In ancient Rome, when a general returned from conquest, he was granted a triumph, a lavish parade through the city. He rode in a chariot, clothed in purple, crowned with laurel, as the crowds roared and the Senate honored him like a god. Slaves carried the spoils of war. Prisoners marched in chains. The entire city was his stage. But behind him, standing close enough to be heard over the thunder of applause, was a lowly servant. His sole task was to lean in and whisper into the general’s ear: “Memento mori, remember you must die.” It was a safeguard against arrogance and delusion. If you know you will die, you cannot worship yourself.
Charlie Kirk: A Memento Mori in Human Form
On September 10, 2025, in Orem, Utah, Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a sniper. Not long before, when asked in an interview what he most wanted to be remembered for, his answer was simple: “My faith.” Days later he posted on X: “Jesus defeated death so we can live.”
That was the center of his worldview. And it was the wellspring of his politics. Charlie believed life was sacred because it was created by God and purchased by Christ. That is why he fought for the unborn, why he spoke against a culture of death, why he defended the family as the foundation of society. He believed nations mattered because God made nations, and that the West was worth preserving because it was built on transcendent truth, not on self-worship. He believed freedom was fragile, because man is fallen, and therefore must be guarded with vigilance.
Charlie lived with memento mori stamped on his conscience. Because Christ had conquered the grave, he did not need to worship safety. Because eternity mattered more than popularity, he did not bow to mobs. Because truth was higher than power, he could confront corruption without fear.
In life, he was relentless in exposing the hollowness of the West’s illusions, that comfort is security, that pleasure is happiness, that self is god. In death, he became the very reminder he had embodied: a memento mori in human form. His assassination was not merely political, it was theological. It was the silencing of a man who dared to live by a standard higher than the self, and to order his politics around eternal truth instead of temporal applause.
Conservatism, is the political philosophy that remembers. It insists on limits. It defends family, nation, and faith because it knows life is fragile, death is inevitable, and future generations must be guarded. Conservatism defends life because it remembers death.
Nunc Est Bibendum
Secular Humanism’s creed is the opposite. Its motto is nunc est bibendum, “now is the time to drink.” If death is final, if there is no eternity, then life is nothing more than a temporary intoxication. Eat, drink, indulge, distract yourself, for tomorrow you die.
This is why the liberal mind reduces everything to appetite, identity, and self-expression. It has no ground for sacrifice, discipline, or restraint, only consumption and performance. It pretends to celebrate life, but in reality it devalues it. Because without eternity, life has no ultimate meaning.
The result is a culture of the walking dead. They parade as progressives, but they are nihilists. They claim to defend freedom, but they reduce freedom to self-destruction. They mutilate children in the name of liberation. They discard the unborn in the name of choice. They dissolve families, mock faith, and undermine civilization, all while telling themselves they are on the side of life.
They do not reject religion, they have their own. The self is god. The self is the highest source of authority. The self defines meaning, truth, morality, even biology. Nothing higher exists. Nothing beyond challenges it. It is a closed loop of worship, with the worshiper and the object of worship being the same. They have sacraments, abortion, sexual liberation, gender ideology. They have clergy, academics, influencers, activists. They have heresies, any thought that suggests the self is not sovereign. And they have punishments, cancellation, silencing, sometimes violence. This is the religion many Americans convert to in college. Its sacred is whatever you feel. Its sin is whatever makes you uncomfortable. Its blasphemy is anything that contradicts your self-created identity.
But like all false religions, it is fragile. When the self is god, the self must be protected at all costs. Its god cannot endure contradiction. It cannot tolerate rival deities. So when a man like Charlie Kirk proclaimed not the fragile, ever-shifting self but the transcendent God who made the self and rules over it, the disciple of self-worship reacted like every fundamentalist confronted with blasphemy: he silenced the heretic. He assassinated the man who dared to live by a standard higher than himself.
Two Religions in Collision
What happened in Orem was not merely an act of political violence, it was a clash of faiths. The religion of the self cannot coexist with the religion of Christ. One worships the mirror; the other worships the Maker. One denies death; the other faces it. One destroys life to protect the idol of autonomy; the other defends life because it remembers death and trusts in resurrection.
