Charlie Kirk, September 11, and our Unending Commitment to Transparency
Remembering Charlie Kirk on September 11 is tragic but oddly appropriate. There is no better day to not only condemn political violence but celebrate the ideals for which Charlie fought.
I met Charlie and collaborated with him in the late Tea Party and pre-Trump era, which were the early days of his work. When we discussed philosophical but practical ideas linking the size of government with freedom and opportunity his eyes lit up. From a young age it was clear he had a spark and an unusual gift. He was a friend of Open the Books and we both were beneficiaries of leaders, mentors and visionaries who came before us like Tom Coburn and Foster Friess. From the time Charlie started to the moment he died he was a happy warrior who believed passionately in free speech and debate.
In the wake of Charlie’s murder, there has been an outpouring of condemnations of political violence, which are appropriate and welcome. Fortunately, fewer Americans today than in our past have a real-world frame of reference for large scale political violence. Americans who fought in world wars didn’t need to be reminded to stay far away from that abyss. Those of us who have seen political violence, through military service or through other work in conflict zones, which is my story, have a special responsibility to speak up and make it clear that we do not want to go further down that road.
My journey started before 9/11. In late 1999 I had an opportunity to work in post-war Yugoslavia on a democracy project in what is now North Macedonia under the tutelage of a former Reagan advisor named Walt Raymond. Walt had spent years as our nation’s chief propaganda officer fighting Soviet Communism and had dedicated the final years of his life to helping democracy take root in the post-communist countries he had worked with Reagan to liberate. My mission was to start an internship program in the parliament modeled after internship programs on Capitol Hill.
My work took me north to Kosovo, where I saw many scenes of devastation but also incredible outpourings of hospitality. In Mitrovica, a town in which two-thirds of the homes were destroyed, I spent a surreal day being hosted by a family who had lost everything and converted animal shelters to living quarters. We sat in a beautifully manicured lawn enjoying a fabulous meal and conversation with rose bushes to our front and a pile of rubble that was their home to our backs.
The larger town of Pristina, the capitol of Kosovo, illustrated both the awesome power of American precision munitions and the effects of civilization collapse. I sat in meetings with high officials talking about “development” as the power flickered. I thought, “Shouldn’t we help them get the power back on first?”
Wonderful smells of Balkan cooking mixed with burning trash that could not be collected embedded a visceral understanding of how fragile civilization can be when basic services collapse. Smells help our brains encode memories and it is not hard to transport myself back to that time and place.
My few months in the Balkans convinced me that the tribalism and identity politics that tore the Balkans apart could have the same impact in America if we let go of the ideals that hold us together.
Not long after I returned to the States, I gathered with my Hill colleagues in Rep. Steve Largent’s office on a crisp September morning to watch news coverage of a fire at the World Trade Center. When a second plane hit, and our minds grasped that it was a passenger jet, we looked at each other and realized we were under attack. By that point, the streets outside the Cannon Building started to fill like a scene from a disaster movie.
We moved like a herd toward the open spaces of the National Mall between the Capitol and the Washington Monument to stay away from buildings that could be targets. We saw smoke rising from the Pentagon. As we walked, we heard a loud explosion from a distance and reversed course. Years later I pieced together the timeline and realized the boom we heard was caused by the F-16s racing to intercept Flight 93. The F-16 pilots were on a suicide mission to down a plane that was likely planning to target the Capitol. The heroes of Flight 93 took the plane down first and protected every person in our fleeing herd.
On the walk back into the city down East Capitol Street, my phone rang. Unbelievably, it was a friend from Serbia, a country we had just bombed, calling to make sure I was safe. A group of staffers huddled into then Rep. John Hostettler’s townhouse and watched in disbelief as the towers collapsed.
When I first heard the news about Charlie, I thought: Terrorism. And I remembered my time in the Balkans and 9/11. My second thought: Don’t let them win.
As of this writing, we don’t know the identity and motive of the shooter, but we do know the identity and motives of Charlie. Whether you agree with his arguments, brand of politics, and preferred candidates, he believed passionately in debate and free speech, and we can honor him by fighting for those ideals.
Transparency makes the fair fight Charlie relished possible, and we will never stop fighting for every American’s right to see how government is spending their money.
We can also honor Charlie by reflecting and wrestling with ideas with all our might, just as he did. There’s a debate raging on the right about whether we’re in a “post-liberal” moment. Some argue that the classical liberal ideals of our founders like free speech, free markets and individual liberty are failing (note: the founders’ “liberalism” is very different from today’s liberalism, which is often illiberal) and that the right should more aggressively use state power to constrain the other side that is exploiting classical liberal freedoms to advance illiberalism.
We should resist this fatalist conclusion, especially in the wake of vile acts of violence that are attacks on freedom. Arguing that classical liberalism has failed is like arguing that music has failed because the perfect song has yet to be written. Our system isn’t perfect, but it is the Mozart, Beethoven and Bach of constitutional frameworks. I believe that we are in a pre-liberal era. We haven’t arrived at the destination our founder’s described but their revolution is very much alive. Our story is the longing and aching to get there.
Charlie longed and ached to get his generation to a place where it could recognize the dignity of “the other” and have healthy conflict and spirited debate to avoid violence.
We long and ache with him and his family and always will.