Last night, I was listening to Chopin's Nocturne No 2 in E-Flat Major, Opus 9 No 2:
It was while I was getting ready for bed, and for two days now, "current events" in the world had been weighing on me heavily. I was struck by the stark contrast between the beauty that humanity is capable of producing and the tragedy of recent days. That humanity is a "dangerous, savage child-race" is constantly on my mind.
I cried. And then I tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep for what seemed like hours.
At first, I wasn't sure if I wanted to include a table of contents... On the one hand, this is a very long post, and seeing the overall structure might be helpful. On the other hand, it might encourage people to skip to sections they want to read, which I think does grasping the overall narrative and main theses a disservice, since each section builds on the previous ones.
But one thing that I've found that has led me to adding this in is that most people aren't actually taking the time to read through the whole post (which is totally understandable in today's busy and short-attention-span world). A somewhat humorous consequence of this, given the logic and flow of the topics, is that my right-leaning friends who read only the first few sections get the superficial impression that I'm on "their side" (though I think they might object to a number of points I make later), and my left-leaning friends get the impression that I'm some kind of Charlie Kirk fan-boy, my disclaimers to the contrary notwithstanding.
So in the spirit of giving readers a preview of the breadth of topics and angles I'm covering and to preempt some erroneous conclusions about where my "sympathies" lie, here's the table of contents:
- An Unlikely Blog Post
- Murder and Wrongness
- People Are Doing the Best That They Can
- The Tragedy of Killing
- The Murderer
- The Left Just Conceded That Charlie Kirk Was Right
- Conservative Hypocrisy
- Charlie Kirk Out of Context
- A Short Treatment of a Miscellaneous Philosophical Point
- Conclusion
An Unlikely Blog Post
I do my best to stay away from politics, "current events", and, as I often derisively refer to it, the drama du jour. Indeed, I have quipped, only somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that The Prime Directive prohibits my interference, and because I cannot do anything about these events anyway, nor can I arrange my own personal affairs any differently on the basis of being informed about them, it's a poor use of my time and efforts to even be informed. I've done a pretty good job of tweaking and cultivating my Facebook feed (the only social media I regularly consume) to reflect those preferences, and so typically, I'm confronted by posts about babies, pets, vacations, job changes, fitness progress, and food.
But I could not avoid the news about Charlie Kirk, someone whom I'd never heard of before (or if I did, I didn't bother to remember). Perhaps it was morbid curiosity, but I read a lot of posts and comments, from those on the right (whom I'll interchangeably also call "conservatives", without trying to be precise with that terminology), those on the left (whom I'll never grace with the utterly inappropriate moniker "liberal"), and those who are more Objectivist- or libertarian-leaning.
What I read was heartbreaking. I literally feel a knot in my chest, reflecting a profound distress about the state of our culture.
And it is not about the superficial reasons that ideological disagreements are being "resolved" through violence, what that reflects, or what the likely consequences of that will be--those would be bad enough, but that's all a tale as old as time.
No, it's something deeper: It's the various ways that people are reacting to this.
By all rights, I should have written something up when Brian Thompson was murdered at the end of 2024--the reactions to that were similarly disappointing. But somehow, this is hitting me harder. Or maybe it's the accumulation of both events in less than a year. I don't know.
But here goes.
Murder and Wrongness
First, I want to set some important philosophical context:
Murder is wrong. Full stop.
No qualifications. No provisos. No hedging. No explanations.
No "Murder is wrong, but...".
Murder is an unjustified killing. That "unjustified" part is what makes it wrong, and it makes "Murder is wrong." effectively a tautology. There are no murders that are right. There's no such thing as "It's immoral, but it's the right thing to do.". And this isn't playing at semantics or word games--this has to do with what these concepts actually mean.
If you have properly formed and grasped the concepts of right and wrong, of killing versus murder, of force and individual rights, and of the principle that people's genuine interests are harmonious, there is no temptation to think that a murder--any murder--can possibly be a net benefit. Whatever positive externalities there might be from an immoral act, its being immoral captures that it's a net loss for everybody.
So we must take seriously that when we say that something is wrong, that we condemn it wholesale, without hand-wringing or excuses.
To be sure, not all immoral acts deserve the same intensity or degree of condemnation, but murder is up there. And it's not some mere coincidence that our general extreme revulsion to murder is commensurate with the extreme practical consequences of murder, both in the immediate term (the individual life that's been extinguished and the people that affects) and in the long term (what behaviors are thereby normalized or encouraged in a society).
So let me bring these abstractions to the present context:
I unequivocally condemn Charlie Kirk's murder.
It doesn't matter whether I agree or disagree with him on this or that. It doesn't matter whether he was saying true things or vile falsehoods. It doesn't matter if he was a powerful ideological force in the culture for good or for ill. I'm not going to entertain the desire to dilute the condemnation (or engage in some kind of "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." virtue signaling) by saying that I don't agree with him on some issues. That is so beside the point. (And really, if you know me at all, that I am a defender of individual rights and capitalism, then you should already know where I stand on the issues of immigration, abortion, gays, trans folks, freedom of speech, debate versus violence, and every other issue on which Charlie Kirk may have expressed an opinion.)
Imagine that someone condemns his murder and doesn't follow up with a sort of defensive "But I disagree with him about x, y, and z!". If you conclude that that person thereby sanctions the substance of everything that Charlie Kirk said...that is some damned unclear thinking, jumping to unfounded and, more importantly, irrelevant conclusions. It says more about you and where your focus is: Us-themming is more important to you than whether murder is being used to oppose ideas you find repugnant (and all the consequences of living in a society where that is normalized).
