The Failed Assassination

Why Kirk's Genius Will Last

“And yet we cannot define as skillful killing one's fellow citizens, betraying one's friends, and showing no loyalty, mercy, or moral obligation. These means can lead to power, but not glory.”

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

Political assassinations almost never succeed in their goal. According to Machiavelli, it’s rare. They are mostly acts of desperation, violent efforts to stop history at a moment that's already passing.

This is a fundamental mistake. While killing a man may be easy enough, destroying the ideas, grievances, and ambitions that support him proves impossible. These deeper currents cannot be wiped out with a single shot. Instead, they surge forward with even greater force.

The resort to assassination reveals failure itself. When opponents abandon debate for violence, they signal that persuasion has collapsed and open political competition has become untenable. Such violence fundamentally misunderstands political power. A leader is never a solitary figure who can be severed from history like a weed; he embodies deeper forces that include social anxieties, cultural transformations, long-suppressed demands, and generational aspirations. Strike down the man, and these forces remain untouched. The shock of violence often amplifies them. His followers feel not defeat but vindication, convinced that their enemies' desperation proves their cause's strength.

This is why assassinations consistently fail on their own terms, since instead of ending movements, violence radicalizes them. Rather than silencing voices, it multiplies them. What the assassin imagines as an ending becomes a beginning of an entirely different nature. The target transforms from leader to symbol. His words, once debated, become sanctified. His cause, once contested, becomes consecrated.

This is the reality confronting those who thought Charlie Kirk's elimination would halt the rise of the movement he built. His enemies imagined that by striking at him, they could silence the voices he had awakened. But Kirk's genius lay in having already spread his voice to millions of others. He had transformed conservatism from a defensive posture into an offensive, and more importantly, confident movement. He gave ordinary conservatives not just arguments, but courage. He made it possible for them to speak out, and he showed them that being mocked or ridiculed was not defeat but proof of influence.

Kirk's method was deceptively simple. He distilled conservative ideas into accessible language that anyone could wield. This was not a lowering of standards but a strategy of empowerment. By stripping arguments of needless complexity, he ensured that a student, a parent, or a worker could stand in a classroom or workplace and hold their own. He broke the taboo of silence, replacing hesitation with confidence. That change is irreversible. Once people discover their voice, they do not return to silence.

This is why the assassination has failed. The transformation Kirk set in motion no longer depended on him personally. It had already spread through institutions, campuses, and organizations. His absence does not erase that momentum but accelerates it. The act of violence intended to halt him only demonstrated how successful he had been. His opponents admitted through their deed what they would not admit openly. He had become too powerful to defeat in argument, too effective to ignore.

The tragedy of his death lies not in the destruction of his work, but in the recognition that his work is beyond destruction. His enemies will learn what history has taught time and again. To kill a leader is not to destroy the conditions that created him.

Charlie Kirk will be remembered not only for what he said, but for what he made possible. He turned a party into a movement, gave ordinary people the courage to enter public life, and proved that civil debate could be a weapon more powerful than silence. His assassination will not undo this. It cannot. It has already failed.