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Charlie Kirk (1993 - 2025) - Christian, Husband, Father, Political Activist, and Martyr

10 September 2025 • by Bob • Opinion, Politics, Religion

Ah, I see that the "Coexist" people are alive and well and spreading their message of tolerance again.

I saw the following image when the news broke that Charlie Kirk had been shot by an assassin while speaking at a University in Utah, and as most people probably now know, Kirk has sadly succumbed to injuries. Kirk's untimely death at the age of 31 leaves a wife and two children, which is tragic enough by itself, but what I find reprehensible are the circumstances surrounding his death and some people's reactions to it.

Prior to his death, the majority of people in this country probably weren't aware of Charlie Kirk's existence. For their benefit, I should explain that Kirk made a name for himself by traveling around the country to visit college and university campuses and debate students across a broad spectrum of political and religious topics. One topic that he was particularly outspoken in favor of was our constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech, and the ultimate irony of which was the number of people who tried to prevent Kirk from speaking at their college and university campuses. These bastions of higher learning were at one time the strongholds of free thought and expression, but they have devolved into close-minded, echo chambers where the mere possibility of a dissenting opinion is met with derision, or in many cases - outright violence, such as Charlie Kirk's assassination earlier today.

The prominent Democratic governor, ambassador, and former presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson II, famously said two things that have always stuck with me: "My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular," and "All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions." I never met Charlie Kirk, but I would be willing to guess that he probably agreed with both of those sentiments.

Having framed that part of Charlie Kirk's professional history, that leads me to what I find far more tragic about his assassination: the imminent demise of free speech. There is no shortage of hate-filled people in this country who despised Charlie Kirk and others like him for expressing an opinion that is contrary to what the hate-filled people believe. But these hate-filled people do not understand that their misguided attempts to shut down free expression stand in direct opposition to what living in a "free society" actually means.

Over the past few years, I've had several conversations with Millennials and Gen Zers who have actually said that some people do not deserve free speech. I'd love to say that these Millennials and Gen Zers were speaking about racists or neo-Nazis, but they weren't. These Millennials and Gen Zers were talking about people with whom they simply disagreed. (Although in further irony, these Millennials and Gen Zers were predominantly opposed to capital punishment, with the exception of racists and neo-Nazis, whom the Millennials and Gen Zers felt didn't deserve to live - much less have freedom of speech. However, these same Millennials and Gen Zers often take the additional step of labeling people who disagree with them as racists or neo-Nazis, but I digress.)

This sort of thinking from Millennials and Gen Zers - that free speech shouldn't be a universal right for everyone - is especially dangerous, for it tears away at one of the core principles in the bedrock of our civilization. Here's a case in point: there are untold millions of people who despise our sitting president, but freedom of speech guarantees our citizens the right to speak out in opposition to our president. We are one of the few countries in the world where this form of political opposition is enshrined in our constitution and protected by law, and no one - certainly not Millennials and Gen Zers - should be afforded the opportunity to say who "deserves" to have free speech. To paraphrase former ambassador Stevenson again, everyone should feel safe enough to be unpopular.

Adding insult to injury, there are several people today who are actually happy that Charlie Kirk was assassinated. They detested what he had to say, they loathed him for his beliefs, and now they're rejoicing at the news of his death. At the end of the day, I think that's the greatest tragedy in all of this. I may disagree with others' opinions, sometimes vehemently, but no one should fear for their safety just because I think they're wrong about something. No one needs to die just because they've said something unpopular.

All this discussion brings me back to my opening statement, for it is the people who consistently preach messages of "coexistence" and "tolerance" whom I have usually found to be paradoxically the least tolerant and least interested in living peacefully with others and others' opinions.

In closing, if you disliked Charlie Kirk, I understand why, and you're certainly entitled to your opinion. But Kirk didn't deserve to die for his opinions. And if you're one of the people who is glad that he was killed earlier today, then you should seriously reconsider your worldview, because Charlie Kirk wasn't the problem - you are.

