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It is Okay to Think That Charlie Kirk was not Literally Jesus.
Charlie Kirk did not deserve to get shot in the jugular for expressing controversial political opinions. I actually agreed with many of Charlie Kirk's controversial political opinions. The thing about controversial political opinions though, is that lots of people don't like them. If you are a person who does not like Charlie Kirk's political opinions, here are some things that would be perfectly understandable for you to think or feel upon hearing the news that Charlie Kirk was shot and killed:
"Charlie Kirk once said gun rights are worth the cost of a few shooting deaths. Kinda funny now huh? I wonder if he's changed his mind."
"Sucks he died like that, but I'm kinda glad I don't have to see his tiny face spouting talking points anymore."
"Charlie Kirk was a massive hack. I think we should care about the kids shot at that school in Colorado more than him."
"Charlie Kirk wanted me kicked out of the country because of my political opinions. It's hard for me to feel bad for him."
To be clear, all of these are tasteless and (in my opinion) poorly thought-out, but they are well within the bounds of civil discourse. None of these are beyond the pale. None of these should get one fired from one's unrelated job. None of these are even close to inciting or advocating for violence.
I was shocked today when I saw a Republican Congressman announce a woke-era pressure campaign againt people who "belittled" the assasination. Apparently I have a much longer memory than many people. I still remember 2020. I still remember George Floyd. It wasn't just the riots, it wasn't just the demonization of physical policing tactics, it was the Orwellian psycholigical tyranny of not being able to express nuanced or contrary feelings about a tragic event. Never again. In a free society, people should be able to express their thoughts and feelings on major events, even if they aren't entirely thought-out or sanitized.
That congressman is a dumb asshole feigning virtue for political points. I think calling to lock up people who made belittling tweets about Kirk is worse than authoritarian, it is spitting on the very principles Kirk championed - free expression and debate.
That said, it is because I remember 2020 that I struggle to care. The people currently cheering for Kirk's murder wouldn't return the favour, they would silence me as quick as lightning given the opportunity. I am happy to fight for people who have views I find abhorrent. I can push down the disgust I feel and focus on the principle. I will not fight for people who would turn around and lock me up for fighting for their right to speak. The left were warned over and over and over again that they wouldn't remain in power forever and shouldn't do anything they wouldn't like done to them. We shouted until we were blue in the face that if they weaponised expression they would suffer when the right took charge once again. We were ignored at best and more often ostracised.
This is the kind of free speech I can enjoy. Love you Fruck.
Do you really fight for that out of some inherent admiration for a higher value or because tolerating those views is a price you pay for advancing good ideas in hopes that they flourish? I'll take the heat for my own stance on this but I don't regard free speech as an absolute value even though it's virtually impossible to overstate it's importance. It doesn't give you the right to harass people. It doesn't mean freedom from the consequences of your actions or statements. And I don't regard free speech as a value so high that it means we should burn the whole house down so one person can have his right to say something he's highly attached to.
Then you're fighting for a near non-existent number of people who feel the same way that you do. Unfortunately that isn't what most people want. More people will fight for privilege than principle. Inside of everyone (and especially where it concerns ideological lines) you're never going to coax the majority of people out of their friend/enemy distinction; whether they'll admit it to you or not.
Do you really fight for that out of some inherent admiration for a higher value or because tolerating those views is a price you pay for advancing good ideas in hopes that they flourish? I'll take the heat for my own stance on this but I don't regard free speech as an absolute value even though it's virtually impossible to overstate it's importance. It doesn't give you the right to harass people. It doesn't mean freedom from the consequences of your actions or statements. And I don't regard free speech as a value so high that it means we should burn the whole house down so one person can have his right to say something he's highly attached to.
I don't think there's a difference really. Rights aren't prayers, they are tools we use to protect society. I do think free speech and expression is the most important right, but that's because it is the last line of defence against the tyrannical - even if they lock you up, if you can talk you have the opportunity to convince your captor to let you go. Sure in practice that is very rare, but the potential is better than nothing. In abstract I can agree we shouldn't burn the whole thing down just because one guy can't shout obscenities at passers-by, but in practice that historically means I'm next. Unlike many on the right these days I will still defend the right to speak of people I find abhorrent, which is why that congressman annoys me. But fighting for it, that is fighting for your own demise.
The sad part, in my view, is that many of those who will suffer the consequences of 'belittling' speech will have been indoctrinated into it and raised in an environment where their speech didn't have consequences. They are victims of a zeitgeist shift, but to them, unaware of history, it will look like right wing authoritarianism run rampant. The cycle will begin anew. I'd be worried about that if I didn't think it inevitable.
