The Parents of Charlie Kirk’s Prodigal Assassin

Charlie Kirk’s murderer came from somewhere. We all do.

Since the “In the beginning …” times, our species has wrestled with the fundamental logic – and perceived unfairness – of holding parents responsible for the sins of their children. Or the other way around. In the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, the prophet makes this explicit:

The person who sins will die. A son will not suffer the punishment for the father’s guilt, nor will a father suffer the punishment for the son’s guilt; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself.

Yet we mortals struggle with this idea. It’s a matter of self-preservation. The unifying idea is that we must bear some responsibility for the behavior of our own kids. Our kids are reflections of us because we put our stamp on them. Functional societies have a justifiable fear of the ripple effects of other people’s bad parenting.

Healthy families are civilization’s frontline schoolhouse of needed humans – producers of good men and women, and citizens. Bad parents can easily replicate themselves, and often do. It is a rare and beautiful testament to the enduring nature of the good to see exceptions to the rule.

The inverse happens, too. I have met a many a good parent of a bad kid – a bad seed who grows up to be a bad adult. Or a good kid who leaves the home for school, falls in with the wrong crowd, and rejects root and branch the ways of his family.

Modern parents know at some point we must give our offspring over to a hard and secular world outside the home threshold, a world that undermines good parenting at every turn. A school system that inverts the established, time-tested ways for purposes of political indoctrination. A culture that has lost any sense of moral and natural limits. An algorithmic media that is set on setting people into warring tribes with desensitized, brutish ways.

Charlie Kirk’s assassin was born and raised in southwestern Utah. Mormon territory. He was the son of a mother and father who raised kids in the Mormon way, which creates exemplary fruits that are missionaries to the world. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – its formal name – instills family loyalty, stewardship, tolerance, sobriety, hard work, and sharing. They tithe. They contribute. They are impressive people.

Even Matt Stone and Trey Parker, with their “Dumb the Dumb, Dumb” view of the Mormon religion (which is a cutout for all organized religion), recognized that Mormons have strong families and raise very good kids. The whole “Book of Mormon” craze began with a 2003 “South Park” episode featuring an impressive Mormon high school kid. His ending soliloquy put it best:

“Look, maybe us Mormons do believe in crazy stories that make absolutely no sense, and maybe Joseph Smith did make it all up, but I have a great life, and a great family, and I have the Book of Mormon to thank for that,” he says. “The truth is, I don’t care if Joseph Smith made it all up, because what the church teaches now is loving your family, being nice and helping people.” 

I don’t know about you, but I admire the old-school way the accused killer’s father brought his son – his own flesh and blood – to face justice.

The family saw the fruit of their loins on video surveillance in a national all-points bulletin. The family reached out to their own. Father and grandfather. They talked him into coming home. Once he was home, they convinced him to turn himself in for the crime – and to stanch the dishonor that he had done to his family’s name.

Would Luigi Mangione’s wealthy and well-connected Maryland family have done the same if they recognized his distinctive eyebrows? “Come home, son,” followed by, “You must turn yourself in to the authorities and be held accountable.” There’s no evidence they did anything of the kind. If they had, would Luigi have complied? I doubt it.

Fathers and mothers of America: Do you think you and yours could do similarly? To ask that question is not to easily answer it.

This Utah family has a quiet dignity to it. Their creed was not an assassin’s creed. Their kid is certainly a lost young man. He took a path outside of his family’s way, but his family retained a line of communication and influence over their prodigal son. They lost their son to dark, demonic forces, but appealed to the light remaining in him, and brought him home and to justice.

What this family confronted deserves to be noticed, praised, and modeled. Our country was given clarity in real time. We very rarely get that. This young man did not come in lawyered up and with his phone locked and encrypted.

A reeling nation did not have to suffer the indignity of mushroom management, where “We the People” are kept in the legalese dark and fed legalese doggerel.

Every family that has successfully raised a good kid to adulthood knows how hard it is in our present educational, cultural, and social media bathhouses.

A family can hold a line, and a kid can transgress it. Once upon a time the family had educational and cultural support systems that checked transgression and bolstered parents and kids. Kids heard a shared common and civilized creed in and outside the house. That cord has been cut for a while, and our families and nation are suffering at scale because of it.

This family summoned their prodigal son home. While we rightfully think of their son as moral monster, they still had familial claim and power over him. And with it, they brought him home and then to justice.

This family gave another grieving family and a nation the closure it needed. We owe them our thanks and compassion for displaying moral courage when it counted. The sins of their son are not theirs. They ought to be seen by the nation as neighbors in good standing. They need and deserve our parental prayers.

Under present grooming circumstances, there but for the grace of God go all of us.

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