Charlie Kirk understood that without addressing education and stopping the escalating indoctrination of children, evil would win and the West would die. He told me so repeatedly. Homeschooling and getting the government out of education entirely is not just desirable, but essential, he argued.
In the aftermath of his brutal martyrdom on a college campus as he debated students, much has been said and written about Charlie’s politics, his engagement with college students and youth, his theological views, his beautiful family, his love for Christ, and his gargantuan impact on the nation. Those were all crucial parts of his legacy.
Far less has been said about his extremely passionate efforts on the education front. But as he told me multiple times, this is the key to winning the war and turning the tide. In particular, he believed that government must ultimately be removed from education entirely as parents reclaim their role from the state.
Of course, Charlie understood that this was first and foremost a spiritual battle. In fact, in the last significant conversation I had with him, that was the first thing he pointed out. “The threat is demonic in its core,” he said, noting that the “unclean spirit” was simply taking “the form of the woke.”
The most important element of stopping the evil being unleashed against America and civilization, he said, is not physical. “First, it must be a spiritual transformation revolution,” Charlie explained, before jumping into the political and even personal components of the “right-wing revolution” he said was needed to “save the West.”
Charlie was correct, and I share his views on that issue 110 percent. Almost every talk I give, I remind people about what the Bible teaches on this. Flesh and blood people are not the enemy, as the Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians. Rather, spiritual powers and principalities are the real threat.
Then, we turned to education, a subject Charlie was passionate about and discussed many times on air here at Freedom Project Media with Freedom Project leader Dr. Duke Pesta over the years. In fact, one of Charlie’s major books dealt with education, and he even created a whole division of Turning Point USA to deal with the crisis in education.
It was a great honor to have been invited to give keynote talks at his first major Turning Point event focused on education, and then at the second. His organization bought hundreds of copies of my book Indoctrinating Our Children to Death: Government Schools’ War on Faith, Family, and Freedom—And How to Stop It to give to teachers, school board members, and other educators.
On my show about a year ago, Charlie kindly praised my humble efforts to expose what was happening in government schools and to help parents and churches protect the children. “You do a great job, and I have a lot to learn from you, and our educators love you, and [Turning Point USA Education chief] Dr. Herzberg-Hutz thinks you do a great job,” he said.
Then, Charlie offered his own thoughts on what needed to be done. “We have the whole premise of education wrong,” he explained. “You do not make children. You allow children to grow, and you have them grow into what they ought to be, and you give them direction and guidance, but children are not something to be engineered.”
“They’re not something to be configured,” he explained. “They are to love learning more than anything else.”
Then he got into the roots of the current “education” system. “You see, the Modern Education Project is Prussian at its core,” Charlie explained. “It is focused on the administrative state, the administrative bureaucracy to try to make a population more subservient and obedient, but the form of education that we should be embracing is the classical form of education that is rooted in what is good, true, and beautiful or what is eternal rather than what is temporal.”
Charlie expands on all this in his books, including Right Wing Revolution: How to Beat the Woke and Save the West. In particular, Charlie argued that it was time for parents to reclaim their role as primary educators of their children — and get the government out of the education and child-rearing business entirely.
“The immediate way that we stop it, what is happening in the country when it comes to education, is we must have a renaissance and a revival of homeschooling in this country,” he argued. “That is the first thing, is that we must continue to see that expansion. We must have more and more parents that are unafraid to homeschool their children.”
“Then, secondly, [we must] understand the government has no role in education,” Charlie continued. “I know that’s a radical statement to say, but the government in education is one of the ways we have seen the destruction and the debasing of the nuclear family.”
Finally, Charlie turned to higher education—a subject he knew well despite having not participated himself, as he spent endless hours on campuses debating students and bringing them the Gospel and biblical truth on every issue imaginable.
“When it comes to education, obviously the obvious thing, we must defund these woke universities — in fact, almost all universities, and we must build new stuff,” he said. “Why are there not 100 Hillsdale colleges? It’s great that there’s one. Why are there not 100? I mean, we have 100 polytechnical woke schools across the country, but we don’t have 100 Hillsdales.”
“It’s because we need to think as entrepreneurs to start the next big and great thing, to pour into the next generation, and to understand what education actually is,” Charlie continued. “We are more than half of the country with conservative sensibilities and Christian values, but we are not more than half of the education space, and we need to try to fix that.”
In his book The College Scam, Charlie expanded his attack on these institutions of so-called “higher learning” that were destroying not just education but families and society. “We are way past any possibility of reform,” he said in the book. “The university industry is corrupt through and through.”
“No one will stand up and say, ‘Stop this cultural madness!’,” he said. “The students, parents, and taxpayers who pay for the system won’t say it because they don’t think there is any way around it. The academics, politicians, and financiers won’t say it because they are the problem.”
Aside from preaching the Gospel and bringing people to Christ, taking on the education Goliath and its role in propagating evil was a major part of Charlie’s efforts. As we honor him, it must remain a focal point of his legacy. There was nobody else at his level with the courage to honestly and clearly state the truths he was exposing.
Over the last week, many millions of Americans and Charlie Kirk supporters worldwide have declared in unison, “We are all Charlie Kirk now!” I echo that sentiment. Let us never forget that taking on the “education” beast destroying children, families, and societies was one of his top priorities. It must be among ours, too.
