Charlie Kirk at CPAC Skillfully Presents a Powerful but Vacuous Speech at CPAC 2019

Charlie Kirk, leader of Turning Point USA, which organizes college students toward conservative causes, gave a remarkable speech at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). In his firebrand speech, Kirk defended conservatism against the forces that he said wanted to destroy American culture. He gave a classic statement of conservative victimology: in Kirk’s view, the United States greatest adversary is not Russia, China, or Al Qaeda, but America’s own left wing. He appealed with great power to people who think that liberalism is a disease. Although he gave little or no support to his often-wild accusations, his passion carried the speech.  After all, let us be honest, conservatives aren’t really victims, and so Kirk needed to make his point with something other than content. But make his point, he did: if I didn’t know better, I would have been convinced. Kirk drew a picture of a left wing that opposes good and stands for malice and that attacks conservatism to destroy America. His nonverbal communication and his skillful use of words, not his content (which was utterly shallow), made his point.

Early in his speech, Kirk said:

“What we find is that students are not opposed to our ideas inherently because they’re not exposed to them at all in the first place. It’s that the left has done everything they possibly can to ensure that our generation has never heard why America is the greatest country ever to exist, or why free markets are the most moral proven effective economic system ever discovered, or why the Constitution is the greatest political document ever written, or why abortion after birth is immoral and should be rejected in modern decent society. They’ve never heard these ideas.”

Notice how that passage used balance and contrast: he opposes “what we find” to “It’s that the left has done everything they possibly can.” And the parallel language: “why America is the greatest country . . . why free markets are the most . . . why the Constitution is the greatest . . . why abortion after birth.” His language carries the reader along; more than a list, Kirk’s statements create a cascading stream of righteous indignation.

No content supported Kirk’s indignation. What makes the Constitution so great? He never said. Why are free markets moral? Not explained. What is he talking about, “abortion after birth?” He never explained. He assumed that his audience would accept his platitudes and so his platitudes were enough. He took up the platitudes, expressed them in powerful language, and moved on.  

Kirk later said that “They have always hated this country they have always hated our history” and that “I don’t want to live in the country that the left wants to create.” As content, that seems bizarre. Even the most liberal colleges require history courses, which the students rarely want to take. What about our history is hated? He didn’t say. He could, all the same, assume that his audience agreed with his point, whatever, exactly, that might have been.

Kirk said that “I don’t want to live in a country where it’s okay to execute a newborn child.” This referred, I imagine, to a proposed Virginia law that allowed parents to decline to resuscitate a baby born with severe birth defects such as those incompatible with life. “Execute” is a powerful word: he didn’t say “to let a suffering child pass away,” but to “execute” the child. In language lies power.

Some conservatives excuse liberals with the view that liberals mean well but are unrealistic. Kirk rejected that idea and condemned the left as inherently immoral: “If you want to fundamentally transform and destroy this country from within, you do not mean well, you do not have good intentions whatsoever. If you want to suppress conservatives from coming on college campuses, you do not mean well. If you want to deplatform conservatives from social media, you do not mean well.” Stark, uncompromising, judgmental, taking the moral high road. And note the continuing parallel language: “If you want to fundamentally transform . . . you do not mean well . . . if you want to suppress . . . you do not mean well . . . If you want to deplatform . . . you do not mean well.” “If this,” and “if that,” all to prove that the leftists “do not mean well.” The cumulative language, again, conveys Kirk’s message with power. One alleged suppression of conservatives piles into the next.

What about Kirk’s content? Kirk’s accusations were bold: the left is evil; the left seeks to destroy America; the left thrives on ignorance. What was his proof? I have met many public-school teachers; most of them were very conservative. Most high school social studies textbooks are conservative; indeed, many school boards are reluctant to approve textbooks that aren’t. What was Kirk’s evidence? He gave none. He equated allowing a hopelessly ill child to die in peace with execution. Are conservatives “deplatformed?” Conservatives thrive on my social media feeds, so how are they being deplatformed? Answer: they aren’t. But Kirk presented no evidence because his claims, questionable or false though they were, are heard so often on talk radio and the Internet that his audience required no proof.

Conservatives often think they are under attack. Kirk’s speech appealed to the victimology: the left was, in his speech, not a group of sincere people with wrong ideas, but a sinister cabal of evildoers. His speech posed “us versus them.” It was a call to destroy the left. Clear, sharp, uncompromising. Factually ridiculous, but compelling.

But it wasn’t just language; Kirk’s delivery also helped him persuade. He was vibrant and energetic. He paused with effect. He raised his voice as he spoke key words: “execute.” His gestures were rehearsed, bold, and decisive. He did not read his speech; his delivery seemed to be extemporaneous, which makes his sophisticated language seem even more impressive. He smiled, frowned, and scowled. As the speech continued and his outrage grew, he got louder, faster, and angrier. His enthusiasm swept across the audience. His enthusiasm jumped off the YouTube screen.

Did Kirk really have much to say? I don’t think so. His angry, shallow speech contrasts starkly with the specific, high-content speeches that conservative Ronald Reagan gave during his rise to the top. It was Kirk’s speaking skill, divorced from his content (and, alas for Kirk, good content is the first and most important speaking skill) that made his speech so powerful.

I can’t help but to reflect on the almost-equally charismatic presentation of alt-right leader Richard Spencer that I blogged about a couple years ago. Shallow speakers like Spencer and Kirk can succeed for a few months or a few years. To create a lasting movement, however, requires real ideas, and neither Kirk nor Spencer even pretends to have any.

In his magnificent book The Ethics of Rhetoric, the great conservative theorist Richard Weaver wrote about the “spaciousness of old rhetoric.” What he meant was that, in the old days, speakers didn’t need to give details because the speaker and audience shared common values. Kirk perverts that noble idea with a rhetoric that is not spacious but vacuous: he assumes a fact-free ideology that he and his audience share and opposes it to a demonized version of liberal ideology. If Kirk is right that liberals don’t care about history, well, neither does he. Ironically, what conservatism needs today is not firebrands like Charlie Kirk, but thinkers who seek to nourish and cultivate our nation’s value-laded roots. Such a person is nowhere to be seen. Ironically but truly, American conservatism has lost its roots. What happens to a tree when its roots fail?

Technical note for my fellow communication researchers: of the five classical canons (invention, arrangement, style, delivery and memorization), rhetoric scholars in recent decades concentrate on the first, giving short shrift to the other four. Maybe we think that studying content makes us look more scholarly. But, as Kirk’s speech shows, delivery and style still make a huge difference. My post of February 27, 2019 pointed out how arrangement can be a speech’s central focus. Indeed, all five canons make a difference.