If you are the person who condemns his murder and does follow up with that defense, I get it. Really, I can relate to why you're doing it. Now, if your point is to defend freedom of speech, of course it can be powerful to defend speech you disagree with, but this isn't about freedom of speech--it's about murder and using violence against ideas. (Remember that freedom of speech is a prohibition on government regulation of speech, not private parties' interference in speech.) To take a sort of defensive posture ultimately does the overall discussion about murder a disservice, conceding that what Charlie Kirk said and whether you agree with it has any relevance whatsoever.
There is a lot more I want to say about the philosophical dimension of this, addressing some of the dynamics on a social/cultural/political level, but sadly, that's outside the scope of this post.
People Are Doing the Best That They Can
There's a second bit of context that needs to be set, and it's sort of a blend of philosophical and psychological observations. I have stood on the shoulders of many giants to reach these convictions, but on this specific point, Brené Brown was the chief catalyst for my thinking and development.
All people are basically good; they are generally and genuinely doing the best that they can, with the skills and capacities that they have at any given time.
This is controversial, and really, it requires no less than a full treatise on its own, not the least of which to explore what I mean by "doing the best that they can". But I can't do that here, so please be charitable and fill in some blanks for yourself, reflecting on your own experience: Yes, there are some ways in which you think you might have been able to do better, but when you didn't, think about how that nevertheless reflected the best you could do, given your resources (emotional, intellectual, etc) at the moment. Moreover, I want to emphasize that this "theory" is derived from and for application to real people and real relationships in life, not remote celebrities, characters or caricatures, or abstract hypotheticals.
So much of our art (stories, literature, mythology, plays, TV, movies, and even paintings) for millennia has perpetuated the melodrama of "good versus evil", cashing in on and reinforcing a natural human bias toward the cognitive efficiency of quick moralizing: If you do a bad thing, you're evil, and then I can write you off and dehumanize you.
In reality, I think there are very few genuinely "bad guys", and it's really people doing the best they can. Sometimes, based on adopting bad values and destructive ideas, people are seduced into doing terrible, terrible things--and in the long run, they hurt themselves as they go about hurting others. They are trying to achieve what they think is some kind of value (or avoid some punishment or pain), but they are either mistaken about whether it's a genuinely life-enhancing value, or they pursue it via irrational (destructive) means. I'm really serious here: On some level, people who do even the worst things often believe (albeit mistakenly) that they are justified in what they're doing; they have motivations and, at the very least, they have rationalizations that resonate with them enough that it enables them to do what they do. And think to yourself: Surely you have at least once in your life done a thing you now realize is wrong, but in the moment, you really thought what you were doing was justified. I know I have. And would you consider yourself evil? Of course not--nobody is the villain of their own story.
None of this excuses their beliefs, choices, or actions, let alone the destructive consequences. But if you grasp the motives, if you understand where they're coming from, if you can identify with their temptations (even if you know you would do something different in their place), if you can adopt a sort of "There but for the grade of God go I." mindset (which I say as an atheist!), you can hold people accountable with love in your heart: "I know you were doing the best that you could, but it was unacceptable, and now I have to...".
Even though this is so much more difficult than just condemning someone as evil, not only does this improve your own experience of bad behavior (because your dominant emotional experience tends more toward compassion than anger), it also allows you to more effectively deal with others' bad behavior and encourage better behavior. At the end of the day, people who do bad things, criminals, and the rest--they're not the caricature of "doing evil for evil's sake" that millennia of art--and now also the news and social media--have conditioned us to believe, and so by adopting a more growth-mindset (rather than fixed-mindset) approach, we can encourage the best in people while we make sure to hold them accountable for their missteps.
It is difficult, and it requires tremendous discipline, but it is definitely better. I can at least attest that my own life and relationships have dramatically improved since I adopted such an approach.
So if you can take on this way of understanding and relating to other people and their behavior, when they err (especially when they err grievously), your heart must ache when you imagine the challenges that they have gone through and how they sometimes lead them to doing some very bad things. It's tragic.
But I want to put this very starkly: I don't think I've ever actually met someone whom I'd characterize as evil, and I have met some people who habitually and dispositionally do some terrible, destructive, hurtful, evil things based on some really horrible ideas. These people need to be held accountable for their ideas, choices, and actions, but to characterize them as evil is worse than lazy; it's ineffective and self-destructive.
I am no stranger to the feeling of angry, righteous indignation in response to injustice and the willfully destructive actions of others, but reacting to that with my own hatred is emotionally corrosive in the long run (really, it's such an unpleasant way to be), no matter how good it might feel in the moment to condemn them as evil and lash out accordingly. Here's the problem: It's dehumanizing, and by keeping yourself in a hate-fueled state of limbic system hijack, you actively undermine your ability to engage your rational faculties to see the situation clearly and find effective solutions that work in the long term. When you write someone off as evil, you no longer examine motives and incentives, you arrest your thinking as it relates to figuring out how to get better behavior from them, and you tempt yourself into escalating a vicious cycle of unpleasantness and bad behavior. Sometimes, you don't need to examine their motives or change their behavior, and you just need to distance yourself from them and their harmful effects, but even then, think about how much better your own experience of that will be if you can part ways with love in your heart, rather than continuing to carry the burden of your ill feelings toward them.
