Charlie Kirk Is Dead. Long Live Charlie Kirk.

The assassin who took Charlie Kirk’s life on Sept. 10 may have thought he could kill Kirk’s ideas with the same bullet that he used to steal the lifeblood from the conservative icon, but he was wrong.

The outpouring not just of grief but of fellowship that followed the assassination has shown that people who are vessels for an ideal continue to pour forth inspiration even when the vessel is shattered.

No one under the age of 60 can properly remember the events of 1968, but I was 12 years old that spring when two other icons were brought down by assassins’ bullets, and I vividly recall the pain caused by the loss of Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

The deaths of those two leaders provide a sort of palimpsest over which we can see Kirk’s death emblazoned.

In the case of RFK, the nation was deprived of a political leader and very likely a president. Although Kirk was not a political leader in the traditional sense, he wielded tremendous power to influence elections and, in the opinion of many, would have also very likely been elected president someday. In that regard, the assassin robbed us of the future. We can never know what an RFK presidency would have been like, and we can never know what Charlie Kirk could have achieved if he had been allowed to live. That part of Charlie Kirk is dead.

But perhaps the death of MLK provides a template for how Kirk’s legacy can survive him, and how the nation could still benefit from Kirk’s example – as a staunch defender of the First Amendment’s rights of freedom of speech, religion, and assembly, but also as a faith-based proponent of restoring traditional values to our public discourse.

Martin Luther King was the very embodiment of how faith could empower a mission for justice. He achieved greatness in life, negotiating on behalf of black Americans for equal rights, but it was after his death when his greatest impact was felt. The public execution of this good man changed the national discussion and did more than any law to accelerate the change needed in the American spirit to heal the wounds of slavery.

So too does the sacrifice of Charlie at the age of 31 have the potential to lift up the movement he established and sustain its mission to restore the nation to its founding principles. What we have seen in the short time since Kirk’s murder gives hope that his ideas will live long after him.

As Kirk’s widow Erika said in her powerful address to the nation two days after his murder, “The movement my husband built will not die.” And she spoke directly to the assassin and anyone who agreed with his dark agenda:

The evildoers responsible for my husband’s assassination have no idea what they have done. They killed Charlie because he preached a message of patriotism, faith, and of God’s merciful love. They should all know this. If you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea. You have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country and this world. You have no idea. You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.

Those are bold words, and we have to wait to see how Erika Kirk decides to carry out her own quest to preserve and expand the Turning Point organization now that she has been named CEO. But she is not alone in vowing to keep Charlie’s memory and mission alive. Since the assassination, more than 54,000 inquiries have been received about starting new chapters of Turning Point USA on college and high school campuses. Compare that to the 900 college chapters and 1,200 high school chapters that currently exist and you get an idea of the impact Charlie’s death has already had.

Good people will feel that death deeply. They will mourn and pray for justice. Many of them will redouble their efforts to restore a moral balance to the nation in hopes that their children will live a better life. Evil people, on the other hand, won’t be changed. As Martin Luther King said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.” The murder of Kirk has revealed a callousness in progressive ideology that deprives people of the ability to see their opponents as human. And some people who are neither good nor evil – maybe like that 12-year-old me in 1968 – will be inspired in ways they don’t even understand.

That middle ground is where Charlie always made a difference – convincing one person at a time to pick up a Bible, to register to vote, to run for office, to challenge a teacher. Becoming a martyr will just make it easier for Charlie to reach those people. Erika was right about that. He lived what he preached, setting an example for how to think big and stay humble.

And no, his death is not like the deaths of other good people, the deaths that happen every day across the nation and the world, because there was no one else like him. We mourn those other deaths individually, but we mourn Charlie’s death as a nation. And instead of solace, we seek solutions.

Charlie Kirk is dead. Long live Charlie Kirk.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.