Robert Sterling on the murder of Charlie Kirk aptly sums up where we are, and it’s not good (or is it?)

 (tweet continues) And I’ll be candid: They blame you guys. They blame the left.

Regardless of whether you believe it to be justified, they think you’re the bad guys here. And they are reacting accordingly.

I can already hear some of you racing toward the comments to start screeching in moral indignation, so I’m going to be blunt: Shut up and listen to what I’m telling you. Your movement will lose any semblance of relevance if you don’t develop some small measure of self-awareness, and—absent someone force-feeding you bitter medicine—you guys collectively lack the humility to do this on your own.

Here are the facts:

Fact 1. Tens of millions of Americans started the week seeing a 23-year-old blonde woman—a young woman in whom virtually every parent watching pictured their own daughter—stabbed in the neck by a career criminal. These people then found out the murderer had been released from jail 14 times over.

Fact 2. Two days later, tens of millions of Americans watched a video of Charlie Kirk get murdered speaking to college students. Millions of these people knew who Charlie was; millions of them didn’t. Upon seeing the video, however, these normal Americans from across the land and across the political spectrum agreed that he was the victim of a terrible, fundamentally unjustifiable crime, and their hearts broke in sympathy for his family. Good people who had never even heard the name Charlie Kirk before wept.

Fact 3. Immediately after seeing the footage of a peaceful young man get shot in the neck, these same people logged onto Facebook and Instagram (remember, we are talking about regular Americans, not perpetually online Twitter or Bluesky users) and saw some of their local nurses, school teachers, college administrators, and retail workers celebrating this horrific crime. Not just defending it, but cheering it.

These are all facts. You may not like the implications of these facts, and we can certainly debate the underlying causes thereof, but, indisputably, they are nevertheless factual statements.

Here’s what it means for you, the Democrats reading this:

These normal, middle-of-the-road, non-political citizens just become politically active. They realized that politics cares about them, even if they don’t particularly care about politics. After watching Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk both bleed out from the neck, they think their lives and the physical safety of their families—the bedrock of human society, the foundation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—depend on political activation, whether they desire it or not.

These people are now sprinting—not jogging, not walking, but racing—to the right. Because they blame you guys for everything that just happened.

When they see footage of Decarlos Brown stabbing a Ukrainian refugee to death, they don’t see just one demon-possessed man. They picture every university administrator, HR bureaucrat, and DEI apparatchik that ever lectured them about systemic racism, the “carceral state,” or the need to release violent crime suspects without bail in the name of social justice.

They then think back to conversations they’ve had with their cop friends—their buddy from high school who quit the force after getting tired of being called a racist, their friend at the local YMCA who vents about having to release career criminals because Soros-funded prosecutors aren’t willing to file charges—and they realize everything the left has told them over the last five years has been utter bullshit.

And they blame you. Because, even if you count yourself as a moderate Democrat, your party supported the district attorneys, city council members, and mayors that let fictitious concerns about mental health and racial justice supersede very real concerns for their family’s safety.

When these Americans see blood erupt from the side of Charlie Kirk’s neck, they don’t see just a martyred political activist. They think of every extreme leftist they’ve ever met who (1) calls anyone to the right of Hillary Clinton a fascist and (2) constantly jokes—“jokes”—about punching Nazis and “bashing the fash.”

They realize that there really do exist people who wish to see them dead for their moderately conservative political beliefs, their Christian faith, and even the color of their skin. They ask themselves if the violence visited upon Charlie might one day show up on their own doorstep.

And they blame you. Because, even if you’re just a center-of-the-road liberal, you lacked the courage to police your own ranks. You let modern-day Maoist red guards run loose across every facet of society, and what started with social-media struggle sessions has now turned to 30-06 bullet holes.

When these Americans log onto social media and see their neighbors justifying, celebrating, glorifying murder, they realize that some who walk among them are soulless ghouls at best, literally demon-possessed at worst. These people—whether they faithfully attend church every Sunday or only attend with relatives once a year, on Christmas Eve—start talking about things like spiritual warfare. They implicitly understand that no normal human casually celebrates the mortal demise of a peaceful person.