To be clear--this is not some convenient lie that's just superficially useful, this idea that all people are basically good, but they just sometimes make bad choices. I think this is profoundly true. It's a difficult truth to accept, because some people have hurt us quite badly, and we see stories in the news of people doing horrific things, both next door and across the world. But I think that being armed with this truth is the only way that we can deal with people's bad behaviors in a way that, first and foremost, serves our own interests. Reflect on your own experiences, and really, consider them honestly and carefully: When you have been able to find common ground with someone you might otherwise have considered an enemy, when you've taken the time to understand why they did a bad thing and then explain to them why you find it unacceptable with kindness and compassion (and I think in-person examples illustrate this better), how much better has that been than the sort of vitriolic, antagonistic, condemnatory, accusation-slinging, angry interactions that you've had? Which has been more effective, both in terms of getting the concrete results you want and how much better your experience of it all was? (And, again, which takes more work?)
I'm paraphrasing here, but Brené Brown has framed this with language I find very helpful: "Shame talk" is when you criticize a person for being bad, that they should feel shame for being who they are, whereas "guilt talk" is when you criticize their behavior, that they should feel guilt over their bad actions because they're a basically good person who has the capacity to understand their wrongdoing and feel bad about it (and hopefully, rectify their errors). I don't think that shame talk is effective, not with children, not with our friends, not with our coworkers, not with internet strangers, and certainly not with our ideological opponents. Even the use of guilt talk needs to be approached quite carefully, but it's directionally correct.
(Side note: We have to take a few categories of people off the table here. We are not talking about people who are extremely mentally ill, such as those whose volitional capacities are impaired or who have neurological handicaps like sociopathy. Also, critically, I want to set aside figures like Hitler, who's everybody's favorite go-to example of evil incarnate. I have a lot more to say about that; I don't think my "theory" here fails to account for the likes of Hitler, but it's far outside the scope of what we can deal with in this post.)
Indeed, I wish I could give this topic more robust treatment here, but you'll just have to stay tuned.
So, with all that out of the way, it's time for a pop quiz: Was I talking about Charlie Kirk or his murderer?
The answer is "Yes", but we'll get to that soon, I promise.
It's time to (finally!) turn our focus on what I think is a much more urgent and deeper issue--and one that maybe is even more provocative.
The Tragedy of Killing
Sometimes, killing is not murder: It is justified; ie, it is necessary, it is the right thing to do, ultimately, it is good.
Say what you will about some of the harmful effects that Charlie Kirk's ideas and their promotion in the culture have had. Because he was expressing ideas and only advocating for certain policies, his behavior does not rise to the level of actually orchestrating the violation of or directly violating individual rights. We can dissect how this differs from the acts of politicians who actually are in the proximate chain of rights violations or from the behavior of a mugger on the street, but this is beside the point. Suffice it to say, Charlie Kirk was no more a rights violator through his speech than a university professor is in advocating for communism. We don't get to kill university professors for advocating their murderous views, however much we know how harmful they are. So we can just dispense with any notion that Charlie Kirk's killing was at all justified--it was straight-up murder.
I want to untangle one more nuance first, though: Without dealing with some marginal issues (eg, assisted suicide), what makes a killing potentially justified is that it is the use of retaliatory force, typically directly against its initiator. But strictly speaking, this is only what makes a killing permissible or "on the table" when it comes to an analysis of individual rights. There are myriad reasons that a particular killing may be a terrible idea. Let's use a relatively simple example, and set aside the law for the moment--I mean only to deal with the principle of individual rights, morality generally, and their requirements, not current legal implementation: A mugger on the street comes at you, wielding a knife. He's getting close, and you genuinely fear for your life. But you have a gun. I think that killing him is morally on the table--from the perspective of individual rights. But suppose that, for some reason, you also have a Taser. If you have the time and wherewithal (and this might be a big "if"), you may also be able to neutralize the threat by attempting to incapacitate him with the Taser, instead of shooting him with your gun. If you have a safe (this is the key), non-lethal means at your disposal to neutralize or eliminate a threat or violation of your rights, I think morality demands that you not kill your aggressor, no matter how much lethal retaliatory force may generally be permissible in response to its initiation. The details matter a great deal, especially when you have adrenaline pumping and are fearing for your life, so my point is not to moralize about any specific situations, but rather, just to make the more abstract point that we might consider when later engaging with the particulars.
There's so much more that can be explored on this topic, but I'll say that it's a reflection of a more abstract principle when it comes to retaliatory force generally. A drunk asshole at a bar who tries to pick a fight with you and actually pushes you with a clear intent to continue violence can be met with a swift punch to the mouth by his would-be victim, and many would say that that's justified (again, through only the narrow lens of individual rights), but that might actually be dangerous to the would-be victim. Especially if one has the skills, surely attempting deescalation tactics might be a more prudent, safer, and therefore moral option.
I'm getting a bit off track by trying to provide more context, so here is my controversial claim: Even justified killings, which I've characterized as "good", are tragic.
If you take seriously what I said about how people are doing the best that they can, it is similarly tragic when they go down a dark path of committing destructive acts as when the only way to stop them is by extinguishing them. Sometimes, the only way to stop a person from continuing to wreak havoc is to end their life, and this is typically when the person is actively or imminently engaged in violating people's rights, and there's no other way to stop them.
This is a tragedy.
It is horrifically sad that sometimes, the best thing we can do is kill someone, that we've run out of peaceful options, that we can no longer engage with this person's mind, that there's no hope for rehabilitation. That's the only sense in which this is "good"; all the alternative are worse.
Yes, yes, by initiating force, the person has renounced the principle of dealing with others by reason, and so the only option left is to deal with them by force. But really, that's not always true--we often respond to relatively minor rights violations without retaliatory force, instead trying to reach them with words and ideas, and we get adequate (and often superior) resolutions. And so when that is impossible, we should be using retaliatory force with heavy hearts. The right vibe is "I hate that I have to do this, but it's the right thing to do.". (I wouldn't typically say you should hate doing the right thing, but it's the rights violator who created the lose-lose situation, and we should all hate lose-lose situations.)
