In which Lloydie of the Amazon provides a little distraction, before the bromancer and the Lynch mob begin ranting...

 

Is any introduction needed? Probably not ...

The pond woke with a sense of dread, knowing what was to come this day, what with a loon having poked a stick in the lizard Oz ant nest, or if you want a more appropriate metaphor, a wasp in the hive mind ...

It was with relief that the pond kicked the news of the capture of the alleged unaffiliated voter to the archive...

Charlie Kirk shooting
Tyler Robinson arrested after ‘confessing’ to family member: authorities
Authorities have revealed what was written on unspent bullets found inside the rifle they believe was used to kill Charlie Kirk.
By Lydia Lynch and Joe Kelly

Instead the pond leapt like a famished wolf or a dead whale on the stories just below ...

EXCLUSIVE
Environmentalists at war over wilderness in ruins
Fault lines have emerged in the environment movement over the renewables rollout, with peak groups accused of turning a blind eye to ‘biodiversity-destroying’ projects.
By Matthew Denholm

Not so much the Mattie EXCLUSIVE as the way it triggered a rare appearance by the reclusive Lloydie of the Amazon.

True to his nature, almost platypus-like, shy, secretive and furtive, Lloydie of the Amazon could only manage a two minute burst before ducking away out of sight again

COMMENTARY by Graham Lloyd
Useful idiots have been blinded by environmental spin
Green groups need to turn their focus back on nature if they are to be taken seriously.

Take it away Lloydie, distract the pond, and if you will, mention all the dead whales littering the landscape up Tamworth way ...

The caption: Black Springs farmer Kym Dixon next to a dead wedge tailed eagle, found 180m from the wind turbines near the town of Waterloo in South Australia.

Lloydie showed off the new old reptile spin for reviling renewable energy, the pose of caring conservationist, and never mind the way that the planet is currently being wrecked and ruined ...

The environment movement has been used as useful idiots by a climate industrial complex that has run roughshod over individual rights and the natural world.
Too many have bought the lie by climate extremists that you have to kill nature to save it because climate change is a problem that trumps everything else.
People who live on the land have been ridiculed by city elites when they have tried to blow the whistle on what endless kilometres of wind turbines and solar panels actually means for birds, biodiversity and wildlife.

Ah, big renewables, as dire and as dangerous as big pharma, or big tobacco, and certainly way more problematic than big oil, big coal and big gas.

At that moment, the reptiles dropped in a snap as a news item, Adam Bandt has been appointed the next chief executive of the Australian Conservation Foundation. Picture: NewsWire/ David Crosling

Lloydie of the Amazon was startled by the big combine ...

It is no joke that politicians and renewable energy advocates liken the climate change response to the Industrial Revolution. They are talking with their wallet.
Departing Wilderness Society campaign chief Amelia Young is telling the truth when she says the great similarity with the Industrial Revolution is the impact it will have on nature.
Ironically, it will have few of the benefits of the Industrial Revolution because unlike the steam engine and factory floor it makes things more dispersed, less efficient and more expensive.
This probably won’t disturb newly appointed Australian Conservation Foundation chief executive Adam Bandt, whose line is: “People are sweltering through hot summers and worse bushfires while coal and gas corporations make massive profits and pay no tax as they destroy this beautiful country we love.”
Environment leaders such as Bob Brown and Christine Milne have finally woken to the threat of unchecked renewable energy because it is happening in their back yard. Tasmania is destined to become an avian slaughterhouse to supply power to Victoria and beyond.

Who you gunna call when you need an AV distraction in tune with Lloydie of the Amazon? 

Come on down Ughmann, blathering to petulant Peta ... Sky News contributor Chris Uhlmann says Labor’s $500 billion 2035 climate energy target could be “easily” doubled. “We get caught up on the transition of the electricity system, but we’re talking about changing all of our energy systems, and that is a much bigger project,” Mr Uhlmann told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “The $500 billion figure … the 70 per cent target by 2035, I think, is a vast underestimate, I think you could easily double it.”

Truth to tell, the Ughmann could do anything with numbers and often does, but at this point, Lloydie of the Amazon ran out of steam, perhaps because of a lack of coal or gas ...

