Charlie Kirk and Socrates

Socrates's 'mistake,' from the perspective of the powerful elite in Athens, was that he – like Charlie Kirk long after him – taught the city's youth to question the conventional wisdom held up by its 'leaders' as the unquestionable truth. Hence, they charged him with the 'crime' of leading the youth astray by introducing them to foreign 'gods,' the latter being what Socrates referred to as his 'daimon,' or what we would call 'conscience.'

In Plato's Apology (Plato – Complete Works, Trans. Grube, G.M.A., J.M. Hackett Publishing Company 1997: 23), referring to the charges brought against him, Socrates says to the members of the Athenian jury: "It goes something like this: Socrates is guilty of corrupting the young and of not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other new spiritual things." He then examines the charges systematically and easily demonstrates that he does believe in "spirits," which an accuser claims to be "gods" (Plato 1997: 26). Socrates further claims that, having shown that the charges against him are baseless, he realises that his undoing will have nothing to do with this, but with the fact that he is "very unpopular with many people" who "envy" him (p. 26).

The gist of his defence (apologia) – which, as we know, did nothing to endear him to the jury – comes where he points out (Plato 1997: 27) that the charges against him would have been legitimate if he had abandoned his soldierly duty in the battles where he had fought, "for fear of death or anything else"…"when the god ordered me, as I thought and believed, to live the life of a philosopher, to examine myself and others…" But fearing death, he further argues, rests upon the erroneous belief of thinking "one knows what one does not know." As for himself, he knows that he knows nothing of the things of the "underworld" (including death), and he opines that it is perhaps in this respect that he "is wiser than anyone in anything" (p. 27).

Having clearly – and no doubt to the vexation of his audience – demonstrated his own intellectual and moral superiority compared to his accusers, it was to be expected that the jury would exercise its power over Socrates by finding him guilty and sentencing him to death, as they did. But why cite this as an illustration of courage – specifically moral courage? Because Socrates was willing to die for his conscience-oriented belief in something more valuable than Athenian valorisation, ostensibly, of its Olympian polis religion, but in truth really of paying obeisance to conventional Athenian practices of kowtowing to the rich and powerful (and probably corrupt).

This is the lesson we should learn – and which Charlie Kirk had already discovered, probably without assistance from Socrates, although he may have known the details of Socrates's life and death – in the present global situation of an immensely powerful so-called 'elite' forcing the world population to toe the line of their decisions regarding everything from 'pandemic' lockdowns, 'vaccinations,' and soon (they hope) of obeying 'climate lockdowns.' Particularly (in Kirk's case), it was the widespread, ideologically reinforced belief that it was impossible to bridge the divide between 'Democrats' (who are anything but 'democrats') and 'Republicans' (many of whom are RINOS), and that one would be wasting one's time attempting to cross this chasm by debating with one's adversaries, that motivated Kirk to challenge this veritable dogma.

Moreover, and significantly, Charlie's organisation – Turning Point USA – positioned itself affirmatively in relation to the conservative, Christian youth of America, but not only conservative young people. Charlie, like Socrates before him, had the guts to address his Democrat-supporting youth adversaries in open debate as well, with the motto: 'Prove me wrong!' In a nutshell, he was not afraid to be a truth-teller in the face of enormous opposition from people on the other side of what seemed like an impenetrable ideological barrier.

When he died, he was practising the truth-telling he was known for. This is what the young American parrhesiastes (truth-teller) had in common with a long-dead ancient Greek philosopher called Socrates. And – to refer back to Susan Kokinda of Promethean Action once more, who said this before I did – this is what Charlie's enemies hated about him: he was not afraid to speak the truth. Or, perhaps more accurately, he was afraid – as he apparently confessed before that fatal day – but despite his fear, he carried on with what he believed was his mission, to awaken American youth (or Americans generally) to the need to conduct open, rational debate about their differences, instead of slinging insults at one another (and we know where most of these insults came from).

In short, it appears that, as several commentators have observed – and as we know from history – in death, Charlie Kirk is proving to be much stronger than in life. This has always been the case with martyrs, or individuals who have died for a cause that they espoused in the face of enormous opposition, from Socrates to Jesus Christ.