A Statement on Charlie Kirk’s Death

My name is Eric Ruth and I take grit seriously.

Four years ago, I began hosting Sunday meetings focused on resilience, discipline, and truth. Not as motivation or therapy, but as practice. Last week, I formalized that work by founding the House of Grit: a place where resilience is treated as sacred, honesty is non-negotiable, and comfort is not the goal.

This isn’t for everyone. It isn’t supposed to be.

Each week we study examples of discipline and restraint; the real ones. One week it’s Kobe Bryant’s devotion to work. Another it’s Marcus Aurelius and temperance. This week, for the first time as the recognized leader of this House, I’m addressing the death of Charles James Kirk.

I didn’t know Charlie Kirk. Before last week, I couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup. What I do know is this: some people admired him, some despised him, and one man murdered him. That act was unjust, immoral, and evil. But it was not surprising.

Wisdom understands that events are the outcome of countless choices colliding in a single, gone-too-soon moment. When public rhetoric is persistently inflammatory, when emotions are stoked rather than disciplined, and when a society is saturated with instability and weaponizes it, it all compounds. That doesn’t justify violence. It explains reality. Confusing the two is intellectual laziness.

My criticism isn’t of the dead. It’s of the living.

I’m speaking to two groups; of men: those who rushed online to posture and perform grief and those who celebrated a man’s death. Both responses are failures of character. And neither is what grit looks like. Both are ego pretending to be virtue.

Grit is much, much quieter.

When the financial system collapsed in 2008, some men broke. Some blamed. And some showed up the next morning, did their work without guarantees and rebuilt.

That’s grit: returning to an unemotional baseline and continuing your duty.

Complaining is not action. Outrage is not service. Posting is not courage.

If you felt anything but pity, remorse, or sadness over Kirk’s death, pause. Two men collided. One is gone and the other soon will be. Nothing was gained. Virtue demands that we preserve life so we can serve our communities, self, and faith. Anything that cuts service short is nothing noble.

Contrast this with men who accepted accountability. Kobe Bryant was flawed. He also owned failure, acknowledged perspectives he didn’t understand, and returned to work. Humility is not weakness. It’s the price of greatness.

Public figures who demand moral authority but refuse to admit error erode their own credibility. Good men apologize when they are wrong, even when it costs them. Those who believe themselves above apology suffer the hardest endings. Faith without humility hardens into ideology, and ideology eventually breaks.

To the gay and trans men reading this: you deserve dignity as human beings. You will also experience friction in a society organized around majorities. What matters is how you meet it. Complaining has never changed history. Excellence and virtue and madness for our benefit has. Character has. Build those relentlessly.

This was never about politics. It’s about comfort and character.

So here’s my charge to the men reading: Stop arguing. Stop posturing. Start acting. Get involved. Serve your people. Do the hard, boring, necessary work.

Marcus Aurelius said it best:
“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”

Have a good one. See you Sunday morning.

-Eric