Today in Orem, Utah, a single gunshot turned a lively college debate into a scene of horror. Charlie Kirk – conservative activist, youth organizer, and outspoken champion of free speech – was assassinated in front of a crowd of students. The 31-year-old co-founder of Turning Point USA died from a bullet to the neck as stunned onlookers screamed and scattered. In an instant, a campus event meant for spirited dialogue was marred by bloodshed, and a vibrant young leader’s voice was silenced. This shocking act of political violence sent ripples across the nation. Leaders from all sides swiftly condemned the shooting as a “disgusting, vile, and reprehensible” attack that “violates the core principles of our country, our Judeo-Christian heritage, our civil society, our American way of life.” Their unanimous message was clear: there is no place for such violence in a civilized society. Yet amid the prayers and sympathies, we must confront the dark reality behind this tragedy – a reality that goes beyond one gunman. This was not a random lapse of reason or a mere bout of insanity; it was the face of evil manifest.
Not Madness, But Moral Evil
It’s tempting for some to explain away atrocities like this as the work of a lone madman or a failure of our political discourse. Indeed, whenever heinous acts occur, people search for psychological explanations – was the shooter mentally ill, brainwashed, or simply misguided? But wanting to see your enemy dead is not a mental illness; it’s not a glitch in logic or a lapse in reasoning – it is a failure of morality and decency. It is, in a word, evil. Those who commit premeditated political violence often know exactly what they are doing. However twisted their justifications, such attackers often make a cold calculation that murdering an opponent will serve their cause. The absence of insanity does not make their act any less heinous – if anything, it underscores the moral void at the heart of their decision.
Consider the context: Charlie Kirk was targeted while speaking – engaging in a civil debate, taking questions from a student moments before the shot rang out. His killer (who remains at large as of this writing) didn’t lash out in a sudden incoherent frenzy; he or she struck with purpose, to silence and destroy. This was political assassination, and history has taught us that assassins are not always “insane” outliers. John Wilkes Booth was not clinically mad when he shot President Lincoln – he was a man driven by a perverse but calculated agenda. The same can be said of many terrorists and extremists. They are often frighteningly lucid in their goals, yet utterly devoid of the moral compass that restrains the rest of us. The core principle violated here is moral law – the age-old understanding that no grievance justifies cold-blooded murder.
When someone imagines that killing their political opposition is a legitimate path to change, it is not a sign of clever strategy or passionate conviction gone awry – it is the mark of evil creeping into their heart. It reflects a conscience so corroded by hatred that it no longer registers the humanity of the “enemy.” To willfully shed innocent blood is to cross a line into darkness that no amount of ideological fervor can excuse. We can debate policies and worldviews vigorously; we can even question each other’s judgment or sanity in the heat of argument. But the moment one side picks up a weapon to literally eliminate the other, reason has given way to moral depravity. We should be clear: the only “victory” a political murderer wins is the revelation of his own evil.
The Real Battle Between Good and Evil
Some might dismiss talk of “good vs. evil” as melodramatic, a relic of comic books or Sunday sermons. But the battle between good and evil is very real – and it’s not a mythic duel between a haloed angel and a horned demon in some distant realm. It is right here, between us and them, between everyday people who choose to build and those who choose to destroy. The tragic death of Charlie Kirk forces us to see this reality in stark terms. Kirk stood for engaging young Americans in debate, for building an organization and a movement to advocate his vision of America. By all accounts, he was a builder: he devoted his adult life to rallying students, opening chapters, and sparking conversations about conservative ideas on campuses nationwide. You could disagree with his views, but you couldn’t deny that he was creating something – a network, a platform, a community of thinkers.