Oh man, I know. And looking back, my life would have been much easier - and better - if I'd embraced the friend/enemy distinction. I used to feel like a poster child for 'here's why you shouldn't live by your principles.' But I think I'm just meant to stick to a smaller community, once I started focusing more on improving my community on the local level my life improved immeasurably. Liberal democracy is not entirely stable in a polarised society I think, it tilts back and forth. People like me will never be in power, but we remind those in power that their righteousness is false, and they can and should do better, which - up to a point - is useful imo. It is also probably cope, but it works for me.
I think rights are more than just tools we use to protect higher values. They're the values we aspire to themselves because we're happier living in societies that carve out spaces for different human activities. I think depending on where you are in society you're going to have a different view on what kind of society you live in. In my own case I can agree with what people like Jaron Lanier says and I think many people in country's across the world would say the same thing for themselves, even without an explicit commitment to free speech. If you're a black teenager that inherits the circumstances and conditions of having to grow up in inner city Detroit, you still may not say you live in a tyranny, but you live in a dog-eat-dog world in a 1st world shithole society that doesn't care about you, from some of their perspectives. And it's hard to disagree with that when it's baked into your life experiences. Those communities would greatly enjoy a little more security and a little less freedom if you offered it to them on a plate. There are compromises to reach on civil liberties which include free speech. I used to get criticized all the time for "not understanding" how important freedom of speech is. I can assure people I absolutely understand it's importance. But it's important to understand there are different sociopolitical planes and axes that people live under. And freedom of speech isn't a one-size fits all solution. Countries do what they believe makes sense in their circumstance and history.
This is why I'm a conservative and think it's ultimately the proper fit for society. It's hard for mere mortals to know what will work at a first glance. Even a John von Neumann or Einstein can't hold a candle to the thousands of years of human trial and error. The world's complicated and individuals have only seen so much of it, which is why you have to live life with a useful rule of thumb. Just like in evolutionary biology, we learn that adaptions are 'good' inasmuch as they promote survival, what's old and lasts through time as tradition is also adaptive becauase traditions are evolutionary adaptions for societies. We want something so secure that we can't even remember a time when it wasn't around. The longer something has been around, the more likely it's weathered every imaginable storm, under every condition, on every subject and at every point. When people come around and say "times have changed," that isn't a serious argument when you have 300 million years to wade through in order to make that statement. Anyone would laugh a remark like that off the debate stage. At the very least tradition works and it's dues need to be paid because it's a way of being pragmatic.
No civilization out there better grasped that than the Romans. The highest authority to them in their society wasn't science, it was the "mos maiorum," or what we translate as "the way of the ancestors," (i.e. 'tradition'). And to question or put it in doubt, was literally to question the experts. Incidentally no other society was as anti-Utopian as the Romans were by the same principle. Tradition in this sense is ideologically agnostic. The content of the belief itself doesn't matter, which is why different societies have different traditions. All it has to be is useful, stabilizing, adaptive or productive and the best way to know that is how long it's been around. How else can you forecast what's rational? Only by repetitive, brute and often 'very painful' experience and by what 'works'. This is why contra an earlier statement by someone here who claimed conservatives want to tear down liberal institutions, no conservative I’ve ever met has said that. Conservatives are drawing some very important lessons on the utility and follies of liberalism on their 21st century Jupyter notebooks. Even Einstein conceded that:
"As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists."
I have had trouble answering this, because I think we're essentially in agreement about rights, you're just focused on the immediate future while I'm focused on the distant future. Because yeah it does come down to trade offs, and it's hard to support the idea that the first (or the second) amendment is what some poor kid in Detroit or Chiraq needs more of. So it's a bit selfish of me to insist on them just because my own community is in the position where the greatest assaults are on our freedom by pencil pushing bureaucrats making up rules to justify their pay cheques. But that is the position I believe I am in.
But having said that, that Detroit kid also isn't benefiting from getting fired from his job at Wendy's for posting a video laughing at the death of some white guy whom the media claims says black people were happier as slaves. And I do worry that part of the problem is that modern society sees rights too much as values and not enough as tools. Like we've sacralised the idea of the human right, and now everything from the internet to hormone treatment is a human right that people are willing to burn down society over. And maybe I'm pattern matching too aggressively, but I can't help but see a through line from the increasing abrogation of the first amendment under Obama and subsequent administrations and the rise in chaos online and off. It's obviously not the incitement, but I think it definitely plays a part.
Sorry this isn't more coherent, it's a challenging subject to deal with. You nailed it with your second paragraph though.
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