No, Kamala Harris Did Not Say She's Coming After Trump Supporters

23 August 2025 • by Bob • Politics, Humor

There is a meme floating around which claims that former presidential candidate Kamala Harris uttered the following warning on June 18, 2020:

First of all, no - Kamala Harris did not say that, and the source of this fictitious quote is a satire website. But these sorts of statements make me angry, because they're so easily refuted by the facts. For this specific example, see the articles Social Media Posts Treat Fictional Harris ‘Quote’ as Fact and No, Harris Never Said Trump's Supporters Would 'Feel the Vengeance of a Nation'. Whenever I see political tripe such as this show up on social media, all it does is reinforce the ignorance of the person who reposted it. Not just because the information these political dupes are posting is verifiably false, but also because it publicly demonstrates that these sycophantic suckers are incapable of both telling the difference between fact and fiction and being capable of simple searches that might uncover the truth. (Which is kind of frightening when you think about it.)

Don't get me wrong, Kamala has said a lot of stupid things, and that should have been a dead giveaway that this was fake. If Kamala had ACTUALLY wanted to say something like the original post, it would have been more like the following example:

Now, tell me the truth... you could hear that in your head in Kamala's voice as you read it, right? That's what Kamala Harris actually sounds like when she speaks, and that's why that original quote is easily outed as a hoax. Kamala simply doesn't have the speaking skills or presence of mind to deliver something as succinct as the original post - even with a teleprompter desperately trying to guide her.

POSTSCRIPT:

To be fair, Biden could have said something much like the original quotation 20 or 30 years ago before his brain had turned to cottage cheese. But if he had, his speech would have been stolen from a speech that someone else had given, since Biden was a career plagiarist - see https://tinyurl.com/yj2wdp7b - but I digress. 😉

A Few Additional Suggestions for Renaming Geographical Locations

20 February 2025 • by Bob • Humor, Politics

In the wake of the "Gulf of America" renaming debacle, I think that Mexico should rename the "Gulf of California" to the "Gulf of Mexico," and California should rename "San Francisco Bay" to the "Gulf of California."

Meanwhile, "Cape Cod Bay" should be renamed the "Gulf of Ireland," the "Black Sea" should be renamed the "Gulf of Ukraine," "Long Island Sound" should be renamed the "Gulf of England," the "Red Sea" should be renamed the "Gulf of Saudi Arabia," and all the "Great Lakes" should be renamed the "Gulf of Canada."

While we're at it, the "Atlantic Ocean" and "Indian Ocean" and "Mediterranean Sea" should all be renamed the "Gulf of Africa," and the "Pacific Ocean" should be renamed the "Gulf of Antarctica."

I think that takes care of just about everything.

Election Day 2024

05 November 2024 • by Bob • Politics

A Picture is Worth Thousands of Broken Hearts

12 October 2023 • by Bob • Religion, Politics

I wanted to reshare this photo because it was very personal to me. My wife and I have a bed very similar to this in the bedroom where our four-year-old granddaughter sleeps peacefully when she comes to visit, and I can imagine that the child who owned this bed was sleeping peacefully in it before she was senselessly slaughtered this past weekend. And what had the child done to deserve such a violent and militaristic execution? She was alive, and that was it. For thousands of years people have killed millions of Jews simply because they existed, and many of these genocides have been largely ignored by unsympathetic historians because the victims were Jews and no one seemed to care about their suffering. This is racism at its worst, and it must stop.

Over the past few decades, I have also heard much about the plight of the Palestinians, and if I'm being honest, I have to agree with some of the arguments that I have heard in their favor. I believe that Palestinians should have an independent state where they can live in peace, and if you study your history, you'll see that on multiple occasions Israel offered huge swaths of land with which the Palestinians could have created a free state for themselves. But the Palestinians refused these offers, because the terrorists the Palestinians voted into power, namely Hamas, do not want to peacefully coexist with Israel. Hamas has been very vocal over the years about its intentions to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, which is what lead to Saturday's surprise attack and the deaths of hundreds of innocent Jewish people for the simple crime of not being dead already.

