I wish. But I can't think of anyone who has his skill set, certainly not me.
(More random reflections.)
And even using the term "skill set" seems vaguely dehumanizing, as if a human soul of infinite worth may be reduced to a set of skills. Churchill had a unique skill set, but even someone with the same set of skills will not be Churchill, for there is a greatness of soul that transcends the skills used to express it.
It's like two musicians who have the identical training, only one is an artist while the other a mere musicologist. One can even be a virtuoso but not attain to to the level that transcends it. Which is why I am intrigued by "primitive" musicians from a Muddy Waters, to Johnny Cash, to John Lennon, who nevertheless express a depth of soul that easily transcends their limitations. It's like magic. It is magic.
Art has a function that is both magical and spiritual: magical, it renders present principles, powers and also things that it attracts by virtue of a “sympathetic magic”; spiritual, it exteriorizes truths and beauties in view of our interiorization, of our return to the “kingdom of God that is within you.”
One could say also that sacred art transposes Being to the world of existence, of action or of becoming, or that it transposes in a certain way the Infinite to the world of the finite, or Essence to the world of forms; it thereby suggests a continuity proceeding from the one to the other, a way starting from appearance or accident and opening onto Substance or its celestial reverberations. (Schuon).
But the same thing applies to genuine philosophy, which likewise renders present timeless principles, exteriorizes truths in view of our interiorization of them, transposes the Infinite to the world of the finite, and moves us from appearance or accident to the reality behind or above them.
Kirk was an extrovert, I'm an introvert. He liked to argue. I like to to tell. Or at least present arguments and leave it to the reader to accept or reject them. Besides, what I write is the residue of a great deal of arguing that has already taken place in my own head.
I wish I had Kirk's straightforward faith, but if I did, I wouldn't be me. Rather, I need to seek faith with the materials at hand, mainly via intellection and quasi-mystical intuition, or a knowing that is first a seeing, a direct perception. Which sounds pretentious, but America is founded upon such transcendental vision, e.g., We hold these truths to be self-evident. If you don't see them, you'll never know them.
To which I might add that if you do not love truth, you do not know it.
Freedom of speech is perhaps the most important of these self-evident truths -- that and the infinite value and dignity of the human person. Kirk believed -- saw -- these transcendent truths that condition and facilitate all the others. For this, he is called a dangerous fascist, which is only the precise opposite of what he was. (Besides, to quote an old saying, Fascism is the systematic denial of transcendence.)
Now, anyone can be wrong. But how does one end up with a passionate belief that something is its opposite? That A is -A? Clearly, there is something rotten in our culture and in the educational establishment that not only shapes and supports a systematic, truly grotesque distortion of reality, but denies transcendence altogether.
How partial to violence are liberals?.... around half of those who describe themselves as left of center (from “slightly liberal” on over) say that assassinating Donald Trump or Elon Musk is at least somewhat justified....
Political violence targeting Trump and Musk is becoming increasingly normalized.... tolerance -- and even advocacy -- for political violence appears to have surged, especially among politically left-leaning segments of the population.... The reports found widespread justification for lethal violence -- including assassination -- among younger, highly online, and ideologically left-aligned users. A spillover effect into offline domains is already occurring, as illustrated by a ballot measure recently submitted in California that is macabrely named “the Luigi Mangione Access to Health Care Act" (PowerLine).
Charming: a bill celebrating a coldblooded murderer. Why not the Charlie Manson Access to Knives Act?
These aren’t just a few wackos. These are large numbers of people in professional and managerial jobs -- mostly government employees of some sort, it seems -- who genuinely believe that holding ideas they don’t like should carry the death penalty.
These people are everywhere. They might be teaching your kids. They might be the face looking down at you as you’re wheeled into the E.R. They might be the guy who approves your building permit, or not. It’s an Army Of Haters.
This represents a moral and existential crisis, a catastrophic failure of civilization -- or of the civilizing process that shapes each new generation of barbarians into proper human beings -- the purpose of which being, at the very least, to preserve civilization itself. But today we see the explicit inculcation of a barbarism that is the opposite of civilization.
Some are saying that Charlie Kirk will be more influential in death than he was in life. That remains to be seen, but for me it is cold comfort. No doubt Christ himself has been more influential in death than he was in life, but I wouldn't advocate a policy of martyrdom in order to get our point across. I'd prefer to do it the old-fashioned way via argument and debate.
Reynolds concludes the essay linked above with a question:
They’re there, they hate you, and they’re not going anywhere. So what to do about it?
If someone not only hates you for your opinions, but consequently justifies violence upon you, then what? This seems to be a recipe for "justifiable war." For when is war justified? Among the conditions that must be met is that "All peaceful means of resolving the conflict must have been exhausted and proven ineffective."
Kirk's whole life revolved around a commitment to the use of peaceful means to resolve our civilizational conflict. I wonder what he would say if he were here to comment on the fate that befell him? It's like asking Lincoln what he thinks about John Wilkes Booth.
Speaking of which, it is a measure of how far we have fallen as a nation that Booth assumed he would be welcomed as a conquering hero in the South. But the South, despite its hatred for Lincoln, was appalled at such cowardice. Am I correct about this, Gemini? Unlike Kirk I don't have every fact I've ever read at my fingertips.
You are correct. John Wilkes Booth's expectation of being hailed as a hero in the South was a profound miscalculation. While many Southerners had a deep hatred for Abraham Lincoln as a political figure, across the South, particularly among Confederate leaders and the educated elite, the assassination was viewed as a cowardly, dishonorable, and barbaric act.
Very much in contrast to our pseudo-educated elite.
Prominent figures like Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis publicly condemned the murder. They understood that the act would not help the South, but would instead confirm the worst Northern perceptions of them as savage and dishonorable. Newspapers in cities like Richmond and Raleigh, which had been the heart of the Confederacy, ran editorials expressing "profound grief" and calling the assassination "the heaviest blow that has fallen on the people of the South."
Good times. I'm not for banning flags, but we picked the wrong one:
Seen on X: They don’t kill you because you’re a Nazi; they call you a Nazi so they can kill you.