How did anyone think this was going to end? The impact so far of the billions of dollars spent on renewable energy developments has barely budged the needle on what we still need from coal and gas. To meet the government objectives, planning laws are being changed to deny due process. The latest scheme to redraw the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act to prioritise areas for renewables is not about protecting the landscape. It is about opening up the national estate and agricultural land to industrial development on the unrealistic assumption it will change future weather.
One thing is certain. Nature will outlast the renewable energy fetish. But at least some environment leaders are finally waking up to the fact there are trade-offs in every revolution and they have been sucked in to losing sight of what they were supposed to be all about.

Meanwhile, the pond knew its duty, because look, there, over on the extreme far right early in the morning, top of the reptile world ma ...

Somehow, for some reason the pond didn't bother to discover, "Kooyong" Josh also came out of hiding ...

We must not allow Kirk’s death to become our reality
Australia must counter the hotbed of hate in our own society before we experience the logical violent extension of that hate that has played out so sadly in the US.
By Josh Frydenberg

Strange, at this point the pond remembered that a report had recently been dropped, only to be disappeared by the lizard Oz off to the cornfield ...

Don't trouble the reptiles with any of that ...

Joe, lesser member of the Kelly gang, could be seen attempting to spread a little oil on the hate ...

COMMENTARY by Joe Kelly 
Governor emerges as voice of reason after Kirk’s slaying
Spencer Cox is urging Americans to step back from rage, improve the quality of their disagreements and deepen their human connections.

The archive header suggested a path to reason, Reason not rage: Utah Governor gets the message right after Kirk’s assassination

Oh come on Guv, come on Joe... the bromancer this day is top of the far right lizard Oz world this day, ma ...and he's suppurating with a saturating, irrational rage that brooks no bounds ...

There's an incandescent white heat to his work, a good ten minutes of furious fulminations... though having been taught by Mr Kirk that empathy is a useless emotion, the pond felt a strange lack of empathy ...

Still, this must be what it feels like when one white Catholic fundamentalist nationalist loses the company of another ...

The irrational, rage saturated header: When Charlie Kirk was assassinated, so was democracy, Charlie Kirk was doing politics just the way it should be done. America now waits with bated breath to see what his appalling killing will bring.

The appalling hagiographic illustration by Frank, determined to show he's adept at AI slop: Charlie Kirk’s death is not only an unbearable, wrenching tragedy for his wife and two small children. It diminishes America itself, writes Greg Sheridan. Artwork by Frank Ling.

The quote from the fearless leader:

“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie (Kirk) to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop now.”
– President Donald Trump

The pond expected to be filled with a deep nausea, and not just from the violence, and the spectre of a gun-saturated country that's full of violence ...

Surely the bald eagle swooned, the trumpets fell silent and the shades of heroes past wept once more at the senseless, dreadful, nihilist political violence sweeping America.
In some ways the death of Charlie Kirk is just one more gun death in a nation with nearly 50,000 gun deaths a year.
But it’s much more. Kirk’s death is not only an unbearable, wrenching tragedy for his wife and two small children. It diminishes America itself, diminishes democracy. Kirk was doing politics just the way it should be done. He was on campus, engaging people, those who agree with him and those who disagree. He would talk to anyone, engage anyone, conduct his controversies vigorously but politely.

It gets very difficult to say that Kirk was a hate machine, intent on fomenting hate - especially gays, by spouting Leviticus (YouTube link)- and TG folk and other minorities - but it should be mentioned, if only to suggest that there might be other ways to do politics than support a narcissistic bigoted king ...

The reptiles interrupted with a snap, Charlie Kirk speaks moments before he is shot during Turning Point's visit to Utah Valley University. Picture: AP

The pond realised that it was going to be a long haul and began to pace itself ...

Kirk was absurdly handsome, gifted in fluency, smart as heck, sometimes too tricky, sometimes a bit extreme, but he wanted to talk and listen to people. Those who knew him well swear by him. Political opponents attest to his courtesy, self-deprecating humour and good humour.
There’s something magnificently democratic about the way Kirk conducted himself. He had more than seven million TikTok followers. The organisation he founded, Turning Point USA, had annual revenues of more than $US80m ($120m). He accumulated billions of social media downloads. But he didn’t glide into celebrity isolation, the customary inaccessibility of the very famous. He wasn’t a keyboard coward, didn’t hide behind his digital persona. He still did retail politics.

