Charlie Kirk, Martin Luther King Jr., and Sam Francis

 

In a previous article, I reflected on the first anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s death. With the passage of time, it’s appropriate to reflect on why his legacy was so powerful and controversial, even among conservatives.

Charlie Kirk was not just an incredible organizer, activist, minister, and speaker. 

We need to recognize that he made some bold advancements in conservative political philosophy. 

There have been many articles written about Charlie Kirk's incredible personality, charisma, energy, and political drive. Not as much attention has been paid to the work and the writing that he did.

In his final book, Right Wing Revolution, he released numerous seeds of truth, conservative insight, and common-sense campaign and culture war advice that a proper review and discussion merit their own column. 

I want to start with one of his most controversial assertions: his opposition to the Civil Rights Act. In fact, he spoke against all the Civil Rights Acts that were passed in the 1960s. Starting with the warnings of Barry Goldwater, the Republican US senator who suffered a landslide loss to Lyndon Baines Johnson in the 1954, 1964 presidential election, Kirk outlined how the fundamental statutes of the Civil Rights Act had set the stage for DEI, critical race theory, affirmative action, systemic racism, and all the other culture war problems that the United States is facing. 

This is a necessary but difficult topic to tackle. US Senate candidate Rand Paul of Kentucky stated plainly that the Civil Rights Act should be repealed, and straightaway he had to walk back those remarks for fear of risking the US Senate seat that year, 2010. Washington Post columnist George Will mocked Rand Paul, reminding him that he was running a campaign for the US Senate, not hosting a seminar on libertarianism. 

15 years later, the United States has witnessed the harrowing consequences of affirmative action, critical race theory, diversity, equity and inclusion policies and programs, and ultimately the woke agenda, which has metastasized from the whole civil rights morass, crowding out natural rights, freedom of speech, and economic liberty. The Right and the rest of the country are recognizing that the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s has been distorted. Now, under the guise of civil rights, schools and other facilities are forced to allow men into women's sports and spaces. The Supreme Court has even perversely ruled (Clayton v. Bostock) that Title 9 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when it speaks to no discrimination based on sex, must also include sexual orientation and gender identity. Such broad constructions have undermined our constitutional liberties and our natural rights. They have also created unprecedented litigation and government bureaucracy. 

Following in line with the assertion challenging the Civil Rights Act and Movement, the real greater activist leader who deserves our respect is Charlie Kirk. He should replace Martin Luther King Jr. The martyred Civil Rights Icon led a disordered private life, which has become very public. Martin Luther King Jr was not a Christian in any real sense. He did not believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He subscribed to communist theories, and he also believed in the redistribution of wealth. The ample evidence and documentation prove that Dr. King plagiarized his dissertation. He did not even write the book Letters from a Birmingham Jail, nor did he write his “I Have a Dream” speech.

When the United States Congress put forward legislation to turn Martin Luther King Jr.'s Jr birthday into a holiday, President Ronald Reagan was initially hesitant. There was a great deal of FBI evidence classified about MLK. President Trump just released everything, exposing Martin Luther King Jr not only as a moral failure, but also exploding the mythology around him. King did not believe that all men are created equal. He favored reparations, racial quotas, and affirmative action. 

King’s commitments to government-driven social justice of these pronouncements run contrary to the American constitutional order. The United States has been fed a lie, and it’s time to destroy the MLK idol

Kirk was not afraid to crush the MLK/Civil Rights sacred cows. He even referenced the controversial conservative polemicist in Right Wing Revolution, Samuel Francis, who had issued broad criticisms of Martin Luther King Jr. and the conservative movement as a whole, which was tripping over itself to prove that they were “not racist.” He noticed how, instead of dismantling the New Deal welfare state and restoring America’s constitutional norms, i.e., conserving, political conservatives had settled for merely reforming, streamlining, and optimizing the bureaucratic overgrowth of the federal government. Furthermore, conservatives had gotten used to the left-wing power structures winning the culture, and conservatives took no steps to change them. Sam Francis called conservatives “beautiful losers,” content to lose gracefully rather than fight and win the culture war. 

Kirk quoted Sam Francis’ damning phrase “beautiful losers.” Charlie Kirk also established a robust, intellectually honest, consistent conservatism. But unlike Sam Francis, who tottered into the white version of Martin Luther King’s racialism, Kirk rejected all racialism, ethnocentrism, and white nationalism as conservative fundamentals.  He restored a recognition of the laws of nature and nature's God. He restored and rigorously upheld a return to biblical values in our country. He dared to articulate the truth that race is a social construct, not grounded in genetic code or biological trace.

For too long, conservatives have focused on ideological talking points, intellectual discussions, or collectivist meanderings. Charlie Kirk made conservatism active, and he made it radical and intriguing enough that younger generations wanted to get involved! 

In his last book, Kirk shook conservatives by the shoulders, telling all of us to pay attention to the increased victories that conservatives have achieved. He further urged us to look at the extensive victories that President Trump had accomplished, not just in revitalizing the Republican Party, not just in broadening their appeal to different ethnic groups once thought untouchable and holy belonging to the Democratic Party, but in how Trump showed that they could take over the Supreme Court and start reshaping the culture. 

Charlie Kirk embodied and emboldened a broad vision for American conservatism: That we could actually conserve our Republic, our natural rights, our constitutional order, and most importantly, our Judeo-Christian heritage.