Episode 29: From Division to Duty: Answering the Call Charlie Kirk Left Us

Six months after Charlie Kirk’s assassination on a college campus, Reagan Faulkner delivers a blunt wake-up call to conservatives, especially students and churches, for drifting back into silence. She contrasts brief post-assassination zeal with today’s complacency and lays out concrete steps—debate, organize, donate, volunteer, and mentor—to turn grief into disciplined action and reclaim America’s institutions.

Transcript

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What's up guys and welcome back to the Reagan Faulkner Show. Now, I've been thinking about this episode for a really long time. It's something that I've been wanting to talk about and I think that this is really the perfect time to have this conversation. As y'all know, Tuesday was the six-month anniversary of Charlie Kirk's assassination and it was just, it was awful guys. I mean, we all know it was awful. We all saw it. He was assassinated in broad daylight on a college campus, a place historically rooted in the need for discourse and the exploration of ideas. This is a place that is supposed to push students, supposed to push people out of their comfort zone, supposed to push them for growth, supposed to push them for engagement, supposed to push them so that they strengthen into competent grown adults that can enter the workforce and that can enter society and that can be beneficial and productive members of that society. But what did we see? We saw Charlie Kirk doing just that, doing the thing that colleges are supposed to do. I mean, he was literally doing the Socratic method, asking questions, responding, having these debates, and he was murdered for it. He was murdered for his First Amendment right, for exploring ideas, and for urging students to get out of their comfort zones on a college campus, the place designated for that exact activity. Now, when we think about Charlie, what do we think about? Personally, I think about the steady degree of common sense that he brought to everything he did, every conversation he had, and everything that he touched. He was realistic, he was direct, and he was educated. And no, he didn't go to college, I'm fully aware of that, but he was educated in a different sense. He read, he studied, he talked to people, he knew what he was talking about, and he understood each ramification of the political process. That's why he was in Donald Trump's ear so much. That's why he had a pulse on our generation. He knew what was happening, and he understood how to spur a movement, how to engage the youth, and how to activate and create change in this country. Now, I don't know about you, but since his assassination in September, since everybody pledged that they were going to be more open, more bold, and more loud, I've seen quite a lot of silence. I've seen fear, cowardice, selfishness. I've seen a student body that's completely unwilling to make sacrifices, for the most part, for 75% of people. Now, for you 25% that are out there getting yelled at and having your tables destroyed every other day, I hear you and I see you, but for 75% of people, you're conservative and you watch it happen. You walk right by that table when they're being attacked by the radical left. When Charlie died, all we could talk about was the new red wave. We talked about the generational revival, we talked about the next Great Awakening. We saw all of these people across the country saying, you know what? I'm conservative, and I'm not going to be quiet anymore. I'm Christian. I'm going to go to church, or if he would die for his faith, there must be something to this Christianity thing. Let me go figure it out, and we really thought we were going to see a revival. We really thought we were going to see the kickstart of something amazing, and it lasted a few weeks. It did. We saw people making social media accounts. We saw people speaking out on social media. We saw churches grow and all these amazing things, and I mean, we did see it for a few weeks, but it kind of dissipated. It really did. Things that we don't see anymore. Churches were talking about his martyrdom, vigils, and huge events on college campuses where conservatives were coming together to mourn, to bond, and to grow. We saw Bible sales soaring. We saw church attendance skyrocketing, and we saw new students in all of our conservative groups. We saw adults who were ready to donate. We saw new people at GOP meetings and town halls. We saw older Americans that were ready to volunteer because they wanted to bring back the America that we all miss. But what now? What do we see now in contrast? Churches are afraid of speaking up again. Look at what happened with Don Lemon. Barely any church has called that out. Barely any church has called out what's happening in our society right now. They think it's better to sit back and be quiet. They don't want to challenge the false idea of separation of church and state, which we'll do an episode on that in the future, and what that idea is actually historically rooted in, because no, it's not rooted in what you think it's rooted in. Students are refusing to speak up on campus or even attend events once more, and yeah, I know. Classes are busy. You have your papers due, and