Suddenly social media, the bête noire of raging reptiles, is now the measure of success, and magnificent democracy?

Before the pond had time to be bemused, the reptiles slipped in a graphic with grand pop-up text boxes ...

It was a bit out of date, what with an alleged killer having been caught, but it added to the bulk, as the bromancer explained why democracy had been assassinated (though it apparently hadn't been assassinated when RFK, JFK, Martin Luther King and many others were assassinated) ...

He’d go to college campuses especially, and everyone was welcome to attend. He’d give an open mic to his critics. He was happy to debate credentialled folks on the left, or elsewhere on the conservative spectrum from him, to answer any student, radical or otherwise, who wanted to ask a question or make a speech. That’s why assassinating Charlie Kirk is akin to assassinating democracy.
He had his own personal security detail and there were half a dozen policemen at the event, in Utah, the Mormon home, surely one of the most peaceful places on the planet. Yet he wasn’t safe. Neither is democracy safe.

But why did the pond expect the bromancer to rein in his always omnipotent hysteria? He never does, as the reptiles played the family card, Charlie Kirk with his young family.

Sheesh, did they have to rub it in with all that MAGA memorabilia, a reminder of his devotion to King Donald, molester of women and good friend of Jeffrey? You know, the guy where an association might lead, in other countries, to a firing ...

The bromancer would have none of that, it was all Norman Rockwell ...

That it happened at Utah Valley University, at the foot of the mountains, in a beautiful part of the country near the small, friendly city of Provo, adds a twist, like throwing blood and mud on a Norman Rockwell illustration. I’ve been to Provo, and the nearby majestic mountains. All the grace, abundance and atavistic goodwill of America is there, desecrated now by this savage act.

Now at this point, way into his piece, the bromancer came up with a billy goat butt, dressed up as a "to be sure", and to be sure, the billy goat butt was only offered so it could be demolished...

To be sure, some of Kirk’s views were controversial. Though he was a Christian and a conservative, there are many things he said that I wouldn’t agree with. That point is worth emphasising. Kirk said some brave and true things, and some extreme and strange things. There are many things he said I’d reject. But he had every right to say them. Now he can’t say them at all and, tragically for democracy, other young people can’t hear them.
Kirk did offer a positive vision to young people. One reason Donald Trump won in 2024 was because of a huge uptick in his vote among young men. No one was more influential with young men than Kirk.

Wanting to make a full meal of it, at this point the reptiles slipped in a sound distraction ...

At this point, the bromancer wandered off into a his usual rhetorical, philosophical haze ...

Assassination, the 19th-century anarchists said, is the weak point of dictatorship. As usual the anarchists were talking through their hats. Dictators don’t get assassinated very often. They’re rarely out and about. Assassination is the weak point of democracy. It carries the propaganda of the deed, like all terrorism.
America waits almost with bated breath to see what this appalling killing will bring. Trump immediately attributed it to the far left. Steve Bannon, a key player in Trump’s MAGA movement, declared: “This is war.” So did many other commentators on the right. Is domestic politics really war? Does that imply people should strike back?

Well, democracy was assassinated, so they say, in an understated, reasoned, rational way, or so some folks day, as the reptiles slipped in a snap of the man with his king, Kirk speaks on stage with President Donald Trump at America Fest 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona. Picture: AFP

Then the bromancer tried a little both siderism ...

