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. ✝️🙏🙌
Some of us go back millennia for inspiration when shattering things happen. When " you shall love your neighbour as yourself" was written in Leviticus and later affirmed by Jesus as the pinnacle of human ethical endeavour, and when the Golden Rule was initially stated as " don't do unto others what is hateful to you", or Jesus said " love your enemy", Western civilisation, of which America is a robust part, understood all of it as a rock, an indestructible foundation. Has it been abrogated by the understandable fact that younger generations are atheist? My prayer would be that it has not. That it's still there, and that perhaps somehow it could be re-introduced as basic knowledge. Regarding the left playing God as narcissists do, worshipping the idol of their own self, we might be reminded that narcissism can be malignant, and in this case it has become so, seeking the death of anything that contradicts it, substituting a civilized moral foundation for a degenerate, decadent type of collective mental illness, both suicidal and homicidal.
"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."
Your caricatures are so ignorant. There are liberal Christians. There are liberals who believe in "eternity." Furthermore, there are conservative atheist materialists. Are you trying to just be insulting and feeding on peoples' ignorant prejudices?
Liberals in this context refers to people who share liberal politics but also reject belief in any deity. Their worldview is usually secular or humanist, and their grounding for morality, meaning, and rights doesn’t come from a transcendent source but from human reason, social consensus, or personal autonomy.
It's irrational to generalize in any "context" about "liberals" rejecting a belief in a deity when most believe in a god. It's appreciated that you narrowed it now, but the fact that your original article implies something radically inaccurate suggests that your caricature is grounded in ignorance, and certainly nothing "transcendent."
Furthermore, even those liberals who do not believe in deities often have moral beliefs that they believe are grounded in some objective source, whether it be nature or some other metaphysical theory. And those liberals who do not believe in any form of objective morality still could view "sacrifice", "discipline", and "restraint", as virtues. You clearly have little knowledge or curiosity about the ethical frameworks of people outside your own religion.
A lack of belief in a deity also doesn't necessarily imply a lack of belief in "eternity." Those are logical distinct ideas. A person could believe in the immortality of souls, but not believe there is any deity, a singular deity, or Yahweh particularly.
There is no "liberal mind." That is a superstitious abstraction.
Your judgements about "liberal" ethical frameworks are ignorant. Rather than generalizing about "liberals", address particular liberals and ethical frameworks they claim to hold. "Secular Humanism" is something that you could critique, but you should probably actually look up prominent historical philosophers of that tradition and their ethics and actions before saying something ignorant. You talk about Charlie Kirk's standards--would you be able to coherently debate live about whether morality, meaning, and rights should or do derive from a "transcendent source" with your current knowledge? I doubt it.
Liberal may be the wrong word to use here ( there are different definitions of the word) but there are many people who live by the religion of the self and who reduce everything to “ appetite, identity and self expression”. Queer theorists- those who believe that reality is a construct, that people can change sex, that all binaries and normality itself should be destroyed, that people have their own ‘lived experience’ which supersedes the reality of others, meaning that males can trample on the rights of women, that there’s no such thing as childhood therefore children are able to consent to bodily mutilation and sex with adults. All of these examples are the result of self love to the point of narcissism whereby the needs of other individuals and what’s good for wider society are subsumed by the wants and demands of the individual. We see this mindset across the left nowadays after years of indoctrination in education and the media- wider society does not matter, only the self. Christianity used to fulfil the role of reigning in man’s baser instincts for self love and redirect those instincts out to what’s good for others. As a lapsed RC I am now beginning to see that there are many people who need the boundaries which society is failing to provide.
Dan may have hit upon the wrong word to use but his ideas are not ignorant and the use of abuse merely devalues the points you are making.
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. ✝️🙏🙌
Some of us go back millennia for inspiration when shattering things happen. When " you shall love your neighbour as yourself" was written in Leviticus and later affirmed by Jesus as the pinnacle of human ethical endeavour, and when the Golden Rule was initially stated as " don't do unto others what is hateful to you", or Jesus said " love your enemy", Western civilisation, of which America is a robust part, understood all of it as a rock, an indestructible foundation. Has it been abrogated by the understandable fact that younger generations are atheist? My prayer would be that it has not. That it's still there, and that perhaps somehow it could be re-introduced as basic knowledge. Regarding the left playing God as narcissists do, worshipping the idol of their own self, we might be reminded that narcissism can be malignant, and in this case it has become so, seeking the death of anything that contradicts it, substituting a civilized moral foundation for a degenerate, decadent type of collective mental illness, both suicidal and homicidal.
Brilliant again. Thank you
"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."
Your caricatures are so ignorant. There are liberal Christians. There are liberals who believe in "eternity." Furthermore, there are conservative atheist materialists. Are you trying to just be insulting and feeding on peoples' ignorant prejudices?
Liberals in this context refers to people who share liberal politics but also reject belief in any deity. Their worldview is usually secular or humanist, and their grounding for morality, meaning, and rights doesn’t come from a transcendent source but from human reason, social consensus, or personal autonomy.
Most liberals are theists (62%).
https://news.gallup.com/poll/393737/belief-god-dips-new-low.aspx
It's irrational to generalize in any "context" about "liberals" rejecting a belief in a deity when most believe in a god. It's appreciated that you narrowed it now, but the fact that your original article implies something radically inaccurate suggests that your caricature is grounded in ignorance, and certainly nothing "transcendent."
Furthermore, even those liberals who do not believe in deities often have moral beliefs that they believe are grounded in some objective source, whether it be nature or some other metaphysical theory. And those liberals who do not believe in any form of objective morality still could view "sacrifice", "discipline", and "restraint", as virtues. You clearly have little knowledge or curiosity about the ethical frameworks of people outside your own religion.
A lack of belief in a deity also doesn't necessarily imply a lack of belief in "eternity." Those are logical distinct ideas. A person could believe in the immortality of souls, but not believe there is any deity, a singular deity, or Yahweh particularly.
There is no "liberal mind." That is a superstitious abstraction.
Your judgements about "liberal" ethical frameworks are ignorant. Rather than generalizing about "liberals", address particular liberals and ethical frameworks they claim to hold. "Secular Humanism" is something that you could critique, but you should probably actually look up prominent historical philosophers of that tradition and their ethics and actions before saying something ignorant. You talk about Charlie Kirk's standards--would you be able to coherently debate live about whether morality, meaning, and rights should or do derive from a "transcendent source" with your current knowledge? I doubt it.
Prove me wrong.
Liberal may be the wrong word to use here ( there are different definitions of the word) but there are many people who live by the religion of the self and who reduce everything to “ appetite, identity and self expression”. Queer theorists- those who believe that reality is a construct, that people can change sex, that all binaries and normality itself should be destroyed, that people have their own ‘lived experience’ which supersedes the reality of others, meaning that males can trample on the rights of women, that there’s no such thing as childhood therefore children are able to consent to bodily mutilation and sex with adults. All of these examples are the result of self love to the point of narcissism whereby the needs of other individuals and what’s good for wider society are subsumed by the wants and demands of the individual. We see this mindset across the left nowadays after years of indoctrination in education and the media- wider society does not matter, only the self. Christianity used to fulfil the role of reigning in man’s baser instincts for self love and redirect those instincts out to what’s good for others. As a lapsed RC I am now beginning to see that there are many people who need the boundaries which society is failing to provide.
Dan may have hit upon the wrong word to use but his ideas are not ignorant and the use of abuse merely devalues the points you are making.
I agree.