you may not want your friends or some of the other student organizations you're in to find out, but those are some really basic sacrifices to make. Compared to a man who gave his life on a college campus trying to promote free speech, that's not that much to get up a little earlier to do that paper, to risk that friend finding out that, oh no, you did go to a college Republicans event or a Turning Point event or a Young Americans for Liberty event. Oh, no. It's not that much to ask. You can normally stay for 30 minutes, maybe an hour. This isn't, you know, a grand five to eight hour commitment, but we're seeing just this slow and gradual loss of the movement that we were so excited for in October and September. Or September and October, I should say. Now, adults, where are you? When was the last time you donated to a group that needs it? And I'm not trying to throw shade, but no, I'm not talking about Turning Point. Your Turning Point does not need your money right now. Turning Point has gotten tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars. Turning Point is doing just fine right now. They have money. Their organizations are doing well. Their clubs are doing well. They've got it under control for the most part. I'm talking about your local candidates. It's a midterm year. Do you know who they are? Do you know what they're running for? Do you know what their platform is? And do you know what their goals are to win and what it's going to take to win? I'm talking about your local college Republicans chapter fighting tooth and nail to save your district from the radical, violent, just Marxist left. I'm not talking about Democrats. Democrats are fine. I am talking about the radical left that's fighting everything in their power to make sure that you don't have your Second Amendment rights, to make sure that you don't have your free speech, to make sure that they can engage in child mutilation. I'm talking about that sect of the radical far left. When was the last time you gave to your local GOP with the same five volunteers that are just barely holding it all together as we're going into one of the busiest seasons in politics? What happened to that strong American determination that we all saw in September and October after Charlie Kirk's death? Another promise that we made, unity among the party, unity among Americans and the need to pick up the mic. Where are we? More attacks than almost ever from the radical left, infighting in the Republican Party, fights for power amongst conservative groups on campuses, infighting in college campuses among conservatives, people refusing to pick up the mic, people being stubborn and steadfast in their own opinions and refusing to grow or to shift or to change for the benefit of America. And to make matters worse, when we talk about that specific point, they're doing this on social media, they're doing this on the Internet. You are not going to change anybody's opinion by calling them out in an uneducated manner with tons of typos in the comments section of a TikTok. I'm sorry to break it to you, but you're just not. You're not going to win somebody's opinion like that. Now, let me break it to you. We can't be perfect. We're not going to be perfect. It is a great thing to aspire to, but realistically, it's never going to happen. There is no perfect America. There is no perfect Republican Party or conservative movement. And there is no perfect candidate. There are ideal candidates. There's an ideal party and there's an ideal America. But we strive to be a more perfect union. That's what our preamble says. A more perfect union, not a perfect union, a more perfect union. Constantly striving for growth, constantly striving for betterment and constantly striving for idealism, not perfection. If we strive for perfection and we expect perfection, we're going to be disappointed. We're going to be upset. And ultimately, we're going to give up because it's never going to happen. So. What I mean, really, going back to this point, actually, about more perfect unionism, I really want to say it's the left. It's the Democratic Party that wants to talk about this perfect socialist utopia. They're the ones that think that America can be perfect and we can eliminate every single bad thing. If we open our borders, if we let anybody we want vote in our elections, if we shut out the Republicans, if we ban free speech, maybe it'll be perfect. And it won't be. It never will be. And Republicans think if we alienate this person from the party or if we do this or if we do that, maybe it'll finally be perfect. Maybe we can finally perfect the Republican Party and get rid of the Democrats once and for all. You're never going to get rid of the Democrats. You're never going to get rid of the far left. Can we lessen what's happened in our culture? Can we lessen the societal impacts of the far left, like assassination culture or like, again, child mutilation or the radical LGBTQ ideology agenda that's being pushed in our school systems? Yes, all of that can be made better, but you will never actually get rid of leftist progressive thinking. It will always move. The benchmarks will move. Things will change. But it has always been the Democratic Party, not the Republican Party, striving for perfection, striving for