Michael Knowles shared the importance of defeating the Left and maintaining a unified Right following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Knowles said there seems to always be a “civil war” on the right because of the diversity of thought that makes up the Republican Party in the era of Trump.
“Right-wingers are too independent-minded to avoid (civil war),” Knowles said. “There are, by count, two factions on the Left. There are the progressives and the very progressives. And John Fetterman. If I’m being fair, there’s also John Fetterman.”
While Kirk had many skills, the most distinctive was his ability to make peace within a “fractious coalition.”
“Blessed are the peacemakers,” Knowles said. “Everyone and his mother has an opinion. It is not hard to have an opinion. It is not hard to pick fights, to accuse, to gossip, to defame and to revile. In our age, it can be very lucrative. What is harder is to build, to refine, to assuage, to unite and to advance. What is harder is to meditate, to harmonize, to suffer setbacks with patience and to offer grace to those who often don’t deserve it. Charlie did the harder thing. Why did he do it? Ultimately, he would say it was for his faith in Christ.”
Kirk understood the importance of winning because he understood what was at stake in politics.
“There are real threats, real costs to losing,” Knowles said. “There is a real chance that we can win if we are willing to sacrifice some pride and put in the often thankless work of keeping a team or an army together moving down the field.”
Knowles noted that this year’s AmericaFest is the final event Kirk had a hand in planning. He said the people on stage and the guests in the seats are the team that Kirk put together.
“You might not like some of the people that he brought onto the team,” Knowles said. “You might prefer that he invited some people that he excluded from the team. But this is it. And whatever you think, the Leftists who perpetrated, excused, justified and celebrated Charlie’s assassination make no distinctions between any of us, any of the people in this room. We are all the same to them.”
Knowles ran through all the various factions that make up the current “right-wing.” He noted the difficulty in moving forward with such diverse ideas under the same tent, but said the GOP has shifted its positions on a variety of issues over time – and now is no different.
“Does this mean therefore that we stand for nothing? No, it does not,” he said. “It means that we respond to reality. If there is one thing conservatives pride ourselves on, it is our relationship to reality. The Left has no relationship to reality. The Left castrates little boys to try to make them into little girls. But conservatives do respond to reality. And one of the crucial facts about reality is that circumstances change.”
The key to politics, Knowles said, is getting along with one another.
“At the highest level, we cannot get along with Leftists who want to murder us,” he said. “It’s not possible. The embrace of political violence is only growing on the Left. This is backed up by survey after survey. Even a major liberal magazine had to admit it.”
Knowles called for restoring order and deradicalizing the Left.
“To do that, we need to keep winning,” he said. “We have been winning. We are winning more. We need to keep winning. We have to do it. There is no substitute for victory.”
Anyone telling you we don’t need to win, Knowles said must be ignored.
“There is something in all that black-pilling for them, for the broadcasters, there is nothing in it for you,” he said. “Cynics can profit off despair, citizens cannot. Tune it out. We need to win.”
The only way to win is to unite. Knowles said not just anyone is welcome into the GOP, but there has to be room for debate and disagreement.
“We don’t just take anybody in,” he said. “Some things are out of bounds – injustice, cruelty, vulgar, hatred on the basis of race, sex or religion. Not only are those things wrong in themselves, they’re politically toxic.”
In order to “be on the team,” Knowles said people just have to “love our country.”
“Many on the Left today seem to hate the country,” he said. “Leftists burn the symbol of the country. They defame the people who built the country. They seek to fundamentally change the country, weaken the country, surrender the country and all of its supposedly stolen land. Those people are not on my team.”
Knowles said America has taken in foreigners at different times. And when it has worked, they came to “act and talk and even look like us.”
“When it hasn’t worked, they haven’t,” he said. “If you prefer the flag of some other nation, the customs and habits of some other people, you are not on my team. If you are and want to be a member of the American people, you are on my team.”
To be on the team, one just has to embrace the American creed, which was forged through the general principles of Christianity, and of English and American liberty.
“We believe that we became a nation under God’s grace and according to His providence and that we have a responsibility to cooperate with that grace according to those principles,” Knowles said. “If you reject those principles, you are not on my team.”
Another key element to being on the team is being willing to sacrifice in order to contribute.
“There are plenty of people who are attracted to politics because of what it offers them – fame, money, entertainment,” he said. “They’ll say anything to get another view or make another buck. They don’t ever help elect lawmakers. They don’t ever help get policy passed. They don’t ever work to get out the vote. Sometimes they even discourage civic engagement if it makes for more titillating content. I have no use for those people.
“Our friend Charlie was entertaining. His enterprises were profitable and he rightly earned a lot of fame. That was not what drove him. That was not even close.”
Knowles said the Right is in a period of “major change.” President Donald J. Trump will not be able to run for a third term. The Baby Boomers will soon exist. Younger generations will take charge. And priorities will change based on a younger electorate.
“Conservatives can either confront these new challenges with humility and patience, hearing each other out and refining our message and our vision to match our moment, or each faction can demand all or nothing, retreat to its corner, mumble the same old shibboleths and hand the country over to the people who would destroy us all together.
“The worst thing about assassination is that it works. Some people really matter and it matters when you take them out. And I pray that this will be the exception. I pray that the right can sort out its differences with patience and grace and plot a path forward that leads us all to victory.”