The truth is far left and far right are both complicit in extremism, violence and abuse. There have been murders and attempted murders of figures on the right. At least two serious assassination attempts on Trump last year, and one directed at conservative Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022. A Republican congressman, Steve Scalise, was shot at congressional baseball practice and seriously wounded a few years ago.
There have also been murders and attempted murders of Democrats and figures on the left. Earlier this year, two Democrat state politicians in Minnesota were murdered. There was an attempt to set fire to the house of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, as well as a foiled plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. Both Shapiro and Whitmer are Democrats.
Both far left and far right practise street violence, in demonstrations, sometimes ritualised, sometimes semi-organised, opposed street-fighting gangs.
A study by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies shows an almost exponential increase in political violence plots in the US in the past few years. America has faced these troubles before. In Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address, in 1861, as he tried to dodge the destruction of civil war, he said: “Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

And how was the play for you Mr Lincoln, as the reptiles slipped in an emotive snap, Charlie Kirk’s casket is removed from Air Force Two at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Picture: AP

So to the padding, as the bromancer tried to do an "our Henry" with American history ...

In contrast, both sides of politics now routinely slander, calumniate and abuse each other. The MAGA Republicans, especially Trump, and on the other side the Biden-Harris-Squad Democrats, both see victory by their opponents not as one loss in a series of elections but as utter catastrophe.
The activist and far left is lost in identity politics hatreds, critical theory mind warps, postmodern nihilism, exhaustion of spirit, a frenetic search for life’s meaning in the wretched reaches of political extremism, and a kind of spiritual emptiness.
The far right, or at least the wilder fringes of the MAGA right, increasingly practises an ugly tribalism, a nationalism that doesn’t exalt the traditional virtues of American exceptionalism but sees politics as a series of nasty zero-sum exchanges in which the chief objective is to get the better of the other side.
There are voices of calm. Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama made heartfelt statements mourning Kirk, offering love and solidarity to his family, and calling on Americans to recognise their common citizenship and the necessity of civil disagreement.
America: a nation founded in ideas
How has America reached this point?
The United States is a unique experiment in human history. It is the world’s first global nation. It’s a nation founded on ideas, or rather on values and beliefs. It’s a creedal nation. Many Europeans first came to America in the 17th and 18th centuries to escape European religious conflicts and persecutions. Thus, in a dynamic paradox that has conditioned all its subsequent history, the US was both intensely and intentionally free, and intensely and intentionally religious.
The Declaration of Independence, adopted in 1776, remains one of the most inspiring statements of civic purpose. Famously, it declares: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Just to add to the bromancer brooding about the past and the USA, the reptiles offered The Drafting of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris.

That really set the bromancer off ...

By the standards of the 18th century, this was a stupendous statement of human dignity and political and civic freedom. It also invoked the Creator. There were two problems with it, common for the age. It said all men were created equal and it took the US time, as it did everywhere else, for women to acquire the same constitutional rights as men, especially the right to vote.
The other problem was the original sin of slavery. It took time for the promise that all men are created equal to include African Americans. Some states were free, some were slave states. In the 1860s the US fought a shuddering, titanic, unspeakably bloody civil war to end the business of slavery once and for all. The issue of the civil war was notionally the preservation of the Union, but the point of secession by the southern states was their objection to the insistence that any new state to be admitted to the Union was to be free, not slave.
The abolitionist movement to get rid of slavery, a Christian movement just like that which abolished slavery in the British Empire 30 years earlier, was coming after the practice of slavery in the south. Slavery is inherently evil, but was practised for long periods in almost every part of the world.
When the British abolished the slave trade in the empire it cost them a vast amount of money. It was the right thing to do and it demonstrates that the British government, even in the 19th century, was moved by moral arguments.
When the US abolished slavery, in the civil war, it cost them more than 700,000 dead. It cost Lincoln his life too. The US was right to do it. Lincoln was right to do it. More than any churchman, Lincoln became the moral instructor to the nation. Lincoln was perhaps the greatest of all the leaders the democratic world has known. His words have become a kind of secular scripture for the US, and America would be a better place now if it paid more attention to Lincoln’s words.
Lincoln is especially relevant today for he tried to bring together a nation even more bitterly divided than now. He wanted the citizens of the former slave states to be active and positive citizens in the reborn union. But that never swayed his judgment on the moral enormity of slavery.

Cue a snap, Lincoln is especially relevant today for he tried to bring together a nation even more bitterly divided than now. Picture: Getty

Hang on, hang on, didn't Charlie Kirk say that black people were better off under slavery? (Instagram link) And that they committed less crime back in the good old days?

