Drawing the Line

By Spyridon Andrews

A few nights after the murder of Charlie Kirk, I was rehearsing with a group of musicians in Southern California. As we were packing up, the sax player—someone I had assumed was an intelligent, functioning adult—launched into a rant. He complained that Jimmy Kimmel’s show had been canceled, then pivoted, astonishingly, into defending the murder of Charlie Kirk.

This is Los Angeles, of course, where you never quite know what will come out when someone opens Door Number Three. But in this case, no door had been opened. I was simply trying to put my gear away and leave. He went on anyway—Kirk this, Trump that, “violent hateful speech”—while accusing everyone else of precisely the same thing.

When I said that I disagreed, and that whatever one thinks of Charlie Kirk, he did not deserve to be murdered for his views, the rest of the band rushed in to protect their bandmate. They repeated the familiar refrain: Kirk was “hateful,” therefore his death was somehow understandable, if not justified.

The scene was so grotesque that I found it difficult to take these men seriously afterward—not as musicians, but as adults.

I didn’t bother telling them that I had heard Charlie Kirk speak many times and found him polemical, yes, but not hateful—simply culturally conservative. These days, however, in the eyes of the mainstream left and its media allies, that distinction no longer matters. Cultural conservatism itself is treated as a capital crime.

In the days following Kirk’s murder, thousands—perhaps millions—of leftists took to X, Instagram, and YouTube to celebrate his death. The same platforms that aggressively police “hate speech” had no problem hosting gleeful commentary about a murdered political opponent. Talk show hosts on major cable networks rationalized or minimized the killing. One ABC correspondent even described the alleged killer’s text exchanges with his lover as “touching.” For this display of moral clarity, he was promoted and rewarded with a plum job at a new network.

Jamie Lee Curtis briefly showed what appeared to be genuine human shock at the murder—but weeks later, no doubt after pressure from Hollywood’s ideological enforcers, walked it back. The message could not have been clearer: Charlie Kirk deserved to die for being a cultural conservative.

The Long Road to Justified Violence

This murder did not emerge from nowhere. It is simply the physical acting-out of what has been unfolding in universities, media, and public discourse for the last half-century.

Conservative students have been denied admission, disfavored in hiring, and silenced on campus. White students, Asian students, and men—especially men—are routinely portrayed as moral contaminants for the crime of existing. Like a warped medieval doctrine of original sin, guilt is now assigned at birth: wrong race, wrong sex, wrong history.

The Left has elevated racism and dogmatism to an entirely new level, constructing an elaborate pseudo-science to justify it. This ideology is part gnosticism, part grievance theology, part lunacy—packaged as moral enlightenment and enforced with near-religious fervor. Like cult members, adherents ritualize identity, mutilate their own bodies, declare themselves divine oracles of hidden truth, and treat civilization itself as the enemy: family, sex, gender, tradition, sanity.

Oddly, McDonald’s Big Macs and I-Phones remain exempt.

I have many liberal friends from my youth. I have watched them grow angrier, more inward, more brittle and irrational. The same generation that celebrated “freedom” under the banners of Hendrix and Lennon now openly fantasizes about imprisonment—or worse—for those who disagree with them. So much for “Freedom, man…”

One would think that multiple assassination attempts on a presidential candidate might prompt reflection. Or the shooting of Republican lawmakers on a baseball field. Or the cold-blooded murder of a father in front of his children. But the pattern persists.

A sports talk show host in Chicago recently attacked a Cubs third baseman simply for being friends with Charlie Kirk and supporting TPUSA, calling him a fascist or worse. Ten years ago, such a rant would have ended a career. Today, nothing happens. He continues broadcasting to millions.

The word fascist is now hurled by people who neither understand fascism nor recognize that their own views—speech control, ideological conformity, punishment of dissent—bear a far closer resemblance to it than those they accuse.

And Now, Brown University

Which brings us to Brown University.

A 19-year-old Christian woman from Alabama—one of the few conservatives on a radically left-wing campus—was reportedly targeted and shot in the face. If it turns out that she was targeted for her beliefs, it would not be shocking. It would be the logical outcome of everything institutions like Brown have been teaching and tolerating for decades.

My own time at a rival Ivy League institution was no picnic for a conservative. As a Greek Orthodox Christian, there was effectively no room for my worldview. At the Divinity School, Marx, Foucault, and Lukács were served in double and triple portions. Lukács—who never met a genocide he didn’t excuse—was championed by professors whose greatest hardship was a short walk to buy a baguette.

Eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds are not renowned for wisdom. They are impressionable. At elite schools, they may even believe they are brilliant. So, when an idea lodges in their minds—people like this are evil; the world would be better without them—some may act on it. And buoyed by the sanctimonious self-regard of their professors, they may even believe they are performing a moral service.

A Choice Conservatives Can No Longer Avoid

Conservatives are, by temperament, a fairly docile group. Many work long hours, go home early, and avoid rallies, riots, and street theater. But with politicians inert, administrators cowardly, and radicals emboldened, a choice is emerging.

When coeds are stalked and shot, when speakers are murdered and when neighbors casually justify it over coffee, it is time to turn the television off and get angry. We do not need to get violent, or destructive. That is not our style. But unmistakably firm to the point of letting them know that they had better not put their hand on that hot stove again.

It may mean telling the neighbor who is ranting about how Charlie Kirk “deserved it” to shut up—that we don’t want to hear it anymore. That we are tired of being smeared as fascists because we refuse socialism, gender insanity, and ideological coercion. That our friendship is optional, but our silence is not.

And it may mean reminding people—calmly, clearly—that the society they enjoy runs on the labor of the very people they despise. Firefighters. Police. Sanitation workers. Soldiers. Truck drivers. Oil rig crews. Farmers. Builders. Those services are not guaranteed. And if they continue taking shots at our husbands, wives, children and family members things will not continue as they are.

Republic or Regime

It is time—past time—for a decision. Do we want a democratic republic, governed by representation and protected speech? Or do we want a one-party, ideological state where dissent is criminal and violence is excused?

Lines will be drawn one way or another. Better to draw them deliberately than to stumble into them after more blood is spilled. Better that we, as conservatives, draw the line rather than have someone draw it for us.

What we will not accept is cowardly murder, universities turning children into ideological drones, or the sexualization of five-year-olds. If that is the future some people want, they should be told—clearly and without apology—that it is not acceptable.

And stopping it will require more than us complaining about it. It will require courage and resolve.