In Jacques-Louis David’s famous painting The Death of Marat at the Louvre, we see the revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat lying in his bathtub, pen in hand, writing his final letter. To those unfamiliar with his story, the image may seem oddly quiet, even intimate. However, Marat was a profoundly ill man whose radical politics ended violently on the eve of the French Revolution. His assassin, Charlotte Corday—an aristocrat disillusioned with the revolution’s descent into bloodshed—killed him, believing it would save France from chaos. As she awaited her own execution, she proclaimed, “I killed one man to save 100,000.”
Charlie Kirk, by stark contrast, was no revolutionary firebrand. He did not incite violence or call for the deaths of his enemies. Instead, from a young age, he engaged in the hard work of debate and civic engagement—bringing politics to a generation disillusioned, overwhelmed by crime, failed leadership, and the collapse of truth they witnessed around them. Unlike Marat’s era of upheaval and terror, Kirk chose to illuminate, organize, and inspire.
While Marat’s rhetoric was an explosive call to violent upheaval amid the collapse of the Ancien Régime, Kirk operated within a vastly different political landscape. His activism through Turning Point USA was built on winning people over through debate, facts, and logic. He engaged a generation living in an era, much like old Paris, characterized by polarization, a closeness to violence, and radicalism.
In the United States today, who can blame young people for feeling politically exhausted? This did not dissuade Kirk, however, who steadfastly championed the ideals of America’s founding: freedom of expression, personal responsibility, and communal strength rooted in tradition.
In Charlotte Corday’s own biography, she wrote,
How long, oh! Miserable Frenchmen, will you be pleased with disorder and divisions? Long enough and too long have some factious men, some wicked men placed the interest of their ambition in the place of the general interest.
That may have been true about Marat, but with Charlie, that could not have been further from the truth. Seemingly, everyone who knew him attests to his humility and charity.
Charlie Kirk was, in fact, the inverse of Marat in many ways.
Whilst Marat called for death and destruction with fiery rhetoric in paragraphs oozing with demonic hatred, Kirk’s entire person radiated compassion and goodwill, speaking common sense to a lost generation. Quite literally meeting them where they were, as opposed to Marat, shut up in his chambers.
Marat was murdered by Charlotte Corday, a believer in the Ancien Régime, wanting to end his violent influence. Charlie’s murderer, likewise, is convinced he is acting for the good, but he is ideologically on the side of the Marats of yore.
Make no mistake. The murderer was a fighter for the woke mob, and Charlie was a happy warrior, as Reagan called all conservatives to be. That was precisely why he was targeted.
They hated Charlie because he embodied the essence of America. They despise those founding values and the brave, free, and strong Christian peoples upon whose shoulders America was built—the only country founded on the principles of freedom of thought and expression.
Charlie loved the idea of the America he grew up in and as he thought it ought to have been. Like many conservatives, he wanted to restore America to a more traditional, stable, and healthy nation. In every way, Charlie was a generational voice—one who quite likely would have been president one day.
By contrast, the revolutionaries on campuses whom he debated daily hated America for all it stands for. That is why Charlie was murdered in front of his friends, family, and audience.
That is why his allies now, across social media, are mourning a brave young husband and father of two small children who will grow up without a father in an even more radicalized nation, where discourse and argument take a backseat and violence is political capital. Kirk’s passing will leave a vacuum, and we should count ourselves lucky if the man who fills it is half as decent as him.
As with Marat, the revolutionary times may only just be beginning.
Kirk Was Never a Marat—and That Is Why They Murdered Him
“The Death of Marat” (1793, cropped), a 128-165 oil on canvas by Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), located in Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels, Belgium.
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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In Jacques-Louis David’s famous painting The Death of Marat at the Louvre, we see the revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat lying in his bathtub, pen in hand, writing his final letter. To those unfamiliar with his story, the image may seem oddly quiet, even intimate. However, Marat was a profoundly ill man whose radical politics ended violently on the eve of the French Revolution. His assassin, Charlotte Corday—an aristocrat disillusioned with the revolution’s descent into bloodshed—killed him, believing it would save France from chaos. As she awaited her own execution, she proclaimed, “I killed one man to save 100,000.”
Charlie Kirk, by stark contrast, was no revolutionary firebrand. He did not incite violence or call for the deaths of his enemies. Instead, from a young age, he engaged in the hard work of debate and civic engagement—bringing politics to a generation disillusioned, overwhelmed by crime, failed leadership, and the collapse of truth they witnessed around them. Unlike Marat’s era of upheaval and terror, Kirk chose to illuminate, organize, and inspire.
While Marat’s rhetoric was an explosive call to violent upheaval amid the collapse of the Ancien Régime, Kirk operated within a vastly different political landscape. His activism through Turning Point USA was built on winning people over through debate, facts, and logic. He engaged a generation living in an era, much like old Paris, characterized by polarization, a closeness to violence, and radicalism.
In the United States today, who can blame young people for feeling politically exhausted? This did not dissuade Kirk, however, who steadfastly championed the ideals of America’s founding: freedom of expression, personal responsibility, and communal strength rooted in tradition.
In Charlotte Corday’s own biography, she wrote,
That may have been true about Marat, but with Charlie, that could not have been further from the truth. Seemingly, everyone who knew him attests to his humility and charity.
Charlie Kirk was, in fact, the inverse of Marat in many ways.
Whilst Marat called for death and destruction with fiery rhetoric in paragraphs oozing with demonic hatred, Kirk’s entire person radiated compassion and goodwill, speaking common sense to a lost generation. Quite literally meeting them where they were, as opposed to Marat, shut up in his chambers.
Marat was murdered by Charlotte Corday, a believer in the Ancien Régime, wanting to end his violent influence. Charlie’s murderer, likewise, is convinced he is acting for the good, but he is ideologically on the side of the Marats of yore.
Make no mistake. The murderer was a fighter for the woke mob, and Charlie was a happy warrior, as Reagan called all conservatives to be. That was precisely why he was targeted.
They hated Charlie because he embodied the essence of America. They despise those founding values and the brave, free, and strong Christian peoples upon whose shoulders America was built—the only country founded on the principles of freedom of thought and expression.
Charlie loved the idea of the America he grew up in and as he thought it ought to have been. Like many conservatives, he wanted to restore America to a more traditional, stable, and healthy nation. In every way, Charlie was a generational voice—one who quite likely would have been president one day.
By contrast, the revolutionaries on campuses whom he debated daily hated America for all it stands for. That is why Charlie was murdered in front of his friends, family, and audience.
That is why his allies now, across social media, are mourning a brave young husband and father of two small children who will grow up without a father in an even more radicalized nation, where discourse and argument take a backseat and violence is political capital. Kirk’s passing will leave a vacuum, and we should count ourselves lucky if the man who fills it is half as decent as him.
As with Marat, the revolutionary times may only just be beginning.
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