And they blame you. Because, even if you condemned Charlie Kirk’s murder, they probably haven’t seen you condemn those in your own movement who cheered it on. They view you as complicit in allowing heartless fellow travelers to celebrate death, and it repulses them.

For all of these situations, what has your response been? Nothing but bullshit.

In response to Iryna Zarutska bleeding out on the floor of a train, you post bullshit statistics about reductions in reported crime, when everyone who’s ever been to a major urban center in the last decade knows that actual crime has skyrocketed, only for victims not to waste their time reporting it to cops that don’t have the manpower to respond and prosecutors that seek to downgrade as many felonies as possible to misdemeanor citations.

In response to a 31-year-old man taking a bullet to the neck in front of his family, you post nothing but bullshit whataboutism.

> “What about January 6th?” (Honest answer: After you let Liz Cheney spend two years operating a star chamber in the House, combined with countless other failed attempts at “lawfare” against Trump, no one cares anymore.)

> “What about Mike Lee making a dumb joke on Twitter about some guy in a mask in Minnesota?” (No one outside of Utah, DC, or Twitter knows who Mike Lee even is.)

> “What about Paul Pelosi?” (That’s not comparable to Charlie Kirk getting shot, and we all know it. And, again, Paul who?)

> “What about regulations on assault rifles?” (That’s not going to get you very far when one of these killers used a knife and the other one used a common hunting rifle.)

In response to teachers, healthcare workers, and thousands of other liberals cheering on Charlie’s murder, it’s nothing but more bullshit and misdirection.

> “It’s not THAT many people celebrating!” (Yes, it is. Everyone has seen it on their Facebook and Instagram feeds.)

> “I thought you guys didn’t support cancel culture.” (We don’t cancel people over their opinions; we’re more than happy to see people lose their jobs—especially their taxpayer-funded jobs—for actively cheering on murder, though. If you can’t see the difference, that’s your own shortcoming.)

All bullshit. Not even smart bullshit, but stale, mid-grade, low-IQ bullshit. Ordinary Americans see right through it, and they don’t like how it smells.

You probably don’t like hearing this. But you need to hear it.

Because I’m right, and, as you reflect on this, you know I’m right. The ranks of my political movement gained millions of righteously angry new members this week. We have a mandate to ensure these crimes never happen again, and that’s exactly what we are now going to do.

If you want to keep a seat at the table as we do so, you’d better clean house and start policing your own.
2:17 PM · Sep 13, 2025
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23.1M
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https://x.com/RobertMSterling/status/1966974489553461366

Think you have too much suffering in your life? Our Lady of Sorrows shows us how it’s to be done

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Blessed Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

At the foot of the Cross, the Mother of God became Our Mother. Remember, Mary was more holy at the moment of her birth than all the saints combined at the moment of their deaths. Yet she only grew in holiness. This happened in many ways throughout her life, but most especially by her Son allowing her to participate in His Passion. Her participation is the only time true “compassion” literally took place in the history of the universe. This was an act of love, in both directions.

She is our model, and Our Mother.

She is our model, because she is the epitome of bearing suffering well, ordering suffering towards its rightful object, uniting our suffering to the Cross, participating in our own redemption through the grace of suffering. It is even possible to experience joy through suffering while yet in this life. There is no escaping suffering, because it is for our own good. If you haven’t really experienced it yet, believe me, it’s coming. Get prepared.

She is Our Mother, precisely because her suffering entailed the participation in Christ’s Passion in a real way. Meaning, she suffered with Him every sin ever committed. She knows you, and she wants you to ask for her help. You are never given a burden heavier than you can manage, provided you work with the graces being offered. And guess who mediates all those graces? Yep, your Mother does that.

Pray the Rosary every day.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

“They hate us, they want us dead, and they have now made it clear they won’t stop”

On The Assassination Of Charlie Kirk

By “Flannelavenger” at Men of the West

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. And I don’t feel like I have a lot to add to this conversation that others more eloquent than me have already said. After all, I wasn’t Charlie Kirk’s target audience. He seemed like a nice enough guy. I just never got into his world.

