When the late Charlie Kirk traveled to Old Orchard Beach last month to speak to conservatives at a Maine Civic Action event, he claimed our state was on track to become “a Third World dumping ground.”

“Maine is being invaded,” the right-wing activist told a crowd at the Dunegrass Golf Club.

The Aug. 2 speech, which Kirk made available on a podcast, griped about change in Maine, a place he said he had been visiting for 10 years.

“They’re trying to replace you by mass migration,” Kirk told his audience, adding, “Maine is for Mainers.”

Despite this harsh, hateful attitude — typical of the positions with which he made a name for himself — Kirk’s assassination last week led to an outpouring of praise for his contributions, including vigils across Maine and U.S. flags at half staff.

It’s one thing to mourn a young man cut down too soon. It’s quite another to pretend Kirk, a racist who plugged an anti-gay, anti-women agenda, was a model American. 

Although Kirk, who created and led the youth-focused Turning Point USA, may have been brave and principled in his way, he didn’t hesitate to smear personally those with whom he disagreed.

Addressing the crowd in Maine, Kirk described two-term Gov. Janet Mills as “a traitor” who “should be run out of the governor’s mansion. She’s a disaster.”

Those aren’t the words of a civic-minded political rival. They’re the words of a rabblerouser. I don’t always agree with Mills, or any politician, but to call her “a traitor” without saying anything to back it up is unreasonable.

Kirk argued that “foreigners” were “overrunning the state of Maine” and “it’s worse than you might think.”

He blamed “college-educated elites” and Somali immigrants for colonizing the state and turning native Mainers into second-class citizens. Already, he said, Lewiston and South Portland were “unrecognizable” because of their immigrant communities.

I’m in Lewiston almost daily and often in South Portland. Both are a whole lot nicer than they were just a generation ago. Kirk just didn’t like seeing immigrants on the streets.

“Somali immigrants are not making this state better,” Kirk said, declaring that Maine was facing “suicide by immigration.”

Oh, come on. Maine is facing a demographic challenge as its aged population keeps aging. We need the energy and talent of newcomers who have embraced the American Dream just as past waves of immigrants have done. Besides, more than 90% of Maine’s people are white. We’re not about to go extinct, as Kirk claimed.

Weirdly, though, Kirk didn’t want young people to educate themselves to better compete with the rest of the world. Instead, he urged young men to learn a trade and young women to find a husband.

Kirk painted Mainers as tough, gritty people with blue-collar jobs who work hard and put family first. He warned them to be wary of higher education, claiming some colleges in Maine were “very expensive and to the left of Stalingrad,” churning out graduates who learn to hate the country, loathe themselves and perhaps end up changing their gender.

A poorly educated state that makes itself less welcoming isn’t going anywhere.

The reality isn’t that Mainers are being replaced, as Kirk put it. It’s that they’re doing what it takes to forge a future worthy of the hard work of our ancestors and the dreams of our children.

I’m sorry that Kirk, who possessed an admirable commitment to free expression, won’t be around to see his agenda lose out.