BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  SEPT 29, 2025 

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
— “Citizenship in a Republic,” Speech by former President Theodore Roosevelt, Paris, April 23, 1910

Whatever you think of the late Charlie Kirk and his political and evangelical messages, he was a citizen who stepped into the arena President Theodore Roosevelt admired as the ultimate in civic engagement …. and was shot dead.

What comes as a surprise is that one-third of college students surveyed earlier this year said that “using violence to stop a campus speech” can be acceptable. There was no difference in the findings when noncollege millennials and Generation Z young adults were asked the same question.

Those results were released by the conservative Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) the day before Kirk was assassinated. Kirk was on an Arizona campus to promote open and civil discussion among young people when he was struck down. He spoke his mind and then challenged his audience to “prove me wrong,” a phrase emblazoned on his t-shirt that day.

Similar survey results were also found in a YouGov survey. They are not only disturbing but depressing and unnerving. Continue reading →