The Difference Between Minnesota and Kirk Is, One Sided With Freedom and Democracy, While the Other Supported a Tyrant
- john raymond
- Sep 10
- 2 min read
Violence has now struck both defenders of the republic and those who sought to undermine it. In Minnesota this last summer, elected lawmakers were targeted by an assassin precisely because they served as custodians of the public trust.
Representative Melissa Hortman was killed in her home, and Senator John Hoffman barely survived his wounds. These were men and women engaged in the ordinary work of democracy—passing laws, representing citizens, and preserving the republican form of government. They were attacked because they upheld that trust.
Charlie Kirk’s fate is different. He was not a steward of liberty but a champion of President Trump, a man who has rejected the very principle of stewardship. From the moment he refused to yield after January 6th, Trump became a tyrant in the classical sense—not a king by title, but a ruler who treats power as personal property rather than a temporary charge held for the people.
And Kirk? He built his entire career as a youth evangelist for this betrayal, making Turning Point USA a machine of indoctrination that normalized the notion that legitimacy belongs not to the law but to one man.
The deaths on these two fronts cannot be equated. When Hortman and Hoffman were struck, it was democracy itself under assault. When Kirk fell, it was a consequence of his own complicity in creating a political culture where violence was normalized as a tool of power.
The difference here is not merely one of political alignment. It is one of principle: a Minnesotan died because she defended the covenant of republican self-rule, while Kirk died because he served a tyrant who shatters it, and shatters it daily.
This is not to celebrate any death. Violence is corrosive to the civilizational project of republican governance, which depends on the peaceful transfer of power and the trust that officeholders are temporary stewards, never permanent owners.
But we must also be clear-eyed: the arc of violence in America since January 6th was always going to fall hardest on those who either resisted Trump’s possession of power or exalted in it. Both are now clearly caught in the storm he unleashed.
The lesson is plain. Power in a republic is not possession. It is stewardship.
Those who betray that truth—whether by clinging to power or by rallying others to a false idol—invite the collapse of peace and the rise of blood.
Our dead Minnesotan stands as a martyr of freedom. Kirk’s death, however, is a cautionary echo: serve a tyrant, and you may not escape the violence he has birthed.
Thanks for the like at Bluesky. I look forward to reading more of your materiel.
You present a fair contrast between the two assassinations and victims. And without even mentioning the deep-seated racism in Charlie Kirk.
Of course, the fascist networks will join the chorus cheering Kirk's martyrdom and whipping more hate, as they are demanding military honors for their favorite female martyr, Ashli "Q-Anon" Babbitt.
Hearing Trump praise the white nationalist, I almost heard the strains of the "Horst Wessel Song".