Weeks after his death, I miss Charlie Kirk's presence the most.
I first wrote voice, but the truth is that, since my teenage son hasn't stopped watching him on YouTube, I'll still often hear Charlie's energetic yet somehow calm voice as he engages with college students who disagree with him. Yet I can't fool myself into believing the comforting notion that he's still traveling the country he loved so much, influencing a generation with the conservative values he held so deeply.
A man who had a similar influence on me when I was my son's age is Dennis Prager, whose presence has likewise been deeply missed by his admirers since a devastating fall last year left him paralyzed. We'd heard sporadic updates since then — some offering hope that we'd hear from him soon, others reporting about setbacks in his recovery. (In fact, Salem Media tapped Charlie to move into Dennis's affiliate stations in March.) Finally, last week, Dennis made his first public appearance since his spinal cord injury. PragerU CEO Marissa Streit interviewed him on camera, and one of the first things they discussed was Charlie's legacy.
It's a beautiful thing to see thousands of college students who share our values. It's invigorating. What he did — he didn't do it despite not going to college. He did it in part because he didn't go to college. He was allowed to gain wisdom on his own, and, God, did he ever!
It was jarring to hear Dennis speak with a weaker voice and to see with my own eyes that he truly can’t move his arms or legs, yet hearing him offer his moral clarity on current events was greatly comforting. That’s what drew me to him as a young man who grew up with little religion and who hungered for the kind of wisdom my secular schooling didn’t really provide. Dennis clearly recognized Charlie’s hunger for wisdom — and he knew college was the last place to find it. He was saying that most colleges make you dumber decades before we saw pro-Hamas protests on campus. In fact, he often shared that he found God in the 1970s at Columbia, where professors taught him that there was no difference between men and women.
I would try to listen to Dennis's three-hour radio show daily. My parents once told me that I cried uncontrollably when I missed Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood as a toddler. Although I never cried when I missed an hour of Dennis's radio show in the pre-podcast, pre-dinosaur days, it definitely would put a crimp in my day. Maybe the only guy who listened to Prager more than me was Charlie himself. Dennis noted in the interview:
Charlie listened to all 260 hours of my Torah commentary. He claimed that no one has listed to me more than Charlie Kirk himself. That meant a lot to me.
One of the challenges of listening to someone for so long is the sense that you’ve already heard everything they have to say. To a degree, I had reached that point with Dennis. After watching this interview, however, I see that he has so much new wisdom to share following the injury.
About his current mental state, he said:
I am thrilled to be alive. We are all our mind and our ability to communicate. Would I wish I could move my limbs? I dream about moving my limbs almost every night. Of course I would love it, but I'm alive, and I have my loved ones. And I have the public. And I think I can still make a difference. Would I rather be dead? It's inconceivable. I love life, and I love so many people. Of course, I love my wife, and my kids, and my grandkids.
He also put the lie to the claim that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza:
If you call out the horrible libel that Israel has committed quote-unquote genocide in Gaza, then that means you hate Palestinians. One has nothing to do with the other. There are Israeli Jews who volunteered to drive Gaza children to Israeli hospitals to be treated for cancer, for example. And they would be called "haters." So that's the general principle on the left: you differ with us, then you're a hater.
I recommend you watch the entire interview, in which they discuss issues such as free speech versus hate speech, whether America is experiencing a religious revival, and the transgender debate.
What was the secret behind Charlie's and Dennis’s profound impact on so many people? Dennis said that Charlie had a remarkable ability to make each person feel like they were his favorite. I also believe that, like Dennis, Charlie valued clarity and good-faith discussion—a point he expresses so well in this interview with Dennis:
Dennis explained the reason behind his own connection with so many listeners:
As one caller once said: "Dennis, I have one word to describe you," and I was worried. What is he gonna come out with? And he said, "transparent." One of the most common things people would say to me, you know, at an airport or somewhere in America: "Dennis, I feel like I know you." And my response always was: "You do."
I actually ran into Dennis at an airport a few years ago. He was heading to Chicago on the flight after my family's. I called out to him, "Dennis!" as if we were old friends. He was gracious and spent most of the time asking about my family and my work.
We've lost Charlie, and we’re deeply saddened because we felt like we knew him. But we still have the man who was one of Charlie Kirk's greatest influences. The last book Charlie was working on, about the Sabbath, is dedicated to Dennis.
Streit read the dedication, the most fitting words to end this column:
This books is dedicated to Dennis Prager. Your life's work brought me to honoring the Shabbat. As a result I wrote this book. Thank you, Dennis, for all you have done for humanity. God bless you.
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