I occasionally see people driving around with the "COEXIST" bumper sticker that is fashioned from the iconography of several major religions. While this is a noble-sounding sentiment, it reveals much about the naiveté of the person who emblazoned their vehicle with such innocent absurdity. The problem with preaching this particular message of coexistence is that it completely ignores the actions and emotions of people who do not share a common sense of right and wrong. Americans had a difficult time understanding this disparity when 9/11 happened; the thousands of innocent lives who died in the Twin Towers and Washington DC hadn't done anything to warrant their tragic deaths at the hands of Al Qaeda terrorists, but the enemy we faced was so blinded by hatred that it could not be reasoned with. Sadly, this is where Israel finds itself today. Hamas cannot be reasoned with. Hamas doesn't want to coexist. Hamas only wants to hate Jews and kidnap families and rape women and kill innocent people - like the child who owned the bed in this photo. Being ex-military, I am angered by this image. I am repulsed by what it depicts. I want vengeance for what Hamas has done. But that's not my place, and if I'm not careful, I may find myself so consumed by hatred for Hamas that I'm no better than they are.

College Loans and Debt Forgiveness

31 January 2023 • by Bob • Education, Opinion, Politics

The United States government made it far too easy for students to take loans, and colleges pounced on students' willingness to take loans and jacked up tuition costs disproportionately to the rest of society - knowing full well that students would eventually bear the full financial weight of their poor choices and the government would be forced to make good on those loans one way or other. With that in mind, it doesn't matter whether you label the US government's current meddling in the college tuition debacle "overcharge reimbursement" or "loan forgiveness," because at the end of the day either way you choose to title such a program is little more than playing games with semantics.

In my opinion, what should be happening is these same colleges should be forced to eat part of the costs; some office of the government should take each college individually and review their tuition costs back to 1970 and compare the rise in tuition with inflation in the rest of society and determine whether each college rose their tuition costs more than inflation, and that's the part of the costs that the colleges should be forced to absorb - WITH NO GOVERNMENT BAILOUTS. If a college has to layoff workers to balance their books, then so be it, because there are ample studies available about colleges hiring an exponential number of non-educators with the increased fees they were charging, so that should take care of itself.

Once the colleges' culpability has been taken care of, the remaining costs are the financial obligations of the students - WITH NO GOVERNMENT BAILOUTS, either. While I realize that colleges were offering easy money to students at a time when most students were too stupid to realize the ill-effects of staggering debt (which is also why credit cards set up shop in student unions across the country), I have zero tolerance for students who claim to be a "victim" when no one was holding a gun to their collective heads. At any time the students could have said no. Instead of a loan for exorbitant tuition, students could have:

1. Gone to a different college (which would have encouraged colleges to be competitive).
2. Pursued their base courses through a cheaper, two-year college to save costs (which would have also forced four-year colleges to re-examine tuition costs to attract newer students).
3. Spent more time researching the millions of dollars that are available each year as grants and scholarships (which most students ignored since those involved doing some "work" to discover and apply for, and loans only required a signature).
4. Taken time off between high school and college to save up for school (which MIGHT have encouraged colleges to create more attractive entry-level pricing).
5. Join the military to earn money for college (which is what I personally did).

In addition, students could have chosen a different major, or a different school, or a different career path, or refused to go to college, or myriad other options that were available to them. However, most students took the easy route and chose to sign a loan for their education - AND THAT'S TOTALLY ON THEM. Regardless of whether the school was charging too much, at the end of the day each student made a conscious choice to enter into debt unwisely; the same choice that people make when they sign up for a 33% credit card, or take a loan for a vehicular lemon, or pay too much for a property without doing the requisite market research, etc.

