One of the primary lessons to be learned from the terrible murder of Charlie Kirk is to recommit ourselves to the truth. What Tyler Robinson engraved on bullet casings reveals that he believed Charlie Kirk was a fascist. This is a lie. Robinson was a person with a seemingly normal upbringing, and he likely would not have committed the assassination if he hadn’t believed lies about Charlie Kirk. While the participation by leftist outlets in this lie before Kirk’s death is worthy of condemnation, we will never forget the continued participation in these lies, the very source of the murder, post-assassination. Many on the left relentlessly used the opportunity to spread more and more lies about Kirk, seemingly unaware of the depths of their disgrace. 

For all the horror of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, it has also been a series of revelations about who people really are. 

For a brief moment, it seemed a shared principle might transcend the partisan divide. Some people on the left gained credibility in my eyes. People like Ezra Klein were able to set aside political loyalties to condemn an act for what it was, and gave a true measure of a man for what he was. This offered a glimpse of a more rational public square.

For his trouble, Klein was subjected to a swift and brutal leftist intellectual excommunication.

His dissent was declared analogous to "Burying the truth of the Confederacy," and Klein’s defense of a conservative was equated to the work of the White Citizens' Councils, a "more polite" version of the Ku Klux Klan whose politeness, we are to believe, "didn't matter to their victims [emphasis added]."

These were not the hyperbolic ramblings of anonymous online trolls. These were the considered historical judgments delivered from the highest echelons of the left's intellectual establishment: by Ta-Nehisi Coates in Vanity Fair and Princeton history professor Kevin Kruse.

And as we’ve all seen, a shocking number of people on the left took it much further, and were actually celebrating the assassination. These psychopaths have allowed their hearts to become so twisted that I fear they may have secured their place in hell. Not only that, but they are revealing themselves to be utter cowards, where the only difference between them and the murderer is a will to act. Many of them are now crying victim as they lose their jobs, lying to themselves and others that they were fired for “criticism,” but they have no place in a decent society. Please disappear into pitiful, cowardly obscurity.

I'm afraid that others may have been even more spineless still. With many on the left continuing the lies that got Kirk murdered, I can’t help but think these leftists felt some satisfaction with his murder, and are trying to justify that satisfaction internally and externally by demonizing him beyond any normal assessment of a fellow human being.

Even aside from this filth, others on the left seemed to interpret every new piece of information with shocking delusion. 

As soon as Kirk was shot, we already knew there was a 90% chance the assailant was a leftist. The far left seemed to confirm it was “their side” by celebrating Kirk’s death, while virtually no one on even the most extreme right wing celebrated his death. 

Even in the early stages, the left started to form the narrative that the killer was from the right, although it was not a uniform narrative, it was more just attempts to see if anything would stick. Then it came out that the bullet cartridge case called Kirk a fascist, something that only leftists call people like Kirk. While there are many fighting factions on the right, the idea that a far-right extremist would call Kirk a fascist for not being far-right enough, runs against all common sense. Yet the lost left doubled down, and insisted the murderer was on the right. Why not just go the extra inch in reasoning, and claim the person who murdered Charlie Kirk was actually a really big fan of Charlie Kirk? It is nearly as absurd.

Since then, it has been confirmed that Tyler Robinson was a leftist by investigators, the FBI, the governor, and the killer’s colleagues and family members. There will only be more confirmation of this as time goes on, but with each piece of information, many on the left went deeper into delusion. 

It became apparent that people are living in an entirely different reality. Heather Cox Richardson and Jimmel Kimmy both expressed the exact inverse of reality, claiming the right was floundering for excuses not to admit Robinson was right-wing. It was a form of cognitive dissonance that we have never seen, completely unable to accept information that directly contradicts their narrative. How could it have gotten so bad?

On one hand, believing a lie doesn’t seem to need much explanation. Whether it be because of pride, or ideological reasons, everyone has believed a falsehood at some point or another. We can also conclude that it must have been a mountain of lies to create this alternate reality. It must have been years and years of lies, compounded on top of each other, misinterpretations of most of history, leading people to a spot where they are completely blind. But even this fails to fully explain this level of dissonance, because building a world of lies will still eventually come head-on with a truth that cuts through the nonsense, forcing them to reassess. One would think the murder of Charlie Kirk, and the left’s response in the aftermath, would have been such an occasion. But I fear the problem runs even deeper. 

There are two fundamentally different paths in regard to truth. One is the path of reason, the path that was best represented by Charlie Kirk. It is to say there is objective morality, objective truth that must always be chased. We can establish real principles on this path: human life has innate value, murder of the innocent is wrong, ect. While the scientific method may uncover truth that is verifiable, a dialectic method is needed for coming to truth that isn’t easily verifiable. We must reason with others, searching for the best argument, and coming as close as we can to the truth.

The opposite path, the path that stood against Kirk, is the path of anti-reason. It is to believe, consciously or not, that there is no ultimate truth to chase. There is no higher appeal, and therefore, when conflict arises, there is no point to any dialectic method for seeking the truth; it is only a battle of will and power. The path of anti-reason is really the path of inevitable violence, or cowardice that only obscures the inevitable violence.  

This is not to say that everyone on the path of reason will tell the truth, or be honest, or a better person, or that there won’t be bloody battles within this path, but it is still a fundamentally different path, and the opposite road will always lead to violence. 

The anti-reason side likely claims a different view of truth. They may hold the self-image that they believe in what's verifiable, or that they believe in science, in facts. But a disregard for a higher truth leads to a dissolution of a belief in all truth. We have seen this play out in the last few weeks. When there is no point to reason, abandoning facts is not far behind. When there are no higher principles, people become possessed by their ideology, viewing conflict in terms of sides, overriding truth, even when it’s right in front of you.

This goes beyond a left/right divide. Every sane person needs to stand against this demonic force in society. Compare someone who is racist, with someone who has no regard for truth. I don’t make this comparison as some sort of concession that Kirk was racist–he was not–but I make the comparison because most people regard racism as one of the most repulsive viewpoints a person can have. But imagine if someone was racist, even dangerously racist, but still held value for truth. There is a chance to reach this person. There is a chance for resolution and reason. But imagine the inverse, and person who rejects racism completely, but also rejects the entire concept of truth. There is nothing we can do for this person. They will drive society towards violence and chaos. When these liars show themselves to society, they should be regarded as lower than racists. 

Many conservatives have witnessed the extent to which the left is living in an alternate reality, and they are losing hope, and may respond with their own version of tossing aside a willingness for discourse. Do not lose sight of what Charlie dedicated his life to, not only truth, but the hope that he could reach the seemingly unreachable through the path of reason, while not being blind to the innate violence of the far left. 

Charlie Kirk said, “When people stop talking, that's when you get violence. That's when civil war happens.” I still believe we can carry on his goal of avoiding violence through active dialogue, but many on the right take the opposite interpretation. They believe we have evidently passed the point where dialogue is possible. This is a mistake. Andrew Klavan gave a good rebuttal to this sentiment:

Charlie Kirk was crushing the left. We must learn everything that we can from him. I have no desire to caveat praise of Kirk. He was a man in the arena, and I have little patience for the petty criticisms from those seeking to establish their own credibility from a distance. He was a legendary defender of reason, unlike any in our society. We must recommit ourselves to what he stood for, and not lose ourselves to anti-reason or despair. Unite around sanity and reason. Expose how demented those are who reject any concept of truth, and keep Charlie’s fight alive.