Even as recently as a decade ago, I think if you asked me what my reaction would be if some horrible politician were assassinated or some person who had seriously wronged me were killed (or just dropped dead), I'm embarrassed to say that it would have been glee mixed with a hateful, righteous anger--and we're talking about people who are actually rights-violators, who have used force to harm me and people I love. After all, now they can't go about violating anybody else's rights--that's good, and we should celebrate the good. In cases like an assassinated "evil" politician, I rationalized this to myself as "This is a justified killing because it's retaliatory force, and the only crime here is a failure of delegating that retaliatory force to an objective legal system.". That last part is important, but we'll get to that later. Suffice it to say, I found that this approach did not serve me. I'd be willing to bet this approach would not serve anybody, but people need to figure things out for themselves on their own timelines. My point here is that I understand firsthand the allure of righteous vengeance, even on a purely emotional level divorced from taking any affirmative action myself, and I categorically reject it.
So why am I bringing all this up? I'm saying that even for justified killings, we should mourn the death and that the situation was so bad and severe that it had to come to that. I'm arguing against taking pleasure in the death of people who have committed heinous crimes. I'm arguing against "But I'm not sorry he's dead.".
Charlie Kirk's killing was a murder. It was not justified. So it is especially heartbreaking to see the immense volume of people expressing sentiments along the lines of "Yeah, I mean, I don't condone murdering him, but given his views on x, y, and z and all the activism he did in advance of those causes, I can't be too upset he's gone; the world is better off without him.". There is so much wrong with that statement (some of which I'll get to later), but the thing I find so troubling is this callous indifference to a human life, a person who was doing his best and peacefully arguing for what he believed. Given my argument above, it would be bad enough to hold such an attitude if Charlie Kirk were actually going about violating people's rights and then was (extrajudicially) killed, but when he was straight-up murdered? Oof.
And then a lot of people have also been making comments about his wife and children, like they deserve our compassion, but he doesn't, because of the views he supported. Well, guess what--His wife supported him and thereby also supported the same views and their promulgation.
To my knowledge, Charlie Kirk did not take any coercive action against anybody, however much he may have argued for it--he was causally removed from that initiation of force in a critical way. But some people believe that is justification for killing him, and a great many more believe that that justifies not being sorry he's dead. You can't have it both ways: In principle, if not degree, his wife is just as culpable as he is, and if Charlie Kirk deserves either death or withholding of sorrow, so does his wife.
And his kids? Well surely they're better off without a monster of a father...I mean, imagine if one of them turned out to be trans.
It's just a thought experiment, but if you don't feel bad that Charlie Kirk is dead (even if you condemn murder), do you really think you can bring yourself to explain that to his family?
The consistent application and logical result of this attitude toward people we don't like, so much so that we might be a little glad they're dead, leads to some really ugly conclusions.
So now let me be explicitly consistent about my own viewpoint here: As I said, I can relate to and remember the very same feeling that all these people are having, so perhaps obviously, I don't think they're evil. But if you only condemn the murder intellectually, and emotionally, you feel anything other than sadness (or even if you feel neutral about it), I think it calls for some deep introspection and reflection. I don't know how to say that without sounding condescending and holier-than-thou, like, here I've grown and healed and matured and am so wise, and now I'm telling you what you need to do. No, that's not the vibe I'm trying to send out, but like I said, it breaks my heart that in our culture, and among so many people that I know and am even close to, this attitude is so common.
Every death is a tragedy. Every time killing is the only way to deal with someone doing evil deeds--ie, when it's justified--it's still a tragedy that it's had to come to that. So especially when it's the murder of someone innocent of any rights violations, we should all be grieving, without hesitation or reservation.
The Murderer
At the time that I'm writing this, I'm not aware that the murderer has been positively identified, but that's beside the point.
Let's assume, for the purposes of what follows, that this was a leftist who found Charlie Kirk's viewpoints detestable, dangerous, heinously evil. And let's assume that the murderer's volitional power was not impaired. (I think these are fair guesses, but if my assumptions are wildly off, then at the very worst, this section just reinforces an important point by using a counterfactual--but realistic--hypothetical.)
The murderer holds views that I find detestable. Setting aside all the typical leftist ideas I disagree with, this is a person who evidently believes that if a person advocates for bad ideas too vociferously or effectively, it's acceptable to kill them.
I cannot overstate how much that viewpoint is anathema to the core of my being. I see too clearly the consequences of engaging with other people in this way. I know in my bones that individual rights are sacrosanct and that the initiation of force is so very wrong.
And yet...if I abstract away the substance and the context, I can understand the feeling that I imagine the murderer was acting on. I know what it's like to listen to people voice viewpoints that, if put into practice, would hurt me and people I love. I know the anger that can generate, especially when I imagine that it's hatred and bigotry that's fueling their ideas. As someone who has a strong emotional response to injustice, I get the feeling of righteous fervor, and I definitely understand wanting to do something about it.
But I have the advantage of a rational philosophy that I've also largely subconsciously integrated. I have the advantage of having the skills to calibrate my emotions and intellectual convictions. I have the advantage of knowing how to channel my emotional intensity into productive action. I have the advantage of knowing how to arrest a limbic system hijack.
The murderer obviously had few, if any, of these advantages. That's certainly not an excuse, but by putting it in this kind of perspective, I can relate to and even empathize with the horrific distress the murderer must have felt, a distress that led to the commission of a horrible crime.
