charlie Kirk’s awful, terrible, no good, very bad day,” to which one of her table mates responded, “Oh, that’s great,” and another said, “Jeez, that’s good.” Other people could be heard chortling at the gag.
The meeting was called to order by a middle aged woman who opened by saying, “Before we get really started, I just want everyone to take a deep breath, (pause) hold it, (pause) let it out. This last week has been, um, an especially shocking one, a challenging one, so, um, I just want everybody to take a moment to remember who we are, and who we are to each other. Right?”
Right. Who they are are people who joke over political assassination. Who they are to each other are people who laugh at each other’s jokes about political violence. The meeting continued with a Power Point presentation on transgender ideology, which opened with a series of definitions of various terms and acronyms, one of which included the letters M and F. When asked if everyone knew those terms, one woman twice suggested the M-F term means “motherf*****,” prompting another attendee to say, “Hey, there’s a five-year old here.” The crowd laughed for seven seconds.
This little meeting in north Texas represents a microcosm of the ideology that has taken over much, if not most, of the Democrat base, and it’s been writ large in recent years. Consider the summer of 2020. After a previously anonymous career criminal in Minnesota with a heart condition and enough drugs in his system to kill him died while resisting arrest,America exploded. The mass of people reacting to the death of George Floyd set whole neighborhoods, buildings, police and private vehicles ablaze. The riots in Minneapolis, Kenosha, and Portland, OR, led to particularly vivid displays of arson, but they were not isolated events.
Protestors set fires from Boston to Los Angeles, Seattle to Tampa, and many cities in between. A lot of those not setting fires were busy looting, shooting, beating and killing people. Nobody surveyed the thousands of violent protestors to determine their political affiliation but I’ll wager they were not proponents of property rights, free market capitalism, the rule of law, or other precepts that define modern American conservative ideology.
They burned cities.
Now consider the summer of 2025. A globally recognized conservative organizer, youth leader and proponent of Christianity died when an assassin sent a 30.06 round through his neck while inviting political conversation. The mass of people reacting to this event wept. People who were familiar with Charlie Kirk - even many who weren’t - gathered at memorials from coast to coast, bringing flowers, flags and prayers with them. They reminisced, read scripture and sang hymns at evening vigils. I’ll wager they are not proponents of income redistribution, state controlled grocery stores, unbridled illegal immigration, state mandated gender policy, or other precepts that define modern American leftist ideology.
They burned candles.
These stark differences in ideology probably aren’t surprising to America’s 27% of registered Republicans or the 27% of registered Democrats, as measured by Gallup in 2023. But they are hugely influential among the 43% of registered Independents. Millions of them have seen the outpouring of grief, love and heartfelt vigils for Charlie Kirk; the behavior of the American Right. They also remember the behavior of the American Left and how it spread fiery, murderous chaos across the nation five years ago.
Leftist ideology indicts itself once people see it in action. Perhaps this is why the New York Times last month raised the alarm about a “voter registration crisis,” in which Democrats lost more than two million voters over the past four years while Republicans gained nearly two-and-a-half million. People are beginning to see the ideological differences in American politics and they are choosing to burn candles instead of burning cities.
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