Why the Left Wants the Right to ‘Lower the Temperature’ Charlie Kirk’s assassination exposed the left’s projection, their calls to “lower the temperature,” and sparked a massive surge in Turning Point’s growth and influence. By Roger Kimball
https://amgreatness.com/2025/09/14/why-the-left-wants-the-right-to-lower-the-temperature/
In the aftermath of the brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk last week, does the Right need to “lower the temperature” of its rhetoric? That’s what the usual suspects on the Left are saying.
As it happens, “lowering the temperature” while simultaneously raising the intelligence of discussion was one of Charlie Kirk’s specialties. A theme of his campus “American Comeback” tour (which his widow, Erika, plans to continue) was dignified debate. “Prove Me Wrong” was Charlie’s mantra. He eagerly engaged with college students who disagreed—or, sometimes, thought they disagreed—with him about a wide range of political, social, moral, and religious issues.
If you have never seen him debate, I recommend you consult Mr. Google or one of his professional counterparts and watch Charlie in action. He was robust but also unfailingly kind, patient, and attentive to his interlocutors. The reason? He wished to persuade his audience about the rightness of his point of view, about the virtues of America, the wisdom of Christianity, and the leadership of Donald Trump.
How about his opponents? The internet is full of revelatory compilations of left-wingers denouncing their opponents as “fascists,” “Nazis,” and so on.
One series (and here is another) includes CNN’s Anderson Cooper asking Kamala Harris whether she thinks Donald Trump is “a fascist.” “Yes, I do” was her answer.
The word “fascist” had obviously been circulated by Democrat headquarters on the run-up to the 2024 election. Tim “Nimrod” Walz (remember him?) told a crowd that “No one has ever been more dangerous to this country than Donald Trump and he is a fascist to his core.”
“There needs to be blood,” we are told, which is only natural, since, as Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut said, “We’re in a war right now, so you have to be willing to do whatever is necessary to save the country.” New York Governor Kathy Hochul agreed. “We are at war,” she said. In his infamous speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Joe Biden said that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” “The very foundations of our republic,” forsooth! Nancy Pelosi, reflecting on Donald Trump’s border policy, said, “I don’t know why there aren’t uprisings all over the country and maybe there will be.”
Uprisings are something that House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries can get behind. “We are going to fight this in the streets,” a sentiment echoed by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker: “Time to step out into the streets,” he said.
It is all part of the ethic summarized by Eric “Wingman” Holder, Barack Obama’s loyal attorney general. “They go low,” he said, “we kick them.”
It has long been obvious that Left has a black belt in what psychologists call “projection.” They are masters of the art of accusing their ideological opponents of vile things of which they themselves are guilty. Their demand that we all must work to “lower the temperature” and “come together” in unity after the murder of Charlie Kirk is a subset of projection. They call their opponents “fascists” and an “extreme threat to the very foundation of the republic,” but when someone from their flock responds with violence, they blame “intemperate,” “right-wing,” MAGA rhetoric.
The tactic is not working this time. That cosmic suspiration you heard on Thursday night was the sigh of relief issued by the left when it learned that Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old man who killed Charlie Kirk, was white and that he came from a family of Republican Trump supporters. “You said he would be a black transsexual Trump hater, and here it turns out he is a cisgendered MAGA-supporting cracker.”
Nice try. Social media was full of that contention in the immediate aftermath of Robinson’s being identified as the shooter.
White Robinson certainly is. But he is also, as Utah Governor Spencer Cox put it, “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology.” A complete inventory of Robinson’s hatreds is still being compiled. As for the transgender motif, it turns out that his roommate (some outlets say his “partner”) is in the process of “transitioning.” Hmm. I suspect many people will, like me, agree with the commentator Scott Adams: “When the Charlie Kirk story first broke,” Adams wrote, “I unfairly leapt to the assumption the shooter was probably trans. Now, I feel terrible for making that assumption because the killer was only the boyfriend of a trans. I was way off.”
Adams added, “I am now unfairly leaping to the assumption the boyfriend is on antidepressants.”
It is curious that the last question Charlie Kirk was asked before being murdered bore on the question of transgenderism.
“Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?”
Charlie replied, “Too many.”
He was then asked, “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”
Charlie replied, “Counting or not counting gang violence?”
Charlie was then assassinated.
The left is terrified by the response to the ideologically motivated murder of Charlie Kirk. They should be. In the couple of days since the shooting, his organization, Turning Point, has signed up 18,000 new chapters. There have been mass demonstrations across the country—indeed, across the world—expressing sorrow at Charlie’s death and solidarity with his humane and humanizing ideas. As has been often pointed out, unlike the destructive “demonstrations” (what the rest would rightly call riots) that followed the death of the career-criminal, drug-abusing, arrest-resisting George Floyd, the mass gatherings for Charlie have featured prayer, not arson.
One key lesson that emerged from the horror of Charlie Kirk’s assassination was summed up neatly by a post on X: “They don’t kill you because you’re a Nazi; they call you a Nazi so they can kill you.” More and more people are coming to understand this.
One bullet fired by a deranged leftist silenced Charlie Kirk forever. But it also awakened millions of embryonic followers. It is too soon to say for certain what the aftermath of his tragic death will be. I would not be surprised if the words “Turning Point” eventually come to be seen to name not only Charlie Kirk’s organization but also a mighty fulcrum created by his death.
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