How Should Americans Remember Charlie Kirk’s Legacy?

Charlie Kirk’s funeral was held on Sunday, September 21, 2025, about ten days after his death. The site for the funeral was State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were all in attendance.

Any person may ask, what kind of young man became friends with leaders like Trump, Vance, and Rubio as well as being respected and admired by teenagers and young adults. The word that I would use to describe him – an opinion that comes from hearing him speak and watching him interact with other people – is genuine. He did not seem to care if you were important or not. He did not care about your race, color, age, or religion. He loved all God’s children, especially those who were high school and college students. He loved people, and people loved him!

Victor Davis Hanson, in an article published at The Daily Signal, sought “to put the passing of Charlie Kirk in perspective” and “to make sense of this terrible incident. He suggested that we “remember what Charlie Kirk did.” He was a political organizer and a media figure, but he did not try “to persuade people on the basis solely of politics” like traditional politicians do. 

Charlie Kirk addressed “root causes that make people vote in a particular way.” He told leaders in the Republican Party that there was an “existential crisis of young people” on and off college campuses – young people who cannot afford to buy a car or home or to have children. He recognized that there is an “alienation of the youth and its flirtation with [socialism] and its false answers to these real problems. But more importantly, it’s creating a social, cultural problem called ‘prolonged adolescence.’”

Charlie Kirk tried to understand the situation of young adults – young people who are marrying later, having fewer children, and doing so later in life. Instead of buying homes in their late 20s and early 30s, they are waiting longer to do so. Instead of going to school for four years and then getting married, buying a home, and starting a family, they are going to school for six or eight or more years and owing several hundred thousand dollars in student loans. So, Charlie Kirk sought to “address the cultural, the economic, the social maladies of this country that expressed themselves in politics. And he thought if he took care of that, then he would be successful elsewhere. And so, he was.”

Democrat Joe Biden carried the youth vote – those 19- to 40-year-olds. However, without Kirk’s help in 2024, Republican Donald Trump “got, nationwide, 6% to 8%, about 8% higher of that youth vote than he did in 2020.” Even more important, Trump “got up to 18% to 19%” in key swing states – like Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Arizona, and Georgia – and flipped “a greater margin in 2024 than he did 2020.” Those additional votes gave Trump the Electoral College win – credited mostly to Charlie Kirk and his “efforts at addressing the real issues that young people were worried about – and showed the youth’s respect for Charlie Kirk.

Here are some interesting facts that Hanson shared about Charlie Kirk.

·         “He was the most successful political activist under 40 of either party, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative.”

·         He was “a political organizer, a political activist, [who created] a business-like organization … a 501(c)(3) … nonprofit … with $100 million budget.”

·         “He was a writer … a podcaster” who “dropped out of college at 18” and lived “by his wits, not in the artificial bubble of academia or the la-la land of the campus, where there are no consequences to behavior.” He “had to earn a living … form an organization … [and] appeal to people.”

·         “… he learned to speak to people in a practical … to write with people in a pragmatic way … learned to organize and galvanize people in a practical way.

Hanson did not mention Charlie Kirk’s intelligence, but he seemed to me to be highly intelligent. He may not have been “educated” in the way that Democratic politicians thought that he should be, but he was deeply knowledgeable. I heard one of Kirk’s employees and friends say that Kirk was always reading books and talking with wise people to gain knowledge and wisdom.

According to Hanson, Charlie Kirk recognized that the “universities are training generation after generation after generation in this seriously dangerous leftist dogma” (Charlie’s words). How did such a young man see the situation so clearly? Charlie also said (quoted by Hanson): “And therefore, I’m going to the campus and trying to stop this indoctrination by offering a different pathway.”

Hanson stated that people could “remember Charles Kirk’s legacy” by registering to vote and getting as many other people registered to vote. He wrote that such actions could help President Donald Trump to keep the House and Senate conservative and “upset the historical law” about a president losing “badly in his first midterm.” However, Americans can register, “show the same energy and creativity that Charlie Kirk did,” and “pull off a historical upset … [and] force multiply the Trump agenda.”