utopia. And they see it in socialism and communism that has never and should never and will never be the official platform of the Republican Party. Now, what can we do to educate ourselves, to grow, to make sacrifices that will save our country? Because it's more important now than ever. Have a healthy, respectful debate with somebody who thinks different than you. And I mean, in person, not online, not over DMs, not over text, sit down, have a cup of coffee with that person and say, hey, I want to understand why you believe what you believe. And I want to share what I believe, what I believe. And if you go about it in that manner, more than likely, you're actually going to have an amazing, productive conversation. Both of y'all will leave understanding each other better, understanding the world better, understanding the platform better. You'll have more respect for each other. You'll have more respect for the types of people that hold those ideas. Nine times out of 10, these aren't terrible people we're talking to. There is a one out of 10. And those are the people that killed Charlie. Those are the people that keep trying to kill Trump. Those are the people that are rioting in downtown cities across the country, looting businesses and destroying people's lives. But that's that's the one percent. The ninety nine percent. They're just like you and me. They're a little misled. They're a little miseducated. They're a little misguided. But they don't actually hold terrible, horrible opinions and ideas and want to see our country fall apart from, you know, everything ever. They don't want to see us just intrinsically collapse as a nation. They really do think they're doing the right thing. So have that debate or that discussion. Attend a meeting, whether it's a GOP meeting, GOP town hall, college Republicans meeting, turning point meeting, Young Americans for Liberty, whatever it may be, whatever you have on your campus, Network of Enlightened Women, whatever it may be. Just go to a meeting. It'll take you like an hour. You don't have to get dressed up. Nobody's going to judge you. Just show up, meet somebody, talk to somebody, get someone's business card, make a friend, have a coffee, just go to a meeting and talk to somebody, learn something. Now, another thing you can do is if you're on campus and you're the leader of a student group, partner with a like minded organization or partner with a not like minded organization. Just partner with somebody to grow your reach. You can partner with like a turning point chapter. I keep saying Young Americans for Liberty or Network of Enlightened Women. Partner with somebody to expand your reach or even partner with a college Democrats chapter or something we have on our campus is the political social work club, which they're nonpartisan. But, you know, they're partnering with the Democrats on something. So they're they're definitely I mean, I'm not going to say definitely partisan. So I'm advocating for y'all to work with the college Democrats. But trust me when I say they're definitely partisan. But partner with somebody like that. Again, expand your reach. Talk to people who think differently than you, because we are in college. Like I said at the beginning of the episode, we are in college to learn, to grow and to expand our spheres, to strengthen ourselves and to become more comfortable and more solidified in what we believe and why we believe it. Finally, volunteer for a candidate. They need you right now. They really do. We are just a few months out from the midterm elections. We're here in North Carolina. We're done with our primary. I know places like Florida aren't done with their primary yet, but those candidates need you, too. If you're in Florida and you have a candidate that you desperately want to win the primary, get in there and help volunteer. If you're in North Carolina, desperately get in there and help those people that came out through the primaries volunteer because they're not done where they are now is even harder than where they were before the primary started. And they need you now more than ever. If we stay this divided, I will make the firm statement. I fully and completely believe this. I'm not trying to black pill or fearmonger, but our nation is headed directly to civil war. If we don't stop in our tracks right now and figure out some other path, some other road to go down. Charlie even says this is one of the last and arguably the most profound thing that Charlie ever said. When people stop talking, really bad stuff starts. When you stop having a human connection with someone you disagree with, it becomes a lot easier to want to commit violence against that group. What we as a culture have to get back to is being able to have a reasonable disagreement where violence is not an option. When I say that, you're probably sitting there saying, well, you should be telling the leftist, not me. I have seen more and more Republicans in the last six months say, well, that's the enemy. That's the group that literally wants to kill us. They're not even silent about it anymore. And you're right. You are right. But we cannot look at an entire group, an entire party or an entire sect of our society and lump them into one, some group of people that you think want to kill