Remembering Charlie. The Amazing Erika Kirk. Will There Be a Government Shutdown? Flabby Young Minds. Lowry: Roots of ‘Trans’ Fanaticism. More …

The huge memorial service for Charlie Kirk yesterday at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, was like nothing we’ve ever seen. Except that it was very much in line with our best traditions.

It was like a revival. It was a revival. Indeed, Glenn Reynolds in his Substack post calls the gathering “a New Great Awakening.” Reynolds quotes several great tweets highlighting this. More tepidly, the New York Times commented that Kirk’s life “fused” politics and religion, which certainly was reflected in the memorial.

For those of us who’re still trying to forgive somebody who hurt our feelings back in high school, this was the moment that said it all:

Erika Kirk revealed that she forgives the man who killed her husband Charlie and preached unity and peace in a stunning, searing speech that left mourners speechless and crying on Sunday.

“He wanted to save young men. Just like the one who took his life,” Kirk’s widow said through tears, speaking behind the presidential seal on stage at State Farm Stadium.

She added: “I forgive him because it was what Christ did. And what Charlie would do.”

I was surprised at how explicitly religious Don Trump Jr.’s remarks were. He talked about the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen. Not what I expected of Don Jr. The theme that Kirk died a martyr was sounded by many speakers, including President Trump. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s remarks were “the perfect blend of humor and heart.” Curmudgeon Stephen Kruiser found the memorial “a hope-filled clarion call.”

Kirk’s defense of freedom of speech was remarked upon repeatedly. New York Post columnist Miranda Devine celebrated Charlie Kirk’s grace and courage. Erika Kirk revealed the words from Second Lady Usha Vance (“that precious woman”?) that helped her survive the initial shock. But Charlie Kirk was not the only target, Yuval Levin writes:

That political order, the liberal-democratic republic we have inherited from prior generations of Americans and are privileged to enjoy and obliged to pass along in decent shape to our children, has been so successful that we now routinely take its benefits for granted….

But Charlie Kirk’s murderer showed us what real-world alternatives would actually look like. Our political order has been so successful that we too easily forget what it arose to prevent and replace. In this world, and especially in the morally diverse mass societies of the modern West, the only serious alternative to some kind of classically liberal politics is violence.

Needless to say, this is not good news. It means our range of options is more constrained than we would like, and maybe also that it is more constrained than the alternatives available to prior generations in other civilizations. The liberal society — that is, a society organized to safeguard equal rights and limit the powers of both governments and majorities through institutions of law and consent — has never been best understood as a utopian proposition.

Regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Peter Savrodnik interviews Utah Governor Spencer Cox at The Free Press. They talk about “the future of the right, the state of the left, and ‘the God-shaped hole in our hearts.’ “

A New York Post editorial describes the memorial as a message to the mass media, and Satan is reported to be having a bad day, too.

We’re facing a government shutdown. Again. But it’s okay this time because, if it happens, it’s the Dems forcing the shutdown, according to Politico. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson is introducing a bill that he says in a Wall Street Journal op-ed would end government shutdowns forever. Johnson’s bill would convert to multiyear spending cycles.

With another shutdown looming, I’ve introduced an even simpler bill, the Eliminate Shutdowns Act, that could end the drama and uncertainty of Congress’s budgetary dysfunction. Some argued the 2019 bill would lead to higher spending and prohibit consideration of other measures until appropriations bills were passed. Those were legitimate concerns. My new bill simply provides for automatic two-week rolling continuing resolutions for any department for which an appropriation bill or longer-term continuing resolution hasn’t been passed. This would keep spending flat by prorating the previous year’s spending level.

This simple bill could be a game changer. With government funding and functioning assured, Congress would no longer have to spend weeks and months arguing over how to keep government departments open after failing to pass appropriation bills. Appropriations for individual departments would no longer be held hostage until a deal is done for all.

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal praises Senator Ted Cruz for what it calls his “finest hour.” Cruz came down on FCC Chair Brendan Carr for his remarks about ABC and Jimmy Kimmel. Meanwhile, National Review’s John Fund has another idea: the FCC is a New Deal relic that should be abolished.

The “Gen Z Stare” is the result of overindulgence in social media, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Allysia Finley, in a column headlined “How Social Media Creates Flabby Young Brains“:

“The most common meaning is a vacant expression a Gen Zer gives in response to a question,” a NBC report explained. “The stare occurs in classrooms, restaurants, at work and more settings.” Psychologists attribute the dazed look to excessive screen time stunting the development of social skills, which was exacerbated by the pandemic lockdowns.

Many digital natives exhibit autistic traits like difficulty reading social cues and communicating. This isn’t to say that social media or videogames cause autism. But they may give rise to behaviors that are associated with the disorder and fuel a sense among parents that something isn’t right with kids these days….

Is it any surprise that performance on standardized tests has fallen over the past decade as kids spend more time online? Or that many Generation Z members behave like zombies?

States are experimenting with regulations to curb adolescent digital addictions, but the problem defies a pat government solution. And it requires cultural introspection. When kids see adults scrolling their phones at all hours of the day, they begin to think this is normal and acceptable behavior. It isn’t.

The UN Security Council meets tomorrow to discuss the Middle East. The meeting is scheduled when Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah is in full swing; “The move is meant to sideline Israeli officials who will be observing the holiday,” sources tell The Free Beacon. Meanwhile, over the weekend, a 23-year-old spouting pro-Palestine gibberish shot his way into a country club wedding reception, killing one and injuring others. A wedding reception?

Shortly after Jimmy Kimmel’s show was suspended by ABC bigwigs, somebody fired on an ABC affiliate. Townhall’s Matt Vespa says there’s a reason this story was buried:

You’re not going to hear about it, especially after the suspect has been identified. His name is Anibal Hernandez Santana. So, not a white guy. The kicker is he’s also vehemently anti-Trump.

Here is another kind of violence the Left is inclined to censor: “transgender” violence. Breccan Thies writes in The Federalist that it is becoming a national emergency. Fascinating information on Nicholas Roske, now Sophie, who tried to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Like the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s murder, he used the notorious Discord platform. National Review’s Rich Lowry addresses “the roots of transgender fanaticism,” asking, “Why is the trans cause advanced with such fever and hate?”

First of all, the people who have “transitioned” have poured a massive amount of emotional and financial investment into their choice, and there is no going back. The last thing that they want to hear — from anyone — is that it is all a fraud, that they’ve wasted all that psychic energy and money, that they’ve harmed themselves via hormones or surgery for no reason.

It would be like talking to “anti-racist” advocates who, on top of their poisonous views about American society, have gone to great lengths to make themselves black but harbor doubts that they really are.

The level of delusion involved in the trans cause, meanwhile, requires pushing on all fronts to get every claim of the trans advocates accepted and to squash all dissent. If there’s one crack in the edifice, it discredits the entire enterprise.