In just fewer than five hours, a benefit dinner honoring Charlie Kirk sold out. The Cheyenne event promised to donate all proceeds to Kirk’s group, Turning Point USA.
Secretary of State Chuck Gray and conservative members of the Legislature are slated to speak at a gathering in honor of the conservative movement. “Onward, for Charlie.”
Moms for Liberty, also a co-sponsor of the event, was once joked about as being Kirk’s “favorite domestic terrorist organization.”
He made the joke because he knew what it was like to be targeted by the government simply for expressing freedom of speech and building an impactful, organic movement.
The event selling out within fewer than five hours of being advertised in a few places online should tell us something about who Wyoming is.
We are not a place that spits in the face of freedom. And we certainly don’t believe in shooting it in the neck.
This week, at least two were killed in a targeted attack on a Dallas, Texas ICE Facility. In our own local news, violence against children and by children is on the rise. Our society is moving toward a new chapter of violence, the likes of which we’ve never seen before.
I fear that the event that cost Charlie Kirk his life will have the same impact as the Columbine, Colorado school shooting.
We have breached a threshold. We have stepped our toe into a darkness that should never have tinged the norm.
We continue to desensitize our society to life, death, sex and destruction. When we do that, goodness comes in short supply and the darkness works overtime to extinguish it.
To say these are dangerous times would be an understatement.
Recently, I was polled informally for my friend Rod Miller’s analysis, of if the Bill of Rights would pass today.
I answered as a maybe.
Actually I think I said, “Well, I’d hope to smile…”
Undoubtedly, my pessimism could be detected in tone.
After reflecting upon the state of affairs in our country over the last few weeks, I think I’ve had a change of heart. You see, unless this country saddles up and rides for the brand, we are nothing more than a bunch of wily loud mouths with no execution behind our big talk.
Are we willing to live and die for these ideas as our forefathers did? That means more than speaking up in public comment at a school board meeting and losing a couple of “friends.”
It damned sure means more than leaving a snarky Facebook comment. It means talking about the ideas that keep freedom alive.
Supporting small business. Giving back to our communities. Attending church and helping our neighbors. Through the exercise of our freedoms, we keep the spirit alive.
Celebrating one another’s First Amendment rights, remembering to laugh without being offended – again. In these ways, big and small, we are the Bill of Rights. The freedoms, from God, are never extinguished.
So to circle back on that answer, I’d like to throw in a revision and say, “yes.”
I say “yes” because I believe that some of us would die before seeing America lose what has made her great, through our commitment to protecting the freedoms only God can bestow.
These ideas are immortal, untamed by human’s ink to paper and instead only loosely described. We will never lose that, for if we do, humanity loses its spark of life.
For what is freedom in its many forms, but for God’s breath of choice into our life?
