“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” -Tertullian (AD 155-210)

What follows is a series of loosely connected thoughts and observations about the Charlie Kirk atrocity. (I originally typed the word “tragedy” as the last word of that sentence, but it’s not the right word. Earthquakes and other acts of broken nature are a tragedy. Broken humans commit atrocities.)

-> Christians have been dying at the hands of pagans for 2000 years now. It’s always appalling. And it always leaves behind heartbroken believers. And it always . . . always . . . backfires on the pagans.

-> I had a text exchange with a friend about Charlie Kirk’s assassination the day after the event. He expressed concern that the event would accelerate and amplify the polarizing forces already tearing our nation apart. And that exasperated conservatives, weary of taking the high road, would begin to, in his words “fight fire with fire.” My response was . . .

“Very possible. But I hope not. My hope is that a big swath of still-sane center-left people will recoil in horror at whay they have been participating in and/or excusing.  Something similar happened with the center-right with the assassination of MLK. The MLK murder is the closest corralary to this I can come up with, but on the mirror-image opposite side.”

A little later in that convo, I typed:

In that same conversation I mentioned how the event got me thinking about the progression that let us to September 10 at Utah Valley University.

I tried to remember the first time I ever heard about a conservative being shouted down or rioted down on a college campus. I was pretty sure it had something to do with Jeane Kirkpatrick when she was President Ronald Reagan’s Ambassador to the United Nations. The first woman to ever hold that prestigous post; and a formidable intellectual—a Columbia PhD and fluent in three languages. (Side note: The Left has built a quasi-religious cult around Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but Reagan also appointed the first female Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O’Conner.)

In a saner world, Kirkpatrick, a former Democrat, would have been a feminist icon, but she carried the fatal flaw of being anti-Communist. And for Progressives, that’s the unforgiveable sin.

So I looked it up and, sure enough, In February of 1983, Kirkpatrick, one of the most powerful women in the world, was scheduled to speak twice at UC Berkeley for their annual Jefferson Memorial Lectures series. But hecklers so disrupted her first scheduled speech that the second one was canceled. At that point, Kirkpatrick had already had one address recently cancelled because of planned, disruptive protests (at Smith College—ironically a prestigious women’s college). But two weeks later, a Kirkpatrick speech would be disrupted at the University of Minnesota. Eventually, the brilliant, accomplished and insightful speaker largely gave up on trying to share ideas at the places in America the should have the safest and most welcoming to the presentation of ideas.

 

In the years that followed, Robert Bork, Charles Murray, Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, and scores of other brilliant people with interesting ideas and thought provoking perspectives found their college campus speaking invitations either cancelled in advance or disrupted if allowed to commence. The perpetrators throughout the decades were the roll-call of Neo-marxist, Liberal Fascist, anarchist, anti-Western Civ. know-nothings who think they know everything and hold the moral high ground:

• • Communist Party USA (CPUSA)

• • Occupy Wall Street

• • Code Pink

• • MoveOn.org

• • Antifa

• • BLM

• • BDS groups (various)

• • Anti-Zionist orgs (various) such as, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights

• • PETA/Animal Liberation Front

• • Extinction Rebellion

• • Earth Liberation Front

• • The Open Society Foundation

• • The Human Rights Campaign

• • Various “trans” LGBTQQ+ advocacy groups.

The names and acronyms come and go, but the underlying philosophy and goals remain the same. As does the demonic spiritual root. And these groups tend to be secretly funded either by foriegn powers that hope to weaken the U.S. (China, Russia) or socialist billionaires like George Soros or Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss or Blackrock’s Larry Fink or any of a variety of “dark money” sources.

If you’ve ever wondered how it’s possible that thousands of protesters can show up carrying identical, professionally printed signs at an event on short notice, just know that it’s because some deep-pocketed groups are providing funding and organizational recruitment. Often these protesters are literally being paid to show up.

It was true during “Occupy Wall Street.” It was true during the BLM protests. And it’s true today.

What we have witnessed over the last few decades is mainstream media and the dominant culture excusing and rationalizing rioting, theft and looting (restorative justice), and violence which has culmiinated in the assassination of a bright, young, Christian husband and father who had the courage and confidence to engage in debate with people who disagreed with him. This is how we got there.

Then there was this harbinger of dark things to come back in April . . .

In that text exchange I mentioned above, I made this observation about the last fifty years of left wing college campus dominance brought us to the public murder of Charlie Kirk . . .

What was once tolerated and then rationalized and then celebrated on college campuses . . . culminated in what happened on 9/10. The assassination of a Christian for proclaiming Christian things. That’s literally the definition of a Christian martyr.

The devil always overplays his hand. While grieving with those who grieve, I look forward to seeing how this blows back on those who have aligned themselves with darkness. There is a principle woven into the fabric of the universe by its Creator . . .

Whoever digs a pit will fall into it, and a stone will come back on him who starts it rolling. (Proverbs 26:27)