I know he liked to publicize the exchanges where he got the best of someone, and bury the others, and that he was a far, far cry from a public intellectual. Still, he talked to folks about ideas, and that's something that we should have more of.
That should be something that we strive for, but I fear we'll see it less and less. Who'se going to want to go around and argue with people now?
I guess the steelmanned version of his beliefs would be something like, "racial and sexual minorities are an enemy to the white Americans who own this country; they threaten things we value about our culture and society, and we have no obligation to tolerate or accommodate them if we don't want to."
He spoke out against the Civil Rights act. He said the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory (that immigration is a deliberate attempt to dilute and ultimately replace the white race) is "not a theory, it's a reality." He said the Levitican prescription to stone gay men is "God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters." (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk#Social_policy)
Coverage of Kirk's killing has largely skirted around his views, because to describe them at all feels like speaking ill of the dead. If you bring up the fact that Kirk was a loathsome hatemonger, it somewhat tempers your message that political violence is never acceptable
The United States, like many developed nations, is experiencing a fertility crisis: it doesn't produce enough families and resulting children to sustain it's current population.
The US could take steps to address the underlying problems that result in declining fertility for it's current population, but it's unlikely to do so for several reasons that all boil down to political realities where the people that are most incentivized to vote (retired people who earn social security) would probably bear the brunt of the (significant) costs of such solutions. See the idea of "concentrated benefits, diffuse costs".
So instead the US uses immigration to fill the gap left by declining fertility rates (an option not equally available to all developed countries), resulting in young US citizens continuing to struggle to form families, and producing a fraying of the social fabric that such an inability to form families is likely to have on a society.
So you can see why some people would be duped into such a conspiracy theory, which purports to explain what people are seeing with their very eyes.
On top of that I don't even think most boomers need to be inconvininced. Increase capital taxes, remove the ceiling for SS taxes, give wokers a 4 day workweek, raise minimum wage, invest in 3rd places. A few steps give people the time and energy to meet and make families.
But it seems like we really will just go to civil war before we make sure rich people contribute to the nation.
If you want more children you have to reward mothers directly and significantly in line with their potential earnings. Not a paltry few thousand dollars, but more than enough to offset the price of daycare in hcol cities. I want to mimic social security but for families, and that means concentrated benefits (that directly incentivize voting turnout and interest group formation).
At the same time I want our country to continue to be competitive globally when it comes to business, and not turn into whatever Europe has become. We can't just add this as a line item to our budget. We are not that rich and we have financial problems that are looming.