A Revolution Prevented - American Reformer

The Conservation of the West in the Work of Charlie Kirk

Charlie Kirk was a conservative in all the right ways. I once had the unenviable task of following him onstage at a private gathering of conservative activists, influencers, and donors, and his sharp mind, approachable intensity, and fearless commitment to principle were on full display.

But his conservatism ran much deeper than those admirable qualities. What struck me that day was his full embrace of freedom of speech, not merely as an end unto itself, but as a means to preserve our constitutional form of government. When asked once why he insisted on subjecting himself, week after week, to the constant churn of campus debate, he said, “When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence, that is when civil war happens.”

Kirk understood, at a fundamental level, that we must keep talking—especially with those with whom we vehemently disagree—so that we can settle our differences peacefully. The constitutional framework our Founders established requires that Americans remain free to debate and to persuade. That is why Kirk stood as a profound counterpoint to the popular campus canard that “speech is violence.” Rather, he knew that violence too often tragically comes when the debate falls silent, whether because of the oppression of autocrats or the failure of free citizens to commit to the hard work of self-government.

But Kirk’s conservatism went even deeper, however, than a robust defense of free discourse. What I most admired as I sat listening to him speak that day (and sensing my own remarks growing ever paler by comparison) was his commitment to what another great conservative who shared Charlie Kirk’s surname and penchant for robust campus debate, Russell Kirk, once called the “permanent things.”

While some viewed Charlie Kirk as a rabble-rouser, he didn’t see his mission in that light at all. Rather, he viewed his task as “actively trying to stop a revolution.” How? By igniting in his mostly Generation-Z audience a love of the anchoring traditions and institutions of Western civilization. “This is where you have to try to point them toward ultimate purposes and toward getting back to the church, getting back to faith, getting married, having children. That is the type of conservatism that I represent, and I’m trying to paint a picture of virtue, of lifting people up, not just staying angry.”[1. Brigham Tomco, “How Charlie Kirk became ‘too big to ignore’,” Deseret News , 7 September 2025.]

That is precisely the “type” of conservatism that Russell Kirk (no relation to Charlie) preached throughout his lifetime. In his magisterial work The Roots of American Order, Kirk wrote that “practical government in the United States, and in every other nation, is possible only because most people in that nation accept the existence of some moral order, by which they govern their conduct—the order of the soul.” That “right order in the soul,” in turn, produces “right order in the commonwealth,” and springs from a “moral imagination” passed down through the great institutions of society, such as schools, churches, and families.

Russell Kirk was fond of saying that the American Revolution was a revolution “not made, but prevented,” because it did not seek to break with ancient wisdom and established order, but rather sought to establish new forms of preservation for that priceless inheritance. Charlie Kirk understood this at a fundamental level—his project was not revolution, but preservation by reminding us of permanent things.

However, no assessment of Charlie Kirk’s conservatism is complete without acknowledging his deep and growing faith in Jesus Christ. And that, above all, is what struck me as I listened to him speak (and wishing I could cede my stage time to him). His was not an embrace of civil religion or some ethereal good, but a focused embrace of Jesus Himself, captured in his widely republished post, “Tell someone about Jesus this weekend.”

This faith in Jesus was not a mere appendage to a conservative philosophy, but the foundation for it. Tom Holland observed in his book, Dominion, that whether we wish to acknowledge it or not, the West is “firmly moored to its Christian past.” The modern attempt to divorce the West from those roots has resulted in moral chaos and decay. In his book Cross Purposes, Jonathan Rauch—himself an avowed atheist—has acknowledged that Christianity provides the background condition that allows liberal society to flourish: “There is no secular substitute for the meaning and grounding which religious life provides.” No lesser light than John Adams recognized the vital connection between our Constitutional order and the firm moral grounding that faith provides, writing: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Charlie Kirk understood these truths, and he gave his life to speaking them, with intellectual force and deep compassion, to anyone and everyone who would listen. His life was cut short by an assassin who wanted to end the conversation. The greatest tribute we could give Charlie Kirk is to continue the conversations he began with the same tenacity, courage, and grace that he showed us.