His killer, on the other hand, chose the path of the destroyer. Instead of countering Kirk’s arguments with better arguments, this person tried to cancel them with a bullet. It was the ultimate act of destruction – not just of a person, but of the very principles of free expression and human life. This is how evil operates. It does not debate honorably or create alternatives; it seeks to dismantle, deface, and obliterate whatever (and whoever) stands in its way. We see this pattern in many forms around us. It’s visible in the online mobs that would rather deplatform and vilify those they disagree with than engage in dialogue. It’s visible in the rise of political violence noted by observers – a troubling trend of people convinced that eliminating opponents is a shortcut to achieving their aims. From the firebombing of events to the assaults on public officials’ homes, these acts are all born of the same destructive impulse: an impulse that says if you don’t like what someone stands for, scorch the earth beneath them.
Good and evil do exist, and they often manifest through actions and choices. The good are those who, despite disagreements, honor the dignity of their opponents and seek to persuade or coexist peacefully. The evil are those who surrender to hatred and believe the ends justify any means – even murder. We must acknowledge that a toxic mindset has been spreading in our society, one which glorifies the destruction of the “other side” as a virtue. This mindset is the breeding ground of evil.
Builders vs. Destroyers, Thinkers vs. Indoctrinators
Charlie Kirk’s murder highlights a deeper cultural struggle. It is a struggle between the builders and the destroyers, the thinkers and the indoctrinators. Builders are people who cherish institutions like open debate, family, faith, and education – and who work to strengthen them or create new ones. Destroyers are those who only find purpose in tearing down, negating, and uprooting. Likewise, thinkers seek truth through inquiry and reason, while indoctrinators impose narratives and refuse to tolerate dissent. Kirk prided himself on being a thinker who invited challenge – his campus tour was literally called the “Prove Me Wrong” tour, encouraging students to debate him. Love him or hate him, he put his ideas on the line in the arena of reason. That is what a thinker does.
Yet, all around, we see the rise of indoctrinators who do not want a debate at all. At Utah Valley University, before Kirk even arrived, nearly 1,000 people signed a petition urging the administration to bar him from speaking. Think about that: rather than rebutting his views or simply ignoring him, these signatories wanted to prevent him from uttering a single word on campus. This is the indoctrinator’s impulse – to shield people from hearing contrary opinions, to enforce a single orthodoxy. Tragically, one person (or a small group) took that impulse to the extreme by attempting to silence Kirk permanently with violence. When indoctrination festers, destruction is often not far behind. A society that teaches its youth to shut up or shut down those who think differently is sowing the seeds for more fanatics who eventually decide to “shut down” a human being with a gun.
This problem extends beyond one campus. A growing number of Americans feel that our educational and cultural institutions are drifting away from open inquiry toward one-sided ideological training. In a recent Gallup survey, *41% of Americans who lacked confidence in higher education said colleges are “too liberal,” trying to “indoctrinate” or “brainwash” students, rather than teaching them to think for themselves.” That perception reflects a real experience: many have watched universities and media marginalize voices that don’t fit a certain narrative. Indoctrination is the enemy of independent thought, and by extension, the enemy of truth. When people are steeped in propaganda – taught to see those who disagree as not just wrong but evil – it becomes easier to justify doing anything against the “enemy.” This is how a young radical can march onto a campus with a firearm believing he’s doing something justified. He has been fed on indoctrination and hatred rather than education and empathy.
By contrast, the “thinkers” in our society – whether conservative, liberal, or otherwise – approach disagreements as an opportunity to learn or persuade, not to annihilate. They build bridges or at least respectful boundaries. Charlie Kirk often said he relished the tough questions from left-leaning students; he built an entire movement around energizing young thinkers on the right. His response to hostility was to show up again and keep talking. That is the builder’s mindset. Now, it falls to the rest of us to continue building on his legacy: to keep engaging, keep thinking, and refuse to meet destruction with more destruction.
Assault on the Foundations of Decency
Evil doesn’t only strike individuals; it also sets its sights on the pillars of a decent society. At every turn, the forces of destruction today seem intent on dismantling our most foundational institutions – from the nuclear family to houses of worship. These institutions are where values are taught and character is formed. It is no surprise that those who wish to create a moral wasteland find it necessary to attack the family unit, the church, the synagogue, and any other source of independent moral authority. In fact, many voices openly argue that we should abolish or “transform” the traditional family structure altogether. In their vision of a utopia, the family – that age-old source of love, discipline, and identity – is an obstacle to be removed. Likewise, religion and faith communities are derided as archaic “superstitions” or oppressive institutions. For over a century, extreme left ideologies have critiqued religion, family, and even the nation-state as forms of oppression and alienation, seeking to erode them to make way for a new order.
Why do they target these things? Because family and faith are two of the greatest bulwarks against evil. A strong family instills empathy, responsibility, and a sense of right and wrong. A vibrant synagogue or church community binds people to a higher law of love and justice. These are precisely the qualities that restrain a person from embracing violence and malice. Destroyers know that to create an atmosphere where evil can flourish, these sources of goodness must be weakened or torn down. It is an age-old strategy. Totalitarian regimes from Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union understood that loyalty to family and God competes with loyalty to the regime – so they attempted to fracture family bonds and suppress religious practice. In our own society, the trend is less overtly governmental and more cultural: a ceaseless drumbeat in certain academic and media circles that traditional morals are backward, that parents who inculcate values in their children are “indoctrinating” them (what an irony, given the real indoctrinators!), and that people of faith are bigots or fools.
Yet, as we see the fruit of a culture unmoored from these institutions, we should shudder. When family and faith crumble, what fills the void? We are witnessing the answer: ideological extremism, loneliness, nihilism, and an anger untethered from compassion. A person who has no loving family, no community of virtue, and no sense of accountability to a higher power can far more easily fall prey to the darkest impulses. They have stripped away the things that make us most decent, most moral, and most good, and in that vacuum, evil finds room to breed. The shooter in Utah may have acted alone, but in a broader sense he was empowered by an environment that has steadily chipped away at the shared values and institutions that once gave adversaries a common moral ground. When we remove God, conscience, and community from the picture, we shouldn’t be surprised if some individuals start to act as if anything goes.
The Absence of God: Defining True Evil
At its core, evil is the absence of God – the absence of Good itself. Philosophers and theologians have long noted that evil isn’t a substantive force like electricity or matter; it’s more like a dark void where light has been extinguished. Just as cold is the absence of heat and darkness the absence of light, “evil is the absence of good, or better, evil is the absence of God.” When a person allows hatred to expel every last remnant of compassion, when they banish empathy, love, and truth from their soul, they create a godless vacuum – and that is where evil thrives. In theological terms, they have shut out the divine spark present in every human heart. In plain terms, they have killed their own conscience.
Think of the moment that the gunman raised his weapon and drew a bead on Charlie Kirk, a fellow human being with a wife, with children, with hopes and dreams. To squeeze that trigger required the shooter to extinguish any sense of Kirk’s humanity in his mind. It required a belief, however fleeting, that killing was not only acceptable but perhaps even necessary. This mental state is nothing less than a spiritual blackout – the absence of God within. No sane moral code, whether rooted in religion or humanism, would ever condone such an act. Thus the shooter had to cast aside all that is good and holy, silencing any inner voice that whispered “this is wrong.” In that inner silence, evil shouted. It is a chilling thing to recognize: at the heart of evil lies emptiness, a void where empathy and divinity should reside.
We must recognize this for what it is. If we chalk up this killing purely to mental illness or political fervor, we might miss the more profound lesson. The absence of God – of goodness, of moral restraint – is evil. When individuals or societies drift from the values of compassion, respect for life, and love of neighbor, they drift toward moral abyss. This tragedy in Utah is a glaring reminder of that truth. The shooter’s grievance (whatever it was) is irrelevant compared to the moral chasm that allowed him to believe murder was an option. In that chasm, there was no light of conscience, no warmth of human fellow-feeling – only cold darkness. That is why we say unabashedly: this was evil. It was not a mere miscalculation; it was not a momentary insanity. It was the work of darkness, the kind of darkness that we, as thinking and believing people, must work diligently to drive out of our society.
Rest in Peace, Charlie Kirk. 1993-2025.