I could have been Charlie Kirk, and Charlie could have been me

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I grew up with Charlie Kirk. No, I don’t mean that we went to school together or lived on the same street as kids.

Charlie grew up in the suburbs outside Chicago, while I spent much of my life in Carroll County, roughly 20 miles west of Baltimore. Charlie was only a year my senior. He and I grew up in the same America. We were close to the same age when the cataclysmic September 11 attacks took place. We were around the same age when Barack Obama rose to sudden prominence and popularity and took the White House. We both watched the same conservative pundits, and both became involved with grassroots campaigns. We were both raised Christian, but did not really invest in our faith until early adulthood. We are both husbands and both fathers.

In some ways, I could have been Ch