you. Because like I said a few minutes ago, that might be one in one hundred. That's the one percent. The ninety nine percent are misled, misguided or literally just don't care and think they're being empathetic. And it's up to us to teach what things like toxic empathy are, to teach about actual economics and about tariffs and about why things like that actually work. It is up to us to use real information to get to these people and to let them learn on their own instead of being manipulated and misguided by their TikTok algorithms and by their professors, by their parents or by random news stories that they see from CNN or MSNBC. They just don't know. They just don't know. And that's OK. But we can help them. The GOP can help them. College Republicans, Turning Point, all of these different groups and individually, you and I can just help by sharing our opinions, by sharing books that we enjoy, by having meetings and by having debates. So what do you want to see in our country? Because this is what it boils down to. Do you want to see more violence and more protests? Do you want to see more assassinations and assassination attempts? I mean, heck, y'all, just a few weeks ago, somebody tried to storm Mar-a-Lago with a shotgun and a tank of gasoline. I know Trump wasn't there, but still, this violence, is this what you want to keep seeing in our country? Do you want to keep seeing looting and rioting across our cities, increased crime rates and murders? Do you want to keep seeing terrorist attacks? We've seen so much alleged and prospective terrorism in our country in the last week. I know it boils down to what's happening overseas and in Iran, but still, are these things that you want to see? Because ultimately, that didn't come from, I mean, it did ultimately come from the attacks in Iran, but it also came from the types of people we've let across our border for four straight years. You can see all that, and that can be the America that you choose to live in, or would you rather see a healthy campus climate, healthy discourse and discussion across our entire country instead of assassination culture? And just rabid silencing of opinions that you dislike? Do you rather see bills passing Congress and your elected officials actually being competent and doing something that you're paying them to do with your tax money? Would you rather see a functioning Republican Party and conservative movement, one without infighting, one without just vitriol hatred online in the comment sections of GOP Facebook groups? Would you rather see successful student organizations on campus that are leading the way and leading the movement and leading the culture for a more perfect union and a better America? We're at a tipping point in our nation, on our campuses, and quite frankly, in our entire culture. It's a midterm year, and you have a choice. You can reject that pledge that you made in September. You can reject that feeling that you had to do something and to change something, and that this is more important than your individual self, that this is bigger. Those are all the things that I heard people saying in September. You can reject that. You can be lazy. You can not volunteer. You can stay home, do your own thing. I mean, somebody else is going to pick up the pieces, right? It's just you. Why do you need to do anything? There are, you know, millions of other Americans. You're fine. Or you can get up and you can do something. You can volunteer. You can help a candidate. You can go to a club meeting, visit your local GOP, go to a meeting with them, go to a town hall, learn about what they do, learn about how you can help. You can go to a school board or county commission meeting and actually learn about the people who've been elected in your community and what they're doing and what their initiatives are for your county and your district and your region. Or you can call your representative and you can demand action from Congress when things are gridlocked and when you see absolutely nothing happening. That is a much better way to go about saving America because when we resort to the first set of points that I said, when we resort to somebody else is going to pick up the pieces, well, historically, there's a statistic that says that 10% of people are going to do the majority of the work, whether it's in social change or a movement or a job, building a business, anything like that, about 10% of people do the grand majority of the work. Now, if we change that and we have a 20% or a 30%, we grow that percentage of people helping, we go closer and closer to victory. We go closer and closer to change because, I mean, not to be cliche, but we all know it, many hands make light work. We can win this thing in November. We can win midterms in 2026. We can win back our campuses. That's going to be a steady fight. It's going to be a longer fight. But we can. We just need more people involved. We need more people passionate. We need more Americans willing to stand up. We need more grownups, more adults that are willing to mentor and give their time to young conservatives because we don't know what we're doing. We're trying to figure it out. And some of us have really great mentors, but some people are going to listen to this podcast and say, gee, I really would