The brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025 ripped a hole through the conservative movement and proved, once again, that telling the truth in a nation gone soft on law and order can be dangerous. Kirk built a generation of activists who weren’t afraid to stand for faith, family, and freedom, and his death should be a wake-up call to every American who still believes in courage over cowardice. The facts of the attack, and the charges that followed, show this was not random chaos but a targeted political hit that demands answers and accountability.

In the days after the tragedy, Pastor Rob McCoy — the man Charlie called his pastor and friend — revealed a vital project Charlie was quietly building: a plan to expose the persecution of Christians overseas and to lift up Pastor Son Hyun?bo of Busan, South Korea. McCoy said Kirk had gathered evidence, planned interviews, and intended to bring Pastor Son’s story to the world, even taking it to the highest levels of our own State Department. That promise died with him, but McCoy’s testimony makes clear Charlie’s mission was never just about American politics; it was about defending believers everywhere.

Pastor Son Hyun?bo is not an abstract talking point — he is a real pastor who has been targeted by prosecutors in Seoul on charges related to election laws after boldly opposing the leftward purge of churches and speaking out during the country’s political upheaval. South Korean authorities moved to arrest him in early September 2025, a move conservatives around the world see as political repression disguised as legalism. If free nations allow foreign governments to silence pastors for preaching or for engaging their congregations in public life, we will have surrendered the moral high ground we claim to defend.

Rob McCoy brought this very subject to American audiences on Glenn Beck’s program, urging patriots to “pick up the torch” Charlie had lit and to make Pastor Son’s plight an American cause. McCoy challenged believers and leaders to stop treating religious liberty as a parlor issue and to demand that our diplomats and lawmakers call out persecutors — not look the other way for the sake of convenience or foreign-policy fashion. That plea should be heard in the offices of every senator and secretary who claims to care about human rights.

Let’s be blunt: the media and political class that cheered when Charlie confronted the cultural establishment are the same people who now offer hollow tweets of condolence while refusing to fight for the persecuted abroad. Hypocrisy is the coin of the realm for the modern left; they preach tolerance until tolerance challenges their power. Conservatives must call out this double standard and refuse to be lectured by those who would silence pastors at home and abroad while they cozy up to regimes that suppress Christianity.

This is a moment for action, not ritual mourning. Congress should demand briefings on Pastor Son’s prosecution and press the State Department to use Magnitsky-style sanctions, visa restrictions, and public naming of officials responsible for religious persecution. Turning grief into policy is what Charlie would have done — he was a strategist who believed ideas must be matched with action, and we should honor him by doing the same.

We mourn a leader, but we do not surrender. Charlie taught millions to stand their ground, to speak truth to power, and to organize where the left seeks to dominate. If conservatives fail to defend a pastor in South Korea because it’s inconvenient, we are no better than the cowards who let liberty rot away in the name of stability. The cause of Christ and country is not a hobby; it is a duty.

So hear this plainly: don’t let Charlie’s death be a moment the left can turn into a trophy. Let it be the spark for a national movement that marries faith to policy, prayer to purpose, and courage to consequence. Call your representatives, pray for Pastor Son and his congregation, and demand that America — the last great defender of religious liberty in the modern world — lead loudly and unapologetically. We owe Charlie Kirk that much, and we owe the persecuted around the world nothing less.