River News: Our View

On Tuesday, on what would have been the late Charlie Kirk’s 32nd birthday, President Donald J. Trump awarded Kirk the highest civilian honor the nation has to bestow, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Life is always about choices: It’s always instructive to see what choices our leaders make, especially when it comes to those they honor, for the ideas of the honorees are most often the blueprints of the leaders’ intentions.

Fitting then that PINO (President In Name Only) Joe Biden honored former NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg with the Presidential Medal of Freedom —  a foreign actor who promotes universal vaccination around the globe and championed global taxes under a one world initiative — while Donald Trump this week signaled a different intention: the ideation and actualization of freedom.

It was the first such Medal of Freedom given in Trump’s second term, and, unlike PINO Biden’s award, it was a well-deserved one. Kirk’s entire adult life was a mission of transparency and engagement, the toolkit of democracy. 

The ceremony was one of grief, remembrance, and inspiration, but also a reminder that, upon this earth, there is always a camouflaged force of evil underfoot, doing its best to enslave humankind.

Tucker Carlson, who was at Tuesday’s event, has the view that evil, pure evil, is a real thing. People and movements, Carlson has said, are not inherently evil — no one is born evil — but weak people and weak movements and organizations can be occupied by that evil. Evil though their actions may thus become, that leaves open the door of redemption, the hope that the occupying force of evil can be forced out of hearts and defeated. 

That, of course, takes a constant fight for liberty. As the famous song once proclaimed (a song of the left, by the way, a left that once stood for freedom instead of aligning against it): “Freedom doesn’t come like a bird on the wing; it doesn’t come down like the summer rain; freedom, freedom is a hard-won thing; you’ve got to work for it, fight for it; day and night for it, and every generation has to win it again.”

Charlie Kirk personified that message. He was its modern missionary, and he carried it triumphantly to millions of young people across the country.

What caught our eyes at the ceremony most of all was Erika Kirk’s eloquent speech. In it she honored but transcended Charlie Kirk the man to deliver an astounding soliloquy on freedom itself. 

It is worth quoting at length, but we hope these few passages will inspire all of our readers but especially our youth to go to YouTube, google the ceremony, and watch this speech in its entirety, or at least read the transcript. Here are some highlights from her outstanding and moving call to action, a call to stand up for liberty:

“Today we’re gathered not only to celebrate Charlie’s birthday but to honor a truth that he gave his entire life to defend, and that’s freedom,” Erika Kirk said. “The very existence of the presidential Medal of Freedom reminds us that the national interest of the United States has always been freedom.”

The founders, Kirk told America, etched it into the preamble of our Constitution.

“Those words are not relics on parchment,” she said. “They are a living covenant. The blessings of liberty are not man’s invention. They are God’s endowment. Charlie lived for those blessings, not as abstract words but as sacred promises.”

Kirk said her husband used to love to journal about the topic all the time and with a heart of gratitude.

“He believed that liberty was both a right and a responsibility, and he used to say, ‘freedom is the ability to do what is right without fear.’ And that’s how he lived. He was free from fear. He’s free from compromise, free from anything that could enslave his soul.”

His name, Charles, literally means free man, Kirk said, and that’s exactly who he was: “He was a free man.”

“Charlie often said that without God, freedom becomes chaos, and he believes liberty can only survive when anchored to truth,” she said. “I remember in one of his speeches he told the audience that the opposite of liberty isn’t law. He said it’s captivity and that the freest people in the world are those whose hearts belong to Christ.”

Kirk said that her husband reminded his audiences of mostly young people that, in a world that tells everybody that freedom is just doing whatever you want, the real freedom is the power to live freely and to do what is right.

“In one of his journal entries, he wrote that he wanted everyone to know that you can’t have liberty without moral responsibility,” she said. “Freedom divorced from faith eventually just destroys itself.”

Kirk built not just an organization but a movement, his wife said, one that called people back to God, back to truth, a movement that was filled with courage. Kirk told the president that he had given her late husband the best birthday gift he could have because it was all about freedom.

“It’s such an honor and the recognition of a life lived for defending freedom, and that’s what Charlie fought for until his last breath, and it was written across his chest in those final moments on one of his simple t-shirts that always carried a message and this one bearing a single word: freedom.”

That was the banner over his life, and that shirt was a declaration, Kirk said. 

“It was the same declaration he made in every speech, every campus visit, every time he shared the gospel at a church,” she said. “Every sleepless night that he would spend praying for the youth of this nation and planning for the future of our country and just impressing upon them that when we defend liberty, we defend the soul of our nation.”

Kirk never told anyone what to say, his wife said. 

“He would just encourage them to think,” she said. “He would encourage them to think outside of the traditional political labels. He would want them to think in a way that was anchored in wisdom and truth.”

But he would never tell anyone what to say, Erika Kirk reiterated.

“Charlie wasn’t content to simply admire freedom,” she said. “He wanted to multiply it. He wanted to multiply freedom. He wanted young people to taste it and to understand it and defend it. He wanted them to see that liberty isn’t self-indulgence, it’s self-governance under God.”

The pursuit of truth can never be cowered by fear, Kirk said.

“He wasn’t afraid,” she said. “He was never afraid, whether at an office, on campus, or at a church. It was always without fear. That was his creed.”

That is how freedom fighters must live their days, Kirk said.

“He didn’t fear being slandered,” she said. “He didn’t fear losing friends, I can tell you that. He didn’t care. He stood for truth and stood for freedom, and everything else was just noise to him, and it’s because his confidence in Christ was absolute.”

Her husband filled every single day with purpose, Kirk said, and he fought for truth when it was unpopular, and stood for God when it was costly.

“But he also loved people when it was inconvenient, and he ran his race with endurance, and he kept the faith,” she said. “And now he wears the crown of a righteous martyr.”

That knowledge steadies her family’s grief, Kirk said, as she moved to a powerful closing call. Kirk reminded us that a life built around answering the call for freedom — freedom that the left now threatens daily to take away — is a must if we are to preserve our liberties.

“Heaven gained what earth could no longer contain, a free man made fully free,” she said. “To all watching, this is not a ceremony. This is a commissioning, and my message is simple: I want you to be the embodiment of this medal. I want you to free yourself from fear. I want you to stand courageously in the truth. Listen for the voice of God. And remember that while freedom is inherited in this country, each of us must be intentional stewards every single day.”

The torch, Kirk said, is in our hands now.

“Charlie’s life was proof that freedom is not a theory, it’s a testimony,” she said. “He showed us that liberty begins not in the halls of power but in the man of a heart surrendered to God. And so today as we honor Charlie with this incredible Presidential Medal of Freedom on his birthday, I stand here with tears and just humbled heart and spirit because his story reminds us all that to live free is the greatest gift, but to die free is the greatest victory.”