As I said earlier, no one held a gun to students' collective heads. If students signed up for massive amounts of debt, that is entirely on them - the rest of the country should not be forced to pay for their collective stupidity through taxation. On the contrary, the colleges themselves should be forced to reset tuition levels to reasonable rates and backdate loan amounts accordingly, and students should be required to pay off the remainder.

PS - If something like this proposal was rolled out, I would also suggest that whichever office of government went through the books to synchronize college tuition rates with inflation over the past several decades should also be able to force schools to adopt realistic tuition rates going forward, too. If a school is caught trying to jack up tuition rates, they should be penalized in some way.

For more things to think about, see Why is College So Expensive?, New Rule: The College Scam, Is College Worth It?, and Game of Loans.

Brittney Griner vs the World

14 December 2022 • by Bob • Politics, Opinion

If I might be so bold as to weigh in on the subject, the following illustration hits home with what has been my biggest complaint with the entire media circus that surrounded the entirety of Brittney Griner's arrest and subsequent incarceration: she's nothing but a celebrity, and a minor one at that, so I failed to understand the constant hype around "getting her home."

Despite the Vice President's comments about Griner being "wrongfully detained", at the end of the day - Griner broke Russia's laws, and as such she deserved to be punished according to their laws. We might not like those laws, but our nation would do the same if a foreign national broke our laws while on our soil. Do I think Griner's prison sentence was considerably longer than it should have been? Heck yes, and diplomacy should have been used to reduce Griner's sentence to something a little more reasonable.

Of course, in hindsight we see the ulterior purpose behind Griner's sentence - it was a poker move. Putin knew that if the punishment was far too excessive for Griner's minor crime, he could force the United States to do something unreasonable in order to rectify what was clearly an unjust situation - which we did. The United States traded a major criminal, who will undoubtedly return to his prior life of crime, in order to free a celebrity whom most people couldn't pick out of a lineup.

Adding insult to injury, however, is the fact that the United States attempted to free retired U.S. Marine Paul Whelan or schoolteacher Marc Fogel as part of this prisoner exchange, and rather than forcing the Russians back to the negotiating table, the US acquiesced to Russia's terms. There are SOOOO many things wrong with what happened here.

First of all, Putin stared down the USA, and the USA blinked. The key takeaway for everyone around the globe who opposes the USA is: the USA is weak and easily manipulated. From a statecraft perspective, the Brittney Griner prisoner exchange was an utter failure from the point of view that matters most; e.g. foreign perceptions of the USA.

What's more, however, is the USA has shown once again how anyone who ISN'T a celebrity doesn't matter. If the USA could have traded for just one prisoner, that ABSOLUTELY SHOULD have been Paul Whelan, who has been held by Russia for four years, or Marc Fogel, whose crime and sentence were nearly identical to Griner's. Instead, the weak-minded and weak-kneed imbeciles who headed up this political debacle threw the non-celebrities to the wolves, and opted to bring home the prisoner who would get them on the 6 o'clock news.

In the end, that's the part that hurts the worst: this administration has demonstrated, once again, that the common man has less worth than canine feces to those who could make a difference. This entire affair has been nothing but a cheap public relations stunt for the Biden administration; let everyone else and the country be damned.

Anti-vaxxers are Paranoid, Illogical, and Unscientific

25 October 2022 • by Bob • Politics, Health

There is an old saying that goes, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." Likewise, there is a variant of that saying that has evolved over the years as, "You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think." This is especially true within the realms of Social Media, where any number of ill-informed rabble now have a platform to publicly spew complete nonsense, while remaining incapable of being able to see anything beyond their warped points of view. Even when presented with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, these ideological miscreants cling to their fallacies with a religious fervor that would fill zealots with envy. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, few topics have generated such levels of misplaced devotion as the anti-vaxx crowds, which gained tens of thousands of new converts during the recent COVID19 pandemic as paranoia fueled by conspiracy theories devolved into a quagmire of unscientific, politically-charged drivel. It is usually best to ignore the ridiculous offerings proffered by those who are incapable of understanding simple logic, because nothing you can say will budge them from their comfortable, little echo chambers.