I've been calling a lot of things tragedies, and we need to add one more to the list: It's a tragedy that this person felt so helpless and so despondent and desperate, that the only option that seemed available was murder. You may think this is compassion and empathy run amok (heck, I hear that Charlie Kirk himself might have thought so), and in today's culture, that's an understandable reaction, but I want you to think, really think and try to feel what it might be like to be this murderer. Think about what kind of life that must be, what kind of persistent state of dread you would be enduring, what it's like to have every waking moment dominated by a seething hatred that's nothing more than a lashing out from feeling helpless and defensive, like a cornered animal. It is a miserable existence. And what makes it all the worse is your knowledge as you actually are at this moment that it's utterly unnecessary. Pity is an ugly emotion, and that's not what I'm counseling--I'm asking how you can not feel a deep sadness in your heart that a human being lived this way, if you can even really call that "living".
There are many conservatives (and even Objectivists) who fervently call for the murderer to be found and convicted (and I'm sure many would want the death penalty), but it's being done with vengeance in their hearts. Notice the dehumanizing rhetoric, that the murderer was an animal or otherwise subhuman filth, scum, etc. It may be fueled by a rational commitment to justice, but the irony is that, on the deepest level, it's playing out the same ugliness that's behind so many leftists' withholding of sorrow for Charlie Kirk.
Let me be clear: Nothing I said above should suggest excusing or justifying murder--at the end of the day, the murderer chose these actions, and no amount of adverse circumstances, developmental or otherwise, can absolve the moral responsibility that follows from performing volitional acts.
But, difficult through it may be (and I might be about to really stretch your tolerance), it is possible to hold two truths in your mind and heart simultaneously: (1) The murderer is a basically good person who, through a series of mistakes and culpably bad choices, went down a path culminating in doing a horrifically, catastrophically bad thing; and (2) the murderer must be held accountable--and frankly, for an individual who is clearly so unhinged, permanent isolation from the rest of society (ie, prison) is probably the only practical solution, but a solution that we can, through great effort perhaps, implement with love and compassion in our hearts.
Oh, and I hasten to add that, while I've made all these points about compassion for the murderer in the broader context of articulating a general approach that counsels empathy and understanding and eschews the "shame talk" label of "evil" as applied to people, I do so more in the spirit of intellectual completeness and thoroughly exploring this issue. It would be wildly inappropriate to elevate this issue to the status of being mentioned in even a 10-paragraph post on Facebook, commenting on this whole affair. For such posts, if the goal is to condemn a murder and call out its tragedy, including, perhaps, commenting on cultural dynamics and likely effects, it would detract from the sorrow expressed for Charlie Kirk in a terribly disrespectful way to mention, alongside that, how badly we might feel for the murderer, too. That would just be tone-deaf--even true ideas need to be expressed in contextually appropriate ways, and I hope that through the foregoing, I'm setting up that appropriate context.
By this point, I've covered the essence of what I personally find so heartbreaking about this whole situation. So now, I want to turn my attention to a few other philosophical observations.
The Left Just Conceded That Charlie Kirk Was Right
Obviously, neither the right nor the left are monoliths. The actions of one person don't reflect the attitudes and beliefs of the rest of their political group. But they do reflect on them. Look at even the immediate aftermath of Charlie Kirk's murder: I myself have lost count of how many voices on the right are condemning the left as a monolithic unit for this. (And boy, are they saying some pretty ugly things.)
My point is that, whether the murderer's actions reflect dominant leftist viewpoints or ideology is irrelevant to the cultural effects of the murder. (Incidentally, I think there's an interesting analysis to be done about how much certain aspects of the murderer's philosophy coincides with some amount of the left in general, but that's outside the scope of what we can get into here.)
Based on history and what we're already seeing to a modest degree, this is what I predict:
By resorting to violence to end an argument about ideas, the murderer has conceded that no rational argument is possible against the viewpoints that Charlie Kirk was expressing.
This is yet another tragedy, because there are rational arguments that objectively and conclusively prove Charlie Kirk wrong on a number of topics that I'm sure the murderer took issue with.
But now, one of the best exponents of certain ideas can no longer be argued with and proven wrong (and he is someone who, by all accounts, was more willing to engage in civil debate than most others, on either the right or the left).
The cultural effect of this--the way that this will land with many conservatives who agree with Charlie Kirk on the substance of his ideas--is "See? There are no arguments against what Charlie Kirk was advocating for--he had to be assassinated to be silenced. He must be right.".
Obligatory Isaac Asimov quotation: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
Ironically, the murderer's actions have given an enormous boost to the very ideas that were evidently so repugnant that they had to be silenced through violence. The cultural effect is that the murderer has just proved that Charlie Kirk's ideas are true, actual philosophic/epistemological standards be damned. By making Charlie Kirk into a martyr, the murderer has done a greater service to the cultural impact of conservative ideas than any individual conservative could ever hope achieve in their wildest wet dreams.
Now, a lot of these effects are a product of factors that are specific to this particular murder and its context, but I want you to look at the issue more abstractly (and consider that all murders have their own unique contexts and adverse effects). You see, my view is that what makes something moral or immoral is not merely some abstract theoretical framework, disconnected from the practical necessities of life. What makes something morally wrong is that, in the long term ("on net", if you prefer), it undermines your happiness and prosperity. You don't need to engage in some kind of economic calculus to assess every potential act; instead you go through a process of abstraction and concept-formation to grasp that there are certain broad categories of behaviors that enhance your life and those that undermine it. (And because people's genuine interests are harmonious--also something that would require its own robust treatment to prove, beyond the scope of this post--all human prosperity is at stake here, to one degree or another.) So the rigorous understanding of why something like murder is wrong has nothing to do with social convention or religious demands or anything like that, but a process of conceptualization from observation of what happens when people murder to resolve their differences versus when they don't. It's a highly complex and abstract process, but the point is that it's inherently tied to the practical consequences of murder.
