When Charlie Kirk was assassinated, I was contacted by a lot of people asking whether I personally knew him. I did not. When he got started, he was 18 years old, and I did not think what he was doing was particularly applicable to me. Many of my friends knew him well; arguably better than well. But I had an understanding of Charlie that few people had and let me tell you why.
During the 2000 presidential campaign, I interacted with many people supporting George W. Bush. I spoke to some about the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), an organization I first encountered in 1992. One gentleman discussed with me forming a local chapter of the operation in Los Angeles. Meaning, it was up to me to form the chapter.
I contacted a variety of people, and we decided to have a meeting at my home. I conveyed this to the group’s Chief Executive Officer and asked him to come out from D.C. for the meeting. When he arrived at our home he expected to see a group of 8-10 people. Remember, this was before email was widely used. What he walked into was our living room/dining room, it was packed with 60-70 people. He was both stunned and exhilarated. People were hanging off the walls and so delighted to be there.
We formed a leadership team from that meeting and went on to have some events. We struggled to find places to meet. Really, Jewish Republicans? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Were you meeting in a phone booth? By the end of the year, we had an event at the Skirball Cultural Center that bravely agreed to house us. The featured Speaker was Dennis Prager. He was stunned to see about 250 people. I thought he was going to cry. He told the crowd he had never seen so many Jewish Republicans in one place. This was a man who had spoken to Jewish groups in virtually every community in our country and across the world.
Within a year, with the help of the national organization, our hearty band had distinguished panelists at an event. We had it at a hotel and there were about 900 people in attendance. Our group was booming.
The national organization had quarterly meetings in D.C. that I had been attending since 1996. They initially saw me as this weird creature. Who was this person coming here from Los Angeles? All the other people there were from along the Atlantic Coast and maybe inland. Almost no one came from west of the Mississippi.
With the development of the Los Angeles chapter, they were all mystified by how this had been accomplished. I was asked to speak at the national meeting and share the special magic we had. I was kind of at a loss for words. And those who know me, especially the Beautiful Wife, know I am NEVER at a loss for words.
I scanned this crowd of very impressive people and stopped. Then I shared that we didn’t do anything special. “What we did was give water to people in a desert. They were starved for the opportunity to interact with people who thought like they did. When they were at a Jewish gathering, they were afraid to express their opinions. Now they had their own army behind them, and they felt free to tell people how they thought on issues of public policy and when they did, they found many of them agreed.” You think Gays were in the closet? Jewish Republicans were really in the closet. But no more in Los Angeles.
This is what Charlie did with all these young kids, especially at colleges. They are oppressed, stripped of their free speech. If they expressed their opinion or shared, they were a Republican or a Conservative, they were afraid they would be banished outcasts. Worse they had oppressive professors who even acted out against them when they tried to organize. Jonathan Turley delineates that in his recent column “Prove me Wrong”: Charlie Kirk’s Final Challenge on Free Speech – JONATHAN TURLEY.
What Charlie did was not that hard. It was the act of doing it that was hard.
It was having the guts to do it that was hard. He saw that his peers were being oppressed, and he went out to stop the oppression. He loved the essentials of our country, the First Amendment and free speech, and he asserted everyone must have it or we were not a free country; we were not America. He gave these oppressed kids and young adults an army to back them up and he told them “We have your back – speak freely.”
He also reminded his generation that the free exchange of ideas was essential to our freedom. That is something they expected to experience on their college campuses but did not. That is why he had gatherings where people could challenge him if they disagreed. In fact, they went to the front of the line. He learned this concept from his friend and mentor Dennis Prager who always took calls first from those who disagreed with him. These kids learned they could have this free exchange of ideas, and they would not have to go to a special room because their feelings were being hurt. They felt stronger.
That is what I had in common with Charlie, but he certainly did it on a better and grander scale than I ever did. To say the least. God Bless you Charlie.
