It is hard to believe that a year has passed since Charlie’s assassination.

Paying fitting tribute to his life’s work is daunting, and I have been hesitant to write anything at all—especially when I think of his wife, Erika, and their children. None of us can fathom what they have endured.

But we must keep Charlie’s life and work alive in memory and let them inspire and inform our own.

Prudence is an old word with a venerable tradition in Western thought and politics, though its full meaning has grown obscure in modern times. It is also the virtue I most associate with Charlie—and the one we would do best to learn from as we continue to fight for the country he loved.

Charlie was a principled man, but he was no ideological fanatic and no dogmatist on questions of politics and policy. He was always reading, learning, and talking with Americans from every walk of life: college students, grassroots conservatives, the donor class, and leaders across the country.

He knew what many in the conservative movement have forgotten: while the principles of justice advanced by the American Founders are eternal, circumstances change, and the application of principle must change with them. Dangers that one generation rightly ranks first may not deserve that place in the next, let alone a half-century later. The moral, political, and material circumstances of a great country are no less changeable. Navigating that complexity in pursuit of the good, while minimizing harm, is the essence of prudential statesmanship.

Prudence of this kind is built out of experience, which a long life supplies in abundance. The young have not accumulated such stock from which to draw. Sound political judgment early in life requires a voracious appetite for grappling with hard problems, a willingness to be taught by mentors, and a self-imposed, methodical program of study. It is difficult work, and most who attempt it fail.

Not Charlie. Year after year he labored to understand the true state of America and the Right, and then to explain to his fellow citizens where the country ought to be headed.

What Turning Point USA became under his leadership was a remarkable achievement. His goal, however, was something higher than the growth of the organization he founded. Second only to honoring God and protecting his growing family, Charlie aimed at nothing less than cultural and constitutional revival.

We honor Charlie properly by remembering these facts of his life and work. We honor him further by continuing to build, intelligently and prudently, the America we want for ourselves, our fellow citizens, and our children and grandchildren.