Didn't he once say that passing the Civil Rights Act was a "huge mistake"?

Wasn't this his usual sort of hate speech?

The conservative campaigner described Martin Luther King Jr as a “morally flawed man” whose “mythology” does not warrant the “reverence” he has received in the United States. He suggested that the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests happened “because a guy drug overdosed on the streets of Minneapolis”.
Kirk also claimed that the Covid pandemic “was never a greater threat than the seasonal flu”. He added: “We, the people in the West, deserve an apology” for the “youth suffering” during lockdowns. He also suggested that the January 6 riots “were not an insurrection”.
Clashes with students dominated the second half of the event. One medicine student received applause for rebutting Kirk’s anti-abortion position, while another student accused Kirk of “cherry-picking” Bible verses and questioned whether Jesus ever really commented on homosexuality. Kirk responded by stating that marriage should be “between one man and one woman,” as based on “scripture”. (here)

And what about Ukraine?

Although the event was scheduled to take only pre-approved questions, Kirk insisted on opening the floor. This led the Union’s full-time bursar, John Brown, to challenge him on Ukraine, prompting Kirk to declare that the US recognition of Crimea as part of Ukraine “was a mistake” and should be “given back” to Russia.

He was really keen on the genocide in Gaza too, not to mention his devotion to sacrificing a few so that the many could enjoy their gun fetish.

Sh*t stirring for a living.

Never mind, back to the bromancer's fantasy life ...

In his second inaugural address, in 1865, as the war was drawing to a close, Lincoln contemplated nonetheless the possibility that it would continue: “(if the war continues) until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether”.
Looking towards the war’s end, he exhorted his countrymen: “With malice toward none, with charity for all … let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds … to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
In his first inaugural address, he had appealed to “the better angels of our nature”.
Lincoln was thus the very best kind of political leader. He told the truth about the moral economy of the nation, its good and its bad. He told the truth to his citizens in another way, that neither a good outcome nor a bad outcome was foreordained but, rather, history depended on their agency. And he urged and practised reconciliation.
Lincoln was magnificent and few leaders have his gifts or his strength of character. But don’t think that America’s moral character depended entirely on leadership from the White House. The presidents after Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 until the advent of the whirlwind Teddy Roosevelt in the first years of the 20th century were a dismally mediocre crew, rightly now forgotten in popular culture.
Nonetheless, in the second half of the 19th century America became the greatest nation on earth, an industrial and agricultural powerhouse, an engine of scientific invention, a huge receiving society for immigrants, including one-third of the population of Ireland. Because the US had a clear civic identity, a clear creed, lots of opportunity, and almost no government welfare, immigrants went to the US to work and build and prosper. Most were tremendously happy to become Americans. Modern America was not built on blood and soil and ethnic continuity but on commitment to America’s creed and personality.
It also became a deeply civilised country. Paul Johnson, in his magisterial A History of the American People, cites the great educationist John Dewey’s appreciation of the mid-west: “They embody and express the spirit of kindly goodwill towards classes which are at an economic disadvantage and towards other nations, especially when the latter show any disposition towards a republican form of government. The Middle West … has been the centre of active social philanthropy and political progressivism”. Even today, the hospitality and kindness of folks in the mid-west, which I’ve encountered many times, is striking, a version of what Michael Gawenda memorably called “the great American friendliness”.
Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to conceive of America as a great global power. The US ultimately went into both world wars reluctantly, to sort out Europe’s mess. Part of the motivation was American generosity.
This was captured in George M. Cohan’s classic World War I recruiting song, Over There, with its stirring lyrics: “The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming … and we won’t come back till it’s over, over there.”
This spirit of American idealism didn’t always mean deep involvement in the world’s affairs but the idealism continued for most of the 20th century. John F. Kennedy, as gifted an orator as Lincoln, told his fellow Americans: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

Oh yes, American idealism in Vietnam ...echoing down the ages ...

Sorry, at this point the reptiles preferred to slip in this snap, US President John F. Kennedy addresses at the podium in 1960.

And that led to the bromancer wrapping things up, with his usual devious "good things, bad things", good people on both sides routine ...

