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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

I see a few common types of criticism of Charlie Kirk floating around in response to his death. These appear to be gotchas that people are using to justify his assassination, or that he had it coming. I don't think these gotchas are as valid as some people think they are. It's a mixture of his own quotes and things he has said previously.

  1. Kirk said "I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage" so no empathy for him.
  2. Kirk said "It's worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights" so he deserves it.
  3. Charlie Kirk asked his listeners to bail out the person that attacked Paul Pelosi and celebrated it.
  4. The rest that I've seen so far are weaker arguments with less traction about Charlie Kirk saying something mean about people like George Floyd or great replacement theory etc. so I'm not gonna address those.

There are also some comparisons of Kirk's assassination to the assassination of two democrat Minnesota lawmakers, and how the right gave little care for the killing of the two democrat politicians. I go more into detail about why these are not comparable here: https://www.themotte.org/post/3128/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/364180?context=8#context

Here is the full context of the empathy quote:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fact-check-charlie-kirk-once-001900786.html

So the new communications strategy for Democrats, now that their polling advantage is collapsing in every single state… collapsing in Ohio. It's collapsing even in Arizona. It is now a race where Blake Masters is in striking distance. Kari Lake is doing very, very well. The new communications strategy is not to do what Bill Clinton used to do, where he would say, "I feel your pain." Instead, it is to say, "You're actually not in pain." So let's just, little, very short clip. Bill Clinton in the 1990s. It was all about empathy and sympathy. I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage. But, it is very effective when it comes to politics. Sympathy, I prefer more than empathy. That's a separate topic for a different time.

He also had this to say about empathy

The same people who lecture you about 'empathy' have none for the soldiers discharged for the jab, the children mutilated by Big Medicine, or the lives devastated by fentanyl pouring over the border.

Spare me your fake outrage, your fake science, and your fake moral superiority.

So Kirk is criticizing the liberal use of empathy, and he directly states he prefers sympathy. Not a gotcha. Maybe one doesn't need to empathize with him, but at least show some sympathy since the stated reasoning is he said he doesn't like empathy, but he did not say the same about sympathy? Kirk's stance on the word empathy does not justify gleeful jubilation of his death.

Here is the full context of the second amendment quote:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fact-check-charlie-kirk-once-205500283.html

AUDIENCE QUESTION: How's it going, Charlie? I'm Austin. I just had a question related to Second Amendment rights. We saw the shooting that happened recently and a lot of people are upset. But, I'm seeing people argue for the other side that they want to take our Second Amendment rights away. How do we convince them that it's important to have the right to defend ourselves and all that good stuff?

CHARLIE KIRK: Yeah, it's a great question. Thank you. So, I'm a big Second Amendment fan but I think most politicians are cowards when it comes to defending why we have a Second Amendment. This is why I would not be a good politician, or maybe I would, I don't know, because I actually speak my mind.

The Second Amendment is not about hunting. I love hunting. The Second Amendment is not even about personal defense. That is important. The Second Amendment is there, God forbid, so that you can defend yourself against a tyrannical government. And if that talk scares you — "wow, that's radical, Charlie, I don't know about that" — well then, you have not really read any of the literature of our Founding Fathers. Number two, you've not read any 20th-century history. You're just living in Narnia. By the way, if you're actually living in Narnia, you would be wiser than wherever you're living, because C.S. Lewis was really smart. So I don't know what alternative universe you're living in. You just don't want to face reality that governments tend to get tyrannical and that if people need an ability to protect themselves and their communities and their families.

Now, we must also be real. We must be honest with the population. Having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty. Driving comes with a price. 50,000, 50,000, 50,000 people die on the road every year. That's a price. You get rid of driving, you'd have 50,000 less auto fatalities. But we have decided that the benefit of driving — speed, accessibility, mobility, having products, services — is worth the cost of 50,000 people dying on the road. So we need to be very clear that you're not going to get gun deaths to zero. It will not happen. You could significantly reduce them through having more fathers in the home, by having more armed guards in front of schools. We should have a honest and clear reductionist view of gun violence, but we should not have a utopian one.

You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won't have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It's drivel. But I am, I, I — I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe.

So then, how do you reduce? Very simple. People say, oh, Charlie, how do you stop school shootings? I don't know. How did we stop shootings at baseball games? Because we have armed guards outside of baseball games.. That's why. How did we stop all the shootings at airports? We have armed guards outside of airports. How do we stop all the shootings at banks? We have armed guards outside of banks. How did we stop all the shootings at gun shows? Notice there's not a lot of mass shootings at gun shows, there's all these guns. Because everyone's armed. If our money and our sporting events and our airplanes have armed guards, why don't our children?

This is so clearly not a celebration of gun deaths from Charlie Kirk. It's part of a larger argument. He's not calling for or supporting the use of guns in senseless killings. I think this is a stronger "gotcha" and the irony is definitely there. I do think the argument that his stance of gun control directly contributed to an environment that made him being killed by guns more likely does have some element of truth to it. But Kirk's stance is not a gleeful condonation of deaths via guns. It's also a pretty standard pro 2nd amendment stance.

One could argue the rates of death to usage in auto accident deaths is much lower and the benefits much higher compared to the availability of guns in America. But then they would be making the same type of argument Kirk is making here. I don't think people would say someone that dies in an auto accident deserves it because they support driving cars. I do think at a certain point the statistics will shift my stance that the risk of guns outweigh the benfits procured by the second amendment. Most people using this quote are not even willing to have that conversation.

Also, we have to consider the usage of the tool. It would be extremely ironic if Kirk died via gunfire in the process of protecting god-given rights, as he claimed. We don't know the motive of the killer, but I highly doubt the intention was to protect any god-given rights. Going back to the car analogy, if someone were to argue we should allow unlimited speed on a highway but dies from drunk driving, there is some element of irony, but it's not as ironic as if that person were to die from driving high speeds on the highway. Neither did Kirk die from a random altercation on the street or a stray bullet, which I think would give more credence to the irony factor. Kirk was deliberately assassinated via gun for likely politically motivated reasons.

Here is the full context of the Paul Pelosi quote: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/charlie-kirk-bail-out-alleged-paul-pelosi-attacker-1234621493/

"Politico says, ‘top Republicans reject any link between GOP rhetoric and Paul Pelosi assault.’ Of course, you should reject any link!

Why is the Republican party — why is the conservative movement to blame for gay, schizophrenic, nudists that are hemp jewelry makers, breaking into somebody’s home or maybe not breaking into somebody’s home? Why are we to blame for that exactly?

And why is he still in jail? Why has he not been bailed out? By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out. I bet his bail’s like thirty or forty thousand bucks. Bail him out and then go ask him some questions. I wonder what his bail is? They’re going after him with attempted murder, political assassination, all this sort of stuff.

I’m not qualifying it. I think it’s awful, it’s not right. But why is it that in Chicago you’re able to commit murder and be out the next day?

Not an exact comparison for a few reasons. Paul Pelosi is not dead. Furthermore, this statement is made in context of a world that many criminals from blue cities constantly get out on bail. See Karmelo Anthony or Decarlos Brown Jr. as recent high profile examples of criminals getting out on bail (In the case of Decarlos Brown, he is not out on bail for murder, but he was out on bail when he murdered the Ukrainian girl).

Kirk is not stating the attacker is a hero. He's saying we should bail him out to ask questions. He does come off a bit celebratory of the attack. But Paul Pelosi is not dead, and I'm fairly certain news was out by this point that he was recovering, which gives for more room to makes jokes about the other side than murder.

He also literally states that he thinks the attack was awful and it's not right.

The constant use of out of context quotes to push an agenda or to condone murder is frankly sickening and all so tiresome. Find me an example of Charlie Kirk being gleeful at the deaths of others, and I'll adjust my stances a bit. But so far, these are not it.

EDIT: Adding in this as one more example of a criticism I just saw from someone I consider a centrist.