That being said, I occasionally see something so ludicrous that I cannot remain silent, and though I know that my actions will do no good, I cannot resist the temptation to speak up, which brings me to the subject of today's blog. Despite 2½ years of a global pandemic that has resulted in millions of deaths around the planet, there are thousands of paranoid, uneducated saps who deny its existence or distrust the government's motivations where the pandemic is concerned. The following conversation details just one example of this type of mentality at work.

As I said earlier, this discussion typifies the point that I was trying to make; despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, this anti-vaxxer was incapable of seeing anything beyond his paranoid, unscientific, and illogical perspective.

What a sad indictment of the quality of scientific thought in the 21^st century.

UPDATE: This post was edited to fix a small math error that was in the original.

Unionism, Socialism, Capitalism, and Communism

12 September 2022 • by Bob • Politics, Opinion

A few years ago, Ben Shapiro (like him or hate him) was speaking at a university, and a young Socialist stepped up to the microphone during a Q&A session to promote the related ideas of Unionization, Market Socialism (as opposed to political), and worker-owned businesses. The Socialist kept pressing the point that Capitalism is unfair to workers because workers provide all the labor for lower wages than business owners receive, which is classical Marxism at its best (or worst, as the case may be). The Socialist kept espousing what he thinks is "fair" with regard to wage gaps between the common worker and the CEO. Though to be clear, the young Socialist doesn't use the word "fair." Instead, he obscures that notion through a never-ending barrage of Socialist jargon. Nevertheless, that is his implication: Capitalism is "unfair" because workers do not earn as much as business owners.

However, Shapiro's answer provides one of the best explanations for why there is a logical reason for wage disparity, and I highly suggest that you watch it. There are two versions of this video: a shorter version (≈3:30) with just the highlights at https://youtu.be/3xq-q6a9tCM, and the full version (≈12:50) with the entire conversation at https://youtu.be/NUauABEnTZI. Unions are not a bad thing conceptually; the problem is that they often devolve into a bad thing in reality.

I have seen several situations where unions keep round-tripping back to the negotiating table again and again asking for benefits that are unnecessary (and I can cite examples), and the unions in these situations eventually force their parent businesses to become unprofitable (which is what has led to more robots on factory floors, self-checkout lines in supermarkets, jobs headed overseas, and self-service kiosks at fast-food restaurants). When unions demand higher wages for skills that are easy-to-train and therefore more or less expendable, businesses will do away with expendable laborers. (Either by outsourcing or automation, as I have just mentioned.) In a like manner, when unions demand benefits with significant costs from businesses like paid college tuition for workers' family members, six months of paid maternity leave, etc., these unions may force companies into bankruptcy. Don't get me wrong, paid college tuition and paid maternity leave are wonderful benefits to have, but when labor demands these types of things and profits cannot keep up with the increased expenditures, businesses are doomed to fail and everyone is out of work.

There was a greater need for unions a century ago, when modern labor laws had yet to be written and factories routinely abused their laborers. Times have changed, and everyone in the United States is in the top 1% of the world with regard to health, housing, employment, wages, etc. The quality of life in North America exceeds that of nearly the entire planet, and yet people still find room to complain - because people delude themselves into thinking that life is somehow "unfair" to them, which is typically because someone else has something that they want; either a higher salary, or a better job, a better house, a better car, a better spouse, etc. People want what they don't have, and that's what led to the "99%" riots a few years ago, and also to thousands of misguided Socialists and/or Unionists who decry their elevated global conditions as some form of suffering. Don't get me wrong, nothing is perfect and laborers still need representation to prevent potential abuse, but the irresponsible claims emanating from the mouths of most Unionists sound ludicrous when you take into account just how blessed some of the people doing the complaining really are.