And it’s appalling. Because a wife lost her husband and his children lost their father. And for what? Because he was trying to have a dialog about the issues facing the United States today? That’s one of the basic reasons that this site exists, because we wanted to provide a viewpoint from the political right. And frankly, Charlie Kirk was nicer than I am. He was surely more successful than we have been here at changing hearts and minds. And so he was martyred. And yes, he counts as a martyr. The viewpoints he espoused that got him killed were fundamentally driven by his Christian faith.

And in his death we have seen the complete depravity of the political left in this country. People celebrated a cold blooded murder. Because he didn’t share their politics. The Democrats and the Media are doing their best to pretend otherwise. But for years they’ve called us every name in the book. Their favorite is to call us fascists. When we are not fascists in any meaningful sense of the word. It is a lie. But then again, when you look out over the internet and see these monsters gleefully celebrating the murder of a man who just wanted to have a conversation is it any surprise that they would smear those who disagree with them with a libel that has no basis in fact?

I am encouraged that normal people are seeing this crap show and realizing that we have a problem in this country. That one side of the political aisle has completely lost it (and just to be clear, it’s the left). Kirk’s death, and the absolutely grotesque reaction to it from the left, has reached normal people in a way that we never could have. Their eyes are opening up that maybe the people the left has called fascists or extremists are neither. That maybe we are just husbands, fathers, wives and mothers who have thoughts about the best way to run a country and to order a society. That we aren’t out to hurt anyone.

But even in the aftermath, when ordinary people have reacted in shock and horror to the left wing celebrations at a gruesome murder, they haven’t apologized. They haven’t done anything to disassociate themselves from these lunatics. Members of Congress booed and hissed at the suggestion of a moment of silence. These people have shown who they are. Believe them when they show you that they hate us and they want us dead.

All that we can do is our best. We must try to honor God, and fulfill our duties to our family. In the wake of this travesty, I felt like I needed to write this if for no other reason than to stand up and say that I will not be silenced and I will not be intimidated by this. Charlie Kirk is dead today and all the positions he held that he was murdered for are positions that I am in agreement with him on. If it was up to the online left, my daughter would also never get another hug from her daddy. They accuse us of being the ones to lack empathy. But we aren’t the ones looking to murder people because we don’t agree with their world view.

But it’s time for there to be some accountability for the hateful rhetoric of the left. They can’t be allowed to spend years vilifying us and then pretend that we’re all one big country together when something like this happens. There needs to be repentance. They need to seek forgiveness. And they need to stop the whataboutism. Charlie Kirk is dead because they falsely called him a fascist.

And if this goes on and there’s not a reckoning, there’s no telling who they will kill next. It could be any one of us. Because they hate us, they want us dead, and they have now made it clear they won’t stop until they get it.

https://www.menofthewest.net/on-the-assassination-of-charlie-kirk/

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross: The sooner the better

(This feast is so great that it survived the revolution and trumps the Sunday even in the Novus Ordo. Learning to love your own cross is key on your path towards holiness AND contentment and even joy in this vale of tears. The sooner the better.)


The Exaltation of the Holy Cross… the triumphant joy of learning to love your own cross

Originally posted 

Pick up your cross daily, and follow Him. Learn how to USE your suffering, cooperating with grace, to unite your cross to His Cross. It’s the only way.  Exaltation/Exultation (I’ve seen it both ways) literally means Triumphant Joy. This needs to be our attitude toward our cross and His Cross; it’s our path to holiness. Blessed feast.

INTROIT Gal. 6:14
But it is fitting that we should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is salvation, life, and resurrection for us, by whom we are saved and delivered. Ps. 66:2. May God have mercy on us and bless us; may He let His face shine upon us; and may He have mercy upon us.

“Let us be unsentimental about the nature of the enemy.”