  • Kirk thinks 11 year old rape victims should be forced to deliver their babies if impregnated.

This is followed up by a statement that Kirk has "abhorent" politics, he was perpetuating bad ideas to a wide audience, and that we're better off without him. He did express symapthy for his wife and kids. My benefit of the doubt is that all but 2 of the people he is talking to had been making fun of Charlie and criticising him, so he subconsciously adopts a more critical stance.

Source of that claim is around 18:20 in this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=aL1k2I1HtXE&t=1066

By the way this is really fucking painful to transcript becuase Charlie and the other person speaking keep talking over each other so I will put this AI transcript for now and clean up later. Just watch the video at the timestamp i gave if you want the full context.

I how are you nice to see you um so I just have one question there's like in any case you don't think there's any case where abortion should be legal there's a very very rare couple cases Okay so you do think that a couple cases is legal if if if cesarian section is not going to save the mother's life and the mother's life is actually at risk which is debated amongst growing numbers of OBGYNs okay that is the only case where abortion should be should be allowed but people say it is a growing consensus in the pro-life world that abortion is never medically necessary okay so if you had a daughter and she was 10 and she got red and she was going to give birth and she no wait oh and she was going to give birth and she was going to live would you want her to go through that and carry her that's awfully graphic it's no but it's a real life scenario that happens to many the answer is yes the baby would be delivered oh okay great so I that's insane um but let me tell you why no hold on let me ask you a question there's two ultrasounds I have one is a baby conceived in one is a baby conceived by a loving couple which one is which which which person here was conceived by tell me which one was conceived by you don't know exactly cuz it's all human rights and it's all human matter but it's about your daughter who's pass to give birth to it and it's going to be tortured by that for the rest of her life that's going to take away every freedom she's ever going to have that's going to ruin her life she's going to grow up and she's going to be attached crime the the point is how you were conceived is irrelevant to what human rights you get when hold on one second if a person can see the walks down the side of the street it's not like they don't get First Amendment rights or second amendment rights the worst thing to do to that do the daughter is to then say hey we're going to go murder the being inside of you they would wouldn't even know like listen they they wouldn't know listen listen listen listen but wouldn't it wouldn't it be a better story to say something evil happened and we do something good in the face of evil instead of saying we're going to do evil and then murder the being because we're going to we're going to we're going to Pander to the evil no what makes what makes the West great is that we do good after evil not evil after evil it's not not about the being and the the cells it's not about no no no I'm speaking no I'm speaking no I'm speaking I'm speaking no I'm speaking no I'm speaking no I'm speaking no I'm speaking no I'm speaking thank you so it's not I'm not talking about that I'm talking about the person no I'm talking about the person who is dealing with the pregnancy I am not talking about the cells I don't I don't care listen the fetus the whatever I don't care about that right now until it is formed if there is if there is a 5-year-old child who is pregnant and the baby is 2 weeks can't get prant actually they have and they have given birth there is one recorded case of a 5-year-old gave birth is is that is that common yes not it's common for 5-year-old get sometimes and it's if they get pregnant I think they should be able to have medical access to something that could save not only just their life but like their livelihood how many how many I'm curious how many I hope your daughter lives a very happy life and gets away from you okay so that is really nasty and so her her belief system just so we're clear is that the time's up yeah no I got it it's fine I mean it's insanely nasty and we'll talk again

I expect a better take or example from someone with a centrist view. The reason that claim might come off as shocking is because the imagery of a raped 11 year old being forced to give birth is sickening. But if your stance is that is that the fetus are human beings with rights and that abortion is murder, it is not an absurd position to hold that aborting the child in an 11 year old is wrong even if the circumstances of that pregnancy is horrifying and evil. This is a logical conclusion from his openly stated beliefs about abortion. Also this is an absurdly rare scenario that the other person, Maren, brought up to justify abortions. It's not like Kirk randomly made that statement to be edgy, it's in response to a hypothetical scenario made by his opponent.