Why am I going through all this additional philosophizing? I want to drive home the point that all these consequences of Charlie Kirk's murder that leftists presumably will not like are inherent to what makes the murder wrong. So if you are on the left and my argument about the tragedy of killing wasn't persuasive, you might consider that the murder was more than just abstractly wrong: It has really hurt your own personal values. And on that basis, you might find it all more tragic than the cavalier "But the world is better off without his hateful ideas." attitude suggests. I guarantee you, the world is not better off for being without his hateful ideas, not when it's come to be without them in this way. (I have to inform you that you can't change someone's mind at the point of a gun, and presumably, you want to change people's minds, yes?)
Of course, there's also the dimension of the wrongness that is the normalization of violence in ideological debate, which is at least partly premised on the idea that words can be violence.
My friend Jon Hersey put it like this, and I think it speaks for itself: "When speech is considered violence, real aggression is masked as self-defense."
I don't think any of us wants to live in a world where the distinction between civil discourse and a gun-fight is blurred and resolving disagreements with guns becomes the norm, but incidents like this murder lead us closer and closer to that. Given the prevailing attitudes about firearm ownership (to say nothing of expertise) on the right versus the left, I find myself wondering if the left really wants that kind of world... (But here I am, speculating about n-th order effects, when so many on the left and right can barely grasp first-order effects, let alone second-order effects...)
I've touched on a number of different superficial results, hoping some of them might resonate with you. But really, my hope is that individually and collectively, they all resonate with you, as an integrated understanding of why, because Charlie Kirk's murder was wrong and things that are wrong are overall destructive of everybody's genuine interests, you grasp that there is no room for any ambivalence in its condemnation or in the experience of sorrow over all aspects of what's transpired.
Put another way--you don't get to say that it's wrong, but then "not be too upset that he's dead", not when the magnitude of the wrongness is so severe, especially in how it will impact you and your values. To be "not too upset that he's dead" is to be engaged in some serious theory-practice dichotomizing, reflecting some profound internal disintegration. I don't mean for that to land too pointedly or as an accusation, but I'm not sure how better to articulate that.
Conservative Hypocrisy
Despite the immediate cultural effects I identified above, I don't think that many people on the right actually have a moral leg to stand on.
There are leftists who have been assassinated, and I didn't hear the same outcry from the right, making all these lofty arguments about how wrong violence is in response to repugnant ideas. Indeed, if anything, I have seen the same glee and "Couldn't have happened to a nicer person." sarcasm when someone on the left was murdered (or heck, just died) that now the right is clutching their pearls about when it comes to one of their own. You don't get to have it both ways.
(Okay, so maybe I didn't hear about conservative condemnation of leftists' being assassinated because I wasn't paying attention. And I didn't speak out about them myself and probably wouldn't have, even if I knew about them, but that might have more to do with how "big" a phenomenon Charlie Kirk and his assassination had become in the culture. I assure you, I unequivocally condemn all murders and all uses of violence to shut down exchanges of ideas.)
Ask yourself--what do you think the reaction would be from the right if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, or Bernie Sanders were assassinated? Or forget assassinated--just dropped dead? I can just hear the "Murder is wrong, but..." and "It's sad for his/her family, but..." in my mind's ear.
But it gets worse. There are elements on the right--politicians--who are now planning to use the coercive power of the state to stop the free expression of repugnant views about Charlie Kirk's murder:
I’m going to use Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk. If they ran their mouth with their smartass hatred celebrating the heinous murder of that beautiful young man who dedicated his whole life to delivering respectful conservative truth into the hearts of liberal enclave universities, armed only with a Bible and a microphone and a Constitution… those profiles must come down.
So, I’m going to lean forward in this fight, demanding that big tech have zero tolerance for violent political hate content, the user to be banned from ALL PLATFORMS FOREVER. I’m also going after their business licenses and permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be kicked from every school, and their drivers licenses should be revoked. I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
I’m starting that today.
That is all.
-- Representative Clay Higgins
I think that speaks for itself, but in case it doesn't, let me make it very clear: You don't fight fire with fire; you fight fire with water. If you condemn using violence to silence ideas you disagree with, you don't get to use violence to silence ideas you disagree with. This is not the same as using retaliatory force against those who initiate its use. Yes, "commenter[s who] belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk" are expressing vile attitudes, but they are not the ones wielding force, any more than Charlie Kirk was in expressing some of his own vile ideas.
This is an extreme example, perhaps, but it's illustrative of an important, deeper point: Selective understanding, empathy, and compassion is incoherent. If you're picking and choosing based on whether someone is part of your tribe or whether it suits your immediate feelings about a person, what you have is not understanding, empathy, or compassion at all.
Charlie Kirk Out of Context
Beyond the litany of criticisms of Charlie Kirk's views and specific statements on various topics I have heard (including about Blacks, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the death penalty, Democrats generally, Feminism, gays, George Floyd, immigration, Jews, Muslims, Palestine, Martin Luther King Jr, and trans people), there are two rationalizations for withholding sorrow for Charlie Kirk that really stand out to me: his comments on the 2nd Amendment and on "empathy".
I'll address these both in turn, but I need to reemphasize a particular point: In the present context, none of this matters in the slightest.
I don't want to belabor what I think I already belabored quite enough in the preceding sections, but you don't withhold your sorrow and compassion for someone's murder on the basis of the viewpoints that they peaceably expressed, no matter how much you disagree with them, no matter how objectively repugnant they may be, and no matter how much you might think them deliciously ironic.
That's like saying "He was asking for it.", which reminds me of how some of the very same people on the left would likely condemn "She was asking for it.", when a woman is raped because she was scantily clad.
This point is especially poignant because, by all accounts, Charlie Kirk was one of the most vociferous advocates for open, civil debate, arguing that it's only through that debate that we can avoid devolving into violent barbarism. The irony is staggering.
What's not ironic, however, is that the people who would withhold their compassion for Charlie Kirk are also quite comfortable taking his statements out of context and strawmanning them, sometimes willfully and sometimes subconsciously, but always unacceptably. On one Facebook thread, a friend said that he had a greater appreciation for what Charlie Kirk was actually saying by watching the actual videos--you know, getting the context. Another friend responded in a way that expresses a sentiment that I have seen far too often: "I don’t need to watch all of his videos to understand who he is and what he stands for."
Now, I want to be charitable to this second friend, the one who refuses "to watch all of his videos", because I don't think that's strictly necessary "to understand who [Charlie Kirk] is and what he stands for", but in the context of the thread, this statement was meant to brush aside the need to engage seriously and understand nuance. It went something like this:
Friend A: Charlie Kirk's death is horrible.
Friend B: Charlie Kirk believed horrible things x, y, and z! Here are direct quotations!
Friend A: Those are taken out of context. I've watched the videos, and he's actually saying something different than what might superficially seem to be the case.
Friend B: Nah, I don't need to watch all of his videos to understand who he is and what he stands for.
Friend B may nevertheless be right about his overall assessment of Charlie Kirk and his views, but this kind of heel-digging-in, refusal to engage with the ideas he himself raised in a serious, robust way, is unacceptable.
So speaking of "unacceptable", before I dive into my analysis of the 2nd Amendment and "empathy" issues, I want to say that, in the right context, it is indeed important to hold Charlie Kirk accountable for his unacceptable viewpoints. From what I can tell through my cursory research, he held some pernicious and ugly beliefs that, worse, he wanted to see coercively imposed on others. The immorality of those beliefs is objectively provable, and an objective overall evaluation of Charlie Kirk needs to take account of this as much as it does his championing debate and his better beliefs. But, as I've said so many times already, this is all quite irrelevant to the main thrust of my (now many) arguments.
The 2nd Amendment
As I understand, in 2023, Charlie Kirk said "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.".
I have heard some rather crass comments about this, implying that Charlie Kirk approved of or was okay with his own murder. But in any case, the argument goes that when someone is apparently "okay with" some gun deaths, it's delicious irony or karma that he himself is killed with a gun.
I almost don't know where to begin with this.
Now, I don't know the full context of when this was said, whether he was speaking extemporaneously, etc, but I'll say that I don't think this is the best formulation of an idea that is actually quite valid. The fact that people who use this statement, rhetorically, to withhold their sorrow (or worse, express glee) for Charlie Kirk's murder is just sloppy, and I think it reflects that they're just looking for rationalizations for their own hatred.
I think Charlie Kirk may have been able to articulate his point better, in a less inflammatory and provocative way (not that he seems disposed to that, being a conservative firebrand), but even as stated, if you swap out the words for something less controversial and emotional that keeps the same logical structure, suddenly it's easier to interpret in the way that I imagine he meant it:
"I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some vehicular accident deaths every single year so that we can have the convenience of driving cars."
Quoth Thomas Sowell in A Conflict of Visions: "There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs."
If I'm being intellectually honest and generous, here's how I would analyze his statement:
We face an alternative: a world where guns are relatively more accessible, sanctioned by the 2nd Amendment, versus a world where we attempt to restrict access to guns. Looking at the tradeoffs involved, given that most people are good and law-abiding, in a world where more people are better armed and know how to responsibly use firearms, there would likely be fewer unfortunate gun deaths than in a world where good, law-abiding people have less access to guns, and it's only the criminals who find ways of getting their hands on them. The nature of the gun deaths would be different in the different scenarios, but on balance, the tradeoffs militate in the direction of protecting the 2nd Amendment.
Now, that happens to be pretty close to my personal view, but that's beside the point. The issue is debatable, not the least of which is in analyzing the different ways of addressing gun deaths and gun control (since the alternative isn't actually binary) and considering cultural factors in the United States versus other countries where guns are more accessible and there are fewer deaths of the kind we see in the US. The point is that it's worth the debate, and in a debate, a certain amount of good-will and generosity is required to engage with the arguments of your "opponents". (I put "opponents" in scare quotes because if you really get it, then you know that we're really all on the same side, wanting to build a prosperous society and a bright future, however much we might disagree in some respects about what that concretely means and how to get there.) If you're operating on the premise that your "opponent" is evil or has malign goals, what's even the point?
Anyway, nobody who says that the value of cars or airplanes or vaccines is so great as to outweigh the unfortunate deaths from car wrecks, airplane crashes, or vaccine-related injuries thinks that any particular death is anything other than a tragedy. If you think it's worth it to have cars, despite the fact that that means that some people will die in wrecks (and I'm betting you do), I'm sure that, when you pass a wreck, your reaction isn't "Yep, worth it.". But think about how many people are imputing the "Yep, worth it." attitude to Charlie Kirk and, in so doing, are themselves saying "Yep, worth it." in response to his murder.
Watching people strawman his statements and impute a meaning to them that conveniently makes their own lack of empathy more palatable to themselves (and, I guess, to others?) is infuriating, but also, it's heartbreaking.
Speaking of empathy...
Empathy
Charlie Kirk is denounced as having said "I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made up New Age term that does a lot of damage.", and here I am about to defend him, when I've myself used the word, counseling the application of empathy, numerous times in this post.
Once again, this statement is taken out of context to rationalize withholding of empathy from Charlie Kirk. Really, that's not how empathy works. Michael C Vidal put it quite eloquently:
“Charlie Kirk didn’t believe in empathy, so he doesn’t have mine.”
What a weird way of saying you agree with someone.
Empathy is an act of abstraction, something sociopaths are incapable of performing on any level and most people are selective about based on how they self identify.
A sociopath says “why should I feel bad for them, they’re not me?”
A selectively empathetic person says “why should I feel bad for them, they’re not like me {in this specific way}”
The trick is in finding the commonality where on the surface there is difference, it’s about abstracting away from particulars toward the universal. This can be difficult because it forces us to confront the deepest parts of how we self identify. We often dont want to admit just how similar we are to those we vilify.
I disagree with a lot of the particulars that Charlie Kirk promoted, but I can empathize with his passionate desire to peacefully engage with those he disagreed with about the important issues that we all face.
I’m not a conservative but I can empathize with being a father of two young children and the terror of being taken way from them.
I’m not a young female Ukrainian Refugee but I can empathize with the confusion and sadness and horror she must have felt as her life slipped away in that train car.
I’m not the schizophrenic man who murdered her but I can empathize with the struggles of navigating a world and system that has continuously failed him.
I’m not a Palestinian mother but I can empathize with the utter devastation one feels cradling the lifeless body of the most important thing in the world.
I’m not an Israeli but I can empathize with the fear and frustration of feeling threatened by all of one’s neighbors, and with the overwhelming desire for revenge for October 7th.
I’m not a dog who has been abandoned by its humans, but I am a mammal that understands the importance of family.
I’m not a sequoia on the edge of a wildfire but I know the importance of respiration.
I’m not anti-abortion
I’m not anti-trans
or anti-immigrant
But I am human
And so was Charlie Kirk
He and I disagreed on a lot of things, but most importantly on the issue of who deserves empathy.
The ironic thing about all this is that, even looking into it a superficially (and again, if you're generous in your interpretation of his statement), I don't think Charlie Kirk was against empathy per se. From what I can tell (and guess), the essence of his objection was to how the use of the concept has been distorted and politicized, especially in ways that arrest clear thinking.
As I was doing some modest research on the statement, here is what Google Gemini provided in the "AI Overview" of a standard Google search for just the direct quotation (and remember that many LLMs are known for biasing at least a bit toward the left):
The statement "I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made up New Age term that does a lot of damage" is a quote attributed to Charlie Kirk, a conservative political commentator. The quote suggests that empathy, as it's commonly understood, is overused and can lead to negative consequences, particularly in politics, where it can cloud judgment and be manipulated for emotional appeal rather than facts. Kirk preferred sympathy, which involves caring about someone's situation without taking on their feelings, to allow for more objective decision-making.
Context of the quote
Rejection of "New Age" term:
Kirk viewed empathy as a trendy, "new age" concept rather than a genuine or established human quality.
Political manipulation:
He argued that empathy, especially in politics, can be exploited to sway voters by appealing to their emotions rather than presenting facts or rational arguments.
Preference for sympathy:
Kirk expressed a preference for sympathy because, in his view, it allows for a more detached and reasoned approach to helping others, avoiding the emotional burden of "feeling" another's pain.
Consequences of empathy:
Some of Kirk's critiques suggest that excessive empathy can lead to burnout, clouded judgment, and biased decision-making.
Alternative perspective
Rational compassion:
Kirk advocated for rational compassion—a blend of reason, evidence, and concern for human welfare—as a more effective way to achieve positive outcomes than pure empathy.
Empathy's role in action:
While Kirk saw potential damage in empathy, others point out that genuine empathy is essential for connecting with others and can be a foundation for effective help and understanding, even when balanced with rational compassion.
Now, assuming that this is a better, more nuanced, and accurate reflection of Charlie Kirk's views, I'll say that I don't agree with everything here, and in some ways, pretty profoundly: I think that empathy is a genuine human quality, that it is completely compatible with (and necessary to the proper functioning of) reason, that sympathy is insufficient (and in some ways harmful--really, click on that), and that this "rational compassion" is closer to the proper concept of empathy repackaged in a way that he finds less triggering.
But does any of this sound like the kind of man who doesn't care about other people? Indeed, despite his explicit renouncement to the contrary, does it sound like he doesn't often have actual, real empathy for others? Do you think he would be gleeful at the murder of one of his ideological "opponents" (again, especially given how vociferously he argued for debate as an antidote to violence)?
Regardless of how you answer, though, even if he had the worst views on empathy, do you think that makes any difference to the role that empathy should play in your life, the value it has to you to extend empathy wherever and however you can, whether you ought to relate empathetically to Charlie Kirk?
I think you know my answer.
As an aside, I want to say that, despite the ways in which a lot of people have concluded that my embracing of empathy is some kind of naive, Pollyanna approach to the world, that I'm some kind of hippy-dippy, maybe-not-even-a-real Objectivist because I don't believe that people can be evil, I absolutely will not surrender the term or the concept, just because lots of people misunderstand it. (Hey, Objectivists, remind you of any particular word we're all so fond of?) Indeed, properly understood (which is no easy feat), I think that Objectivism--and specifically, egoism--logically demands and requires empathy for others.
A Short Treