In the wake of the assassination of TPUSA founder, Charlie Kirk, I would humbly suggest that we who profess to be conservative would be wise, however well-intended, to not make the reactionary mistake of allowing his death to serve as the impetus for forming a new sociopolitical “movement.”
Movements, regardless of when and under what circumstances they are begotten, are cyclical, transient, and impermanent. In other words, they come and go over time. But perhaps the most important thing to remember about movements, whether social, political, spiritual, or cultural is, ultimately, when all has been said and done, they have a common goal that they never achieve: the transformation of human nature for the better.
That failure, which is unarguably demonstrated in history, is precisely why the 19th century Russian philosopher Lev (Leo) Nikolayevich Tolstoy could say, and I believe rightly so, that “There can be only one permanent revolution — a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.”[1]
Notwithstanding my disagreement with Tolstoy that “nobody knows how it [moral revolution] will take place in humanity” (because God’s Word clearly explains how—in the heart), I do concur with him in principle.
Indeed, the only “permanent revolution,” as Tolstoy put it, is the one that occurs in the inner man, but it is only the gospel of Jesus Christ that can accomplish the kind of moral revolution of which Tolstoy is speaking (Eze. 36:26; Jn. 1:12-13; 3:6-7; 2 Cor. 5:17; 1 Jn. 5:1). As the 17th century Puritan Thomas Watson declared, “We must not rest in mere outward morality. A swine may be washed, yet be a swine still. Morality does but wash a man, grace changes him. Morality may shine in the eyes of the world–but it differs as much from purity, as a pebble differs from a diamond! Morality is but strewing flowers on a dead corpse!”[2]
What Leo Tolstoy may have failed to comprehend, Charlie Kirk did not.
When one reflects objectively upon the work in which Charlie Kirk was engaged at TPUSA, it wasn’t activism, as many have termed it, but apologetics.
Charlie was an apologist—a good one—as are we all to be who profess the name of Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 3:15). Charlie founded TPUSA as a vehicle to engage the culture in a defense, an apologia, of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He understood that the gospel is a message not a movement; one that changes not only minds but hearts.
Should that not be our goal as well?
Let us consider that question as we seek to honor Charlie and his legacy.
Soli Deo Gloria!
Darrell
[1] “Three Methods Of Reform” in Pamphlets: Translated from the Russian, (1900)
[2] https://www.gracegems.org/2017/04/Strewing%20flowers%20on%20a%20dead%20corpse.html (accessed September 13, 2025 at 11:08 a.m. CT, Lindale, TX).
Image credit: https://sl.bing.net/ichiPR8HsYe