( This is from Harvard Salient excerpted via Rorate. The essay is spot on and excellent overall. If you don’t understand the gravity of this, with anything that is laid out here, you had better get your head around it. 9/10 should have been your wake-up call. This very topic was discussed yesterday during the recording of The Barnhardt Podcast #234, at the 28:00-32:00 minute timestamp. -nvp)


Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika, raises Charlie’s necklace to wellwishers

The End of Illusion: On the Assassination of Charlie Kirk and the Way Forward

By Richard Y. Rodgers and David F.X. Army

… (excerpts by Rorate)

[Kirk] could also be unexpectedly, almost annoyingly, moderate: a man who prized argument over obliteration, outreach over insularity, whose modus operandi was to cross campus thresholds and address anyone curious enough to ask a question. He exhorted a generation, plainly and insistently, to love God, love their family, and love their country. That was enough to get him killed.

Let us be unsentimental about the nature of the enemy. Leftism is not merely a rival policy set or an alternate party program. Leftism is a mental illness. There is no risk in naming the condition plainly when the symptoms are so evident: systematic hatred for inherited institutions, a taste for moral monstrosity, and a bloodlust that sanctifies obliteration—of traditions, of customs, of human life—as signs of progress. If you are on the Right and have been told this language is excessive, look instead at the evidence of behavior: celebration when opponents are deplatformed, undone—or worse—killed. They hate you. They want you dead. To say it this way is necessary, for it is in the flowery meadows of euphemism that rot truly spreads.

This is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a warning. To those who treat conservative life on campus or in civic society as an agreeable pastime—“a club,” “a journal,” “a debating society”—recognize that there is no safe neutral. The adjective “just” in front of any conservative endeavor is an attempt to be dismissed as harmless, but it is precisely the seemingly harmless that activists of the other persuasion seek to erase first. If you wear your conviction visibly, if you sign your name to a cause, if you instruct others in the habits that sustain a free and ordered society, you place yourself on the line, and, if the Left wins, they will place you on the gallows. That is not martyr rhetoric; that is realism.

For those of conservative disposition who wish only to lead a private life, cloistered away from the political fray, I am sorry. That is not possible. They won’t allow it. The logic of our hour is simple: if our institutions and formative practices fall, the private life you cherish will be the first to go. To wish for quiet while our enemies reconfigure the moral architecture of the nation is to wish for exile in place.

And yet, despair is not an option. Charlie’s death must not be allowed to calcify into a paralyzing fatalism. It must harden into a militant diligence. Reverence must be translated into work.

 

[Source: Harvard Salient]

 

12 Sept 1683: When the Prots conspire with the Muslims to capture Vienna, who you gonna call?

Originally posted

Blessed Feast of the Holy Name of Mary!

In the Fall of 1683, the Muslim Turks were poised to overrun Vienna. Demands were made to convert to Islam, pay the jizya, or die. After a two month siege in which the city was starved, its walls had finally been breached. The Calvinist leader of the Hungarian revolt had pledged allegiance to the Turks, and persuaded the Hungarian army to desist. The Austrian emperor fled, along with 60,000 Viennese. The treasure that awaited the invaders was vast. So the Grand Mustafa launched the final assault to take the city, by first celebrating with the execution of 30,000 Catholic prisoners. It was 11 September 1683, and it was for this reason this date was chosen in 2001.

The following day, King John Sobieski of Poland, leaving his own country totally undefended, entered the battle. Along with his Hussar cavalry, he lead additional forces from Germany, and was backed by the Habsburgs and the pope. Heavily outnumbered 75,000 Catholics to 150,000 Muslims, the Holy Name of Mary was invoked to aid in procuring a miracle.

Whole books have been written about this battle, so if you have interest, have at it. Spoiler alert, the decisive action was Sobieski himself leading 18,000 of his Hussars straight into the fight and routing the exhausted Muslim forces, in the largest cavalry charge in the history of warfare.

In the sky at that moment, a cloud obscured the crescent moon.

The strategic importance of the victory cannot be overstated. Had Vienna fallen to the Muslims, you wouldn’t be reading this right now. The Protestant Revolt had torn the fabric of Europe so badly at that point, there is no way it could have united itself to withstand a huge invading force operating with Vienna as a beach head.

In thanksgiving, Pope Innocent XI moved the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary from the Sunday after the Nativity of the BVM to the 12th of September, and ordered it’s celebration in the Universal Church.

Virgin Most Powerful, pray for us.

husaria

lg_wingedhussars