love to do all of that, but I don't even know where to start. And that's where we need adults to step in. That's where we need other influencers and other podcasters to show opportunities on their Instagrams and to help connect people with different representatives and different candidates that need help. Now students, I want to speak directly to you right now. The Democratic Party, they are the party of nihilism. What does that mean? They are the party that doesn't think they can do anything, that doesn't think anything can be fixed. They think that things were set in motion a long, long time ago and that, unfortunately, it's just never going to change. So why even try? There's just no purpose to it. They think they're doomed from the start and they don't start because of that. They complain online. They scream in your face on campus. They try to destroy your table, but they don't actually do anything. If you think about the majority of the Democratic clubs, college Dems, high school Dems that you see on your campuses every day, do you really see them every day? Do they actually do anything? Because more likely than not, your college Republicans or your high school Republicans, your TPUSA and your Club America are way more active than any of your Democratic groups on campus. And that is because they actually think they can make change. They actually think they can save their country and they're putting in the work that it takes to do so. We're the party of action, of growth, and of involvement. We propose the American dream. We lay it out as fairly simple to achieve. So we have to fight for what we believe in, instead of sitting back and saying, our institutions are too far gone. Our campus is too far gone. There's nothing I can do. I won't speak up in class because I have to get that A. You know, when your professor gives you a bad grade, you can go to the dean of your college. You can go to the dean of your, the chair of your department, the dean of your specific academic college, not your huge university, but your area of study, like your school of business or your school of health. And they legally have to handle that. You are not going to walk away with an F for saying something in class. You report that and they will handle it. You don't have to live in silence. You just have to know what your options are when things like this happen. We can create change and we can save our nation. We can have a presence on campuses again, and even in institutions across our entire nation. It feels scary and intimidating and it might feel like it's too much, too much work, too much risk, just too much overall, but it's not. Charlie started Turning Point at 18 years old. He didn't go to college. He didn't know anything about the hierarchy, the environment, or the aggression that he was going to be up against. But he learned and he worked and he studied and he kept trying every day to be a better version of himself and to create a better Turning Point for a better nation. Now, Charlie's gone, and we all know that, but he left us everything that we need to succeed. He left books, he left speeches, he left debates, he left hours and hours and hours, thousands of hours of content on YouTube, on the internet, on TikTok, on Instagram, so many tweets, just a blueprint. He left his entire blueprint for us to take back our institutions and to take back our nation. So instead of giving up, instead of staying home, doing whatever it is that you do, instead of committing to that September oath, I ask you to get up, get started, start speaking up on your campus, in your community, and in our culture. The nation isn't too far gone, and the party isn't too far gone, your campus isn't too far gone, and neither is your church. So be bold and step up. If you don't like what the Republican Party is doing or your local GOP, go to your next GOP meeting and voice your opinion. Offer up an initiative. Offer to take action and get involved so that you can make the change that you want to see. If you don't like what your elected officials are doing, call and email their office. Demand action. If you don't like what your campus is doing, call and email your administrators. Lobby your student government, make a petition, or get out and table in your quad or wherever it is that you table on your campus. The power is in your hands if you don't like where things are or where things are headed. Be like Charlie, pick up the mic, get the tools that you have available to you, and get to fixing things. Complaining on the internet and in your friend groups is not going to change anything. It's not going to fix anything. It's just going to create a more toxic culture. Our government was built on the foundation of public action, and that is the only way for us to preserve our great nation. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of The Reagan-Faulkner Show. Now, if you want more content while you wait for the next episode, be sure to check us out on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook at The Reagan Faulkner Show and Instagram and Facebook at The Wilmington Standard. If you enjoyed today's content, be sure to like and subscribe and leave a comment on what you want to see on the next one. Thank y'all so much, and I'll see you on the next one.