Sadly, Vietnam, Richard Nixon in Watergate, Bill Clinton lying under oath, the setbacks of Iraq and Afghanistan, the drift under Obama and Joe Biden, all contributed to wear down the moral authority of the presidency. Trump himself has done good and bad things but he has massively accelerated the moral vacuum of the presidency. He presents his political program merely as triumphing in bare-knuckle power struggles.
This was always a big element, but it was redeemed by American idealism. The idealism is still in America, which has been more divided than it is now. But the nation needs leaders, and social and religious movements, that retire hatreds and recommission idealism.
America confronts an intensely difficult moment in the wake of Kirk’s terrible assassination. But it has conquered far worse moral and political travails in the past. The whole world waits on this question: can the American genius recover itself once more?

A miracle ... not a single mention of the unmentionable, not a mention of the excused criminal, the man who routinely lies under oath, the pussy fondler in chief ...

And so to the Lynch mob, sadly rabbiting on about the same matter for an ungoodly four minutes or so, but being the Lynch mob, with a free pass to the pond ...

The header: Charlie Kirk’s legacy: The art of how to disagree well, The imperfect but necessary culture warrior’s approach to campus debate offered a vital antidote to intellectual banality and cultural safetyism, demonstrating the power of civil discourse in an era of stifled free speech.

It's impossible to convey the hideousness of the illustration, which saw an arrow emanate from somewhere around the region of Kirk's neck, and then swirl over to the extreme far left, while there was text just below the uncredited offering ... 

The text just below the bizarre animation seemed to be part of the prof.'s attempt at an opening flourish of both siderism, quickly forgotten as the Lynch mob got into a culture wars frame of mind ...

Charlie Kirk, the slain youth whisperer of the American right, did not get everything right. He does not deserve (though he will surely get) the MAGA canonisation that has gathered steam since his murder. But what he did get right needs defending.
His Turning Point USA did overreach. What youth organisation doesn’t? Its Professor Watchlist website targets academics who “discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom”. All this did was boost the solidarity of those on it – and led to demands to be included by those Kirk’s team had missed.
But Kirk put his money where his mouth was. He rocked up to campuses not to protest against progressive professors but to engage their students (and some of them) in debate. I’ve been watching these events for years. They are a great antidote to a long day of racial literacy training.
My wife and I sat shaking with anger and sadness on Thursday night as we replayed some highlights. Given the cultural issues raised at these revivalist-style events, from transgenderism to abortion, they were remarkably civil. Kirk eschewed leftism. But he was patient, tolerant and never more than gently mocking of the individual leftists who stood behind a microphone to take him on.
“Prove me wrong.” That was the admonition at Kirk’s tented dialogues. He would sit alone and field questions until they ran out. The excitement of these events was a sad indictment of the intellectual banality that mostly obtains in his absence.
When tents appear in university quads they are usually filled with humourless Israelophobes. When Kirk showed up, everyone knew they would be part of a great theatre of democracy – if only for a few hours.

Why was the pond reminded of John Webster, soap box specialist? 

There was nothing particularly new about Kirk's sophistry, or his grift, save for the skill with which he used social media to amplify his voice, while hitching a ride on King Donald's bandwagon.

Never mind, Charlie Kirk debates students during his American Comeback Tour event, at the University of Tennessee's campus in Knoxville in March, 2025. Picture: Reuters

As one pond correspondent noted, Kirk was a singular American phenomenon, who never made it to Australia, and who failed to convince the English, save for the likes of Farage, on his England tour ...but the Lynch mob clearly loves him ...

