The memorial for Charlie Kirk was remarkable for numerous reasons. It was superbly organized and overwhelmingly attended by young people. It was mournful, yet uplifting. Perhaps what impressed me the most was the composed and respectful tone of the event and the powerful message of hope and faith. When Erika Kirk forgave her husband’s assassin, the bottomless precipice dividing American values and woke radicalism could not have been more evident and impassable.
Those who live by Western tradition, Judeo-Christian values, and American core principles mourn their heroes with respect, dignity, and courage. They celebrate life and peacefully honor the departed hero’s legacy.
Those who live by woke radicalism worship criminals instead. There is no sorrowful solemnity. There is no dignified respect in their demeanor after the death of their symbols, who often perish as a result of a lawful arrest or self-defense. Instead, their reaction is marked by vandalism, arson, violence, and the revolutionary chaos of unhinged crowds, intent on dismantling the system. The woke mob does not respect human life but celebrates death. Its goal is the destruction of the status quo at any cost.
This moral chasm is getting wider and deeper. It is not simply between political convictions. It is between civilizations, or more precisely, between civilization and its antithesis — modern globalist barbarism, disguised as a nightmarish anti-Western utopia that leaves only misery and oppression in its wake.
In his speech of June 18, 1940, titled “Their Finest Hour,” Churchill uttered a memorable revelation and warning:
What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire.
The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.
But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”
The movement to stand up to destructive ideologies and their pernicious results is well on its way. On its success depends our civilizational survival. The West needs to rise to the occasion and relive its “finest hour.”
Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY