The spirit of hope sat uncomfortably beside the spirit of war at Charlie Kirk‘s memorial a couple of weeks ago. Dark screeds cloaked in Christian symbolism clashed with remarks of depth and grace, including Erika Kirk’s stirring call to forgiveness and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s eloquent summary of salvation history.
The GOP must now decide which spirit will define its future as it careens into the post-Trump age. If the war-like spirit becomes predominant, the Republican Party will forfeit its claim to moral authority, alienate swing voters, and ensure the Left’s path back to power.
At Kirk’s memorial, the militant spirit found its fiercest champion in former White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. His ballistic speech framed the nation’s political divide as a Manichean battle between the MAGA righteous and the non-MAGA depraved.
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“You have nothing. You are nothing,” declared Miller of the Left. “You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing.”
But of MAGA, Miller said, “We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil… We have beauty. We have light. We have goodness. We have determination. We have vision. We have strength. We built the world that we inhabit now, generation by generation.”
It shouldn’t need to be said that normal people neither talk nor think like this. The political divide is indeed stark, and tensions are high, but only those on the margins would seriously characterize the other side as the “forces of wickedness and evil.” Such rhetoric is normally out of bounds in our politics because combating the “wicked” and “evil” justifies, and arguably necessitates, the use of violence and extra-constitutional means.
Miller’s deranged characterization of half of the country, delivered in the frenzied and spitty manner commonly reserved for movie villains, is irresponsible and, well, weird. It’s hard to imagine this sort of spectacle drawing converts to the conservative cause.
It’s instructive that the Democratic Party’s influence waned after it cast all people as either anti-racist or racist, oppressor or oppressed, ally or enemy. Rants like Miller’s may feel good to give and even to hear for conservatives, but its simplifications are politically odious. Americans want border security, strong national defense, and a lower cost of living. They do not want to be told to renounce their family members and friends as “evil” for the sake of politics.
Other speakers, such as Vice President JD Vance and right-wing podcaster Jack Posobiec, reiterated this holy war rhetoric, brandishing rosary beads and imploring listeners to don the “full armor of God.” This repurposing of St. Paul’s imagery, originally intended for spiritual battles, for the political arena also dangerously simplifies the national landscape into a good-versus-evil battleground.
Now, of course, many of the Left’s positions are in fact rooted in a radical, destabilizing ideology. But that acknowledgment is a long leap from implying that all Democrats are operating on behalf of Satan, or that all their adherents are “wicked.”
Emotions are understandably high, but they should not be allowed to overwhelm reality completely.
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It’s a dangerous game to absolutize the malice of one’s political enemies, and it’s even more dangerous to absolutize one’s own righteousness.
Miller’s and Posobiec’s rhetoric radicalizes and alienates at a time when Republicans should be building on their inroads with swing voters. That means presenting effective solutions to practical problems and giving the impression of competence and sanity.
That’s what will ultimately defeat the Left, not this deranged holy war.