He was as powerful an advocate of academic freedom as any of his myriad tenured detractors. He died doing what so many of us have shied away from: making our campuses arenas for ideological debate and civil discourse. He taught students across the world how to disagree well. How many of us can say the same?
Far easier to indict the woke campus in a newspaper column. Far harder to try to do something about it. Not by declaring war on the left but debating the issues with them. This is what Kirk did. His weapons were words delivered to crowds encouraged to interrogate him.
He did not hide behind speech codes. A man without a university degree understood academic freedom better than the academics who used it to try to cancel him.
The spectre of cancellation haunts too many campus interactions. Surveys reveal that students hide their conservative leanings to maintain social standing. Too few students are taught the skills of debate. Professors are obliged to prioritise the safety of their young charges from unsettling ideas. Kirk proved that students want an end to this cosseting.
Australian campuses have been mostly colonised by the cultural safetyism of their American counterparts. The embrace of left-wing identity politics by the college elite has stifled debate and filled too many lecture halls, here and there, with eggshells on which too many students feel they are walking.
It is an irony mostly missed by his opponents, but Kirk mobilised not just a new form of young conservatism; he also fostered the intellectual self-confidence of left-wing students. We have mostly abandoned this pedagogical (perhaps civilisational) responsibility.
Progressive 18-year-olds appear in O week, and we coddle them. “How super you go to climate rallies.” “Your preferred pronoun badge looks great!” “Be safe!” “You go girl!”
Their conservative peers, in contrast, are inadvertently taught some crucial survival skills. They must duck and weave, choose their battles wisely, know when to embrace and resist the orthodoxy.
Left-wing students don’t receive these lessons; they are patted on the head. Kirk exposed the lacuna at the heart of progressive education: it was not brainwashing students as much as boring them towards alternatives, young men especially.
“High school boys,” he said, “are the most conservative that they have been in the last 50 years.” In 2024, Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris lost young men by between two and 24 points in six of the seven swing states. Remarkable. “The youth vote,” declared Kirk, “won Trump the White House.” And it was Kirk that got it out.

You go prof, as the cultist cultivates the cult, Charlie Kirk signs hats and takes photos with supporters after his visit to Florida State University in February, 2025. Picture: Reuters

By this time, the pond had begun to lose interest, but the Lynch mob was still keen to keep on lynching ...

In a sector that fetishises social justice activism, Kirk mobilised young people sceptical of it. A man who dropped out of college knew how young Americans were being sold out and mollycoddled by their left-wing professors and administrators.
Thousands routinely turned out to hear him – from left, right and neither. More than 3000 saw him shot at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.
When Australian students begin university, there are some brave but beleaguered Liberals staffing the stalls. Increasingly schooled in Sussan Ley’s conservatism of constant apology, these young people get little of the boosting Kirk offered their American cousins.
The Australian National University student union even banned the Institute of Public Affairs – Australia’s pre-eminent free market think tank – from its Market Day. Turning Point USA would have never allowed such ideological bullying. How tragic, then, that the ultimate bully, the assassin who pulled the trigger, should be the man who silenced Kirk. The liberal campus is not responsible for this outrage. At the time of writing, the killer is still on the run, assumed armed and progressive. The left has enfeebled young minds far more than it has made them violent. This assassin may be an exception.
If his identity and cause is in doubt, the reaction of some of his apologists is not. Kirk so frontally took on a woke campus orthodoxy that some of its beneficiaries just can’t help but mock his demise. George Abaraonye, the incoming president of the Oxford Union, who debated Kirk across a dispatch box four months ago, posted on Instagram: “Charlie Kirk got shot loool.” The most elite officer at the most elite of universities – and that was his response to his opponent’s cold-blooded murder?

Then came a final illustration of the man with his king, US President Donald Trump is joined on stage by Charlie Kirk in Washington in 2019. Picture: AP

It produced a final Lynch mob burst of fury, and a reminder of Melbourne Uni's shame ...

If this is the new morality of the left-wing campus, why not seek to topple its dominion? What has Western civilisation got to lose? Donald Trump asked these questions. His 31-year-old aide, Kirk, gave him the means to answer them – and died putting them into effect.
Kirk was an imperfect but necessary culture warrior. He died on that battlefield. Most Americans are praying he will be the last to do so.
Timothy J. Lynch is professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne.

A new morality? 

Oh indeed, indeed, though for some strange reason, the Lynch mob never mentioned the new morality in action ...

And this is for those who might be wondering why the pond is always joking about the reptiles being top of the world ma. 

The pond's logarithms saw it rise to the top of the YouTube scum...scrum

Spoiler alert, this is the end of the movie, White Heat, directed by eye-patched Raoul Walsh, beloved by the Cahiers du Cinéma mob ...