Charlie Kirk was assassinated not just because he was conservative, but because he was a heretic against the new state religion. He blasphemed the god of self by declaring a higher God. He challenged the cult of identity by declaring eternal truth. He lived as though death had been defeated, and that is unforgivable to those who build their faith on forgetting death.
The West stands at a fork in the road. On one side is conservatism, the worldview that remembers death, humbles itself before God, and defends life as sacred. On the other side is the radical left, the worldview that forgets death, worships the self, and destroys life in the name of liberation.
As a Jewish American and as one who seeks to live out the calling of a conservative mind and spirit, I found myself deeply moved—indeed, pierced—by your column. You have captured in unforgettable words the tension at the very heart of our age: whether man will humble himself before the Eternal, or enthrone the fragile self as god.
Your meditation on memento mori resounds in my own soul, for Judaism too instructs us to remember always that our lives are but a breath, and that our days are numbered by the Almighty. “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90). The wisdom that Charlie Kirk embodied, and that you have so eloquently recognized, is precisely this: that death is not to be forgotten, not to be hidden under comforts and distractions, but to be faced with courage, faith, and reverence.
The journey you describe is palpable, it tugs at the sinews of humanity that bind us together no matter our enduring faiths. I too struggle daily with the conviction that there must be better worlds beyond where we live. Our prophets, our sages, and our martyrs all testified to this: that we walk not merely in the shadow of death but also in the shadow of eternity. That is why your words stir so profoundly—they remind us that to forget death is to forget God, and to forget God is to destroy life itself.
You are right to say that conservatism is the philosophy that remembers. Judaism is nothing if not the discipline of memory. We remember creation. We remember Sinai. We remember Egypt. We remember exile, destruction, martyrdom—and we remember life. Memory is our faith’s marrow, and to conserve is to carry forward that memory into each new age, lest we be seduced by illusions of autonomy, pleasure, and self-worship.
The dichotomy you have presented may indeed seem, on the surface, too neat—life versus death, God versus self. But it is precisely such clarity that serves as a masterful beginning. It unmasks what modern sophisticates often obscure: that there are ultimately only two ways before us, the way of life and the way of death. Our societies and our belief systems may differ in doctrine, yet all of us who acknowledge something higher than ourselves begin to merge at this crossroads. Either we will build a civilization where eternal truths order human life, or we will descend into a chaos where appetites rule and the self reigns as a cruel idol.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination, as you write, was not merely political but theological. As a Jew, I cannot help but see in this a familiar tragedy: the silencing of voices who dare to call men back to truth, the attempt to erase witnesses whose lives embody conviction. It is an ancient stain on the human condition—that we so often answer truth not with humility but with violence.
And yet, even in the blood of the righteous, even in the cruel interruption of a life of faith, there is testimony. Charlie’s faith in the Resurrection, and his refusal to bow to fear, is a reminder to us all that courage is only possible when one knows that death does not have the final word. Judaism, too, testifies that the Author of Life will one day wipe away every tear, and that the covenant of eternity is not broken by the grave.
Your words compel us to remember that our task, if we are to remain human, is not to train ourselves to kill those with whom we disagree, but to train ourselves to think, to build, to conserve, to remember, and to bless. What a stain it is upon humanity that in every age we must relearn this lesson. And what a mercy that in every age, God raises up those who refuse to forget death, and thus insist on the sanctity of life.
Your column is more than commentary; it is a call. And as a Jew and as a conservative, I add my voice to it with gratitude and reverence.
Amen and Amen! 🙏May God open hearts and minds and may He work through us to spread the truth of the Gospel to all around us…and may Charlie’s life and legacy as a Christian martyr inspire us as we seek God in His Word and follow His plan and Charlie’s stated desire (as per his sweet, grieving wife Erika) “to make heaven crowded.” There is no promise that it will be easy—may God grant us the same courage and perseverance of Charlie and all who’ve stood their ground for Christ. We know eternity is at stake. ✝️🙏🙌