As for Socialism, which typically goes hand in hand with Unionism and eventually devolves into Communism, let me take a moment to briefly editorialize. I have witnessed first-hand the many evils of Communism, which is why I cannot support anyone who is espousing either a Communist or Socialist system of government. While a logical argument can be made for socializing specific programs - such as healthcare - both Communism and Socialism are doomed to failure from their inception, because they seek to forcibly create "equality of outcome" instead of "equality of opportunity."

Everyone deserves an equal opportunity to qualify for the job they desire, and an equal opportunity to seek advancement within their respective places of employment. However, people deserve to be rewarded for their efforts, and if one person chooses to outperform their peers, they should be compensated for their efforts. Likewise, if someone chooses to accept greater responsibility within their company, or to step out as an entrepreneur and found their own company, they should also be compensated for their efforts. In a Capitalist society, they will be. However, in a Communist or Socialist society, everyone is forced into categories - often from which they cannot escape - and the outcome is dictated by the state. If Person A outperforms Person B, that doesn't matter; compensation must be the same for both people, for that is "equality" under Communism and Socialism. Of course, this system is untenable for those who are forced to suffer under it, which is why millions of people have fled Communist or Socialist societies over the past century, and millions more have been put to death or imprisoned when trying to protest their oppressive regimes. This is why most countries that adopt Communism or Socialism are forced to do so at gunpoint.

Most people who deride Capitalism do so because they have a misguided view of "fairness," which is generally an untrustworthy worldview. What is "fair" for Person A seldom seems "fair" to Person B if Person A has more than Person B, and therein lies the problem. In an equality of opportunity scenario, both Person A and Person B have the same chance to make more or less based on their personal participation, which is the ideal way of conducting society. However, in an equality of outcome scenario, if Person A has acquired more than Person B, that is forbidden by the state, and the government must intervene and force both persons to be "equal," which is not an ideal way to conduct a society.

This is what we have seen time and again with Communist or Socialist societies; they actively seek equality of outcome, and millions are forced to suffer as a result. The former Soviet Union, North Korea, China, the Warsaw Pact, and Cuba are just a few examples from the 20th century of what happens in an equality of outcome society. Even though barely a generation has gone by since the demise of the Soviet Union, there are thousands of gullible individuals who would gratefully embrace Communism and Socialism because they think that some part of their lives isn't "fair." These people are - as the Communists called them - "Useful Idiots." Such people hasten their own demise by failing to understand what they are promoting; as the old adage says, "Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it."

I will now step down off my soapbox and back quietly away.

Auschwitz and Contemporary Politics

28 June 2022 • by Bob • History, Ponderings, Politics

A blogger who publishes his content using the moniker of The Catholic Traveler recently shared his observations on social media about his recent trip to the former concentration camp of Auschwitz. I visited the former concentration camp of Dachau when I was stationed in Germany back in the late 1980s, so I read his post with interest. After reading his post, I made an observation that I thought was worth sharing, but first - I have to put things in perspective. To do so, I will repost the full contents of his original blog, with full credit given to Mountain Butorac (aka "The Catholic Traveler") as its author.

My personal experiences at Dachau evoked the same emotions that Butorac tried his best to explain, but words failed me as they did for him. When you are standing in a place where unspeakable evil was committed on a daily basis, it is hard to fathom how someone / anyone could allow themselves to torture and kill their fellow human beings without so much as a second thought.

And yet, as I considered recent political events in the United States and re-examined some of Butorac's statements after I removed his references to World War II, I was left with the following excerpt:

The remaining verbiage that we are left with is just as incredible - and just as creepy - when compared to the arguments that I hear in sound bites on the daily news. The devaluation of innocent lives whom people regard as an inconvenience, or a burden, or a threat to the way of life to which they have grown accustomed has apparently not been limited to history or geography.

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