We can pretend like we’re not in a war all we want, but that does not change the reality or make the violence go away. If anything, it makes us susceptible to it.

The ironic thing about those celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk is that they are the ones least prepared for, and who will least enjoy, where this all inevitably goes. It’s a phenomenon where a group of people with the least exposure to violence and death are the most bloodthirsty. They cheer the execution of a man whose greatest crime, in their eyes, was speaking to people they disagree with.

They feel comfortable extolling the fact that somebody else did their dirty work for them and for the time being, they feel safe. But the comfort is false. Truthfully, they do not realize or even consider the ramifications of this. They cannot comprehend what will happen next.

Charlie Kirk was a moderate. He held mostly milquetoast views. He was one of the only people willing to sit down and discuss ideas from all sides of the political spectrum. Because of that, he was well liked by millions of people. Yet they cheer his murder.

What they fail to understand is that no matter how evil they thought Charlie was, there are people who are significantly more extreme that are going to take his place. A void has now been left and these people will gladly fill it, radicalizing his audience. They cut the head off of the hydra and expected the battle to be over.

The caliber of person I see lauding Charlie Kirk’s death is not prepared for the extreme and the militant. The people glorifying his death online are physically and mentally weak, and spiritually devoid. They are not revolutionaries. They are not soldiers. They are not even serious. They are consumers of bloodshed, addicted to the spectacle but unwilling to ever pay the price themselves.

These self-proclaimed communists would not have survived under the regimes of Mao, Pol Pot, Lenin, or Stalin. They don’t understand, nor could they ever be like, those men—willing and able to take life and give their own just to see their goals through. The radicals of the past were hard men forged in famine and blood. The radicals of the present are soft men forged by TikTok and DoorDash.

Like spectators in a coliseum, they roar for blood they didn’t spill, safe in the stands. But when the gates open, and they’re pushed into the arena, will they still cheer? Will they fight with the same fervor when the sword is in their hand, when the blood is on their hands, not a screen, or when their own survival is at stake?

That is the coming reckoning. For every moderate they cheer dead, someone more extreme, sharper, and less forgiving will rise. This is the cycle of history. They believe they are silencing voices of “hate,” when in fact they are fertilizing the soil for something far darker, far less willing to compromise.

Charlie Kirk’s death will not be the end of anything. It is a beginning. A signal. A proof that the illusion of peace is shattering. The weak may laugh now, but soon they will learn what it means to live in a world without moderates, without buffers, without men like Charlie who believed debate was still possible.

When the center is destroyed, only the extremes remain. And extremes are never merciful.