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If people are asking Charlie Kirk of all people to defend their views, they've got problems much more fundamental than that. Charlie Kirk was good for the establishment right. He wasn't good for philosophical conservatism. He was a polished product marketed to people, in the same way Ben Shapiro was the "cool kid's philosopher."
Allow me to rephrase;
“If someone is glad that Charlie Kirk, a moderate conservative squish, is dead and deserved to be killed for what he believed, they’d be ecstatic if I or people like me died / were killed based on what I believe.”
This thought occurred simultaneously to maybe tens of millions of people all at once yesterday.
Kirk apparently said the following:
This is, in fact, as far as I've understood, a very, very radical view in the American political sphere on a key issue, one which some might call the defining issue of American politics. It's not the one that would have been shared by the Trump admin: when Trump issued his anti-affirmative-action EO, the framing was that CRA was good and that the things he was banning were going against its spirit. And as the quote says, Kirk himself calls it a radical opinion!
Of course, for many or even most of the leftists celebrating Kirk's demise, the point is not any of the race-based stuff but his strong Christian conservative opinions, such as opposing abortion including for rape and underaged kids, but the people doing that stuff do not do it because they believe Kirk to be a moderate.
I've also seen a number of far right types on social media saying that Kirk was a moderate when he started his career but had been evolving rightwards towards being "/ourguy/" before his tragic death.
For these things I've learned to go straight to the video. Especially after the NYT had to release a revision because they quoted Kirk as saying something he was actually rebutting.
From what i can tell, the article is referencing the event TPUSA's "America Fest 2023". I have watched the video and couldn't find the quote. I have tried to find other videos of this event with Kirk but couldn't. I asked Gemini to help but still can't find the quote on video.
If he said it, based on other things he said that day on the video I could find, the context was probably something like "The Civil Rights Act didn't go far enough to protect all people of all races, whites included." Because on camera that day he's decrying racism against all peoples.
There's a video where he confirms that the quote is true. He says that they talk about why the Civil Rights Act was a mistake once a week. He also confirms that he thinks MLK is a bad guy, which is also a radical view - the latest polling I could find indicates that 81% of Americans think that MLK had a positive impact on the country, with polling division indicating that at least some of the other respondents (for some reason Pew doesn't indicate how many of the others answer in the negative and how many say they don't know) would be black people who think that MLK wasn't radical enough.
If the meaning was as you speculate, why would he call that a very, very radical view?
This is a pretty silly way of trying to paint him as a radical. Comparing a summary of his position to answers on a poll is a terrible measure of disagreement, and "I disagree" and "this is too radical" are two completely different things.
They are at least material against the claim that Kirk can be best described as a "moderate conservative squish".
The only part of that statement I'd disagree with is "squish".
Anyway, what is even the point you're trying to make here? When people are talking about his views they're trying to say that he wasn't saying any crazy extremist "fighting words" shit, and that he was trying to persuade his opponents by means of civil debate. If that's so beyond the pale that it warrants cheering for his death, than what the hell is supposed to be an acceptable way of being a conservative and participating in politics?
The point being answered is “If someone is glad that Charlie Kirk, a moderate conservative squish, is dead and deserved to be killed for what he believed, they’d be ecstatic if I or people like me died / were killed based on what I believe”. The lefties who are cheering for his death would not have seen him as a moderate, and as mentioned many times, he himself referred to his view on a key issue as being very, very radical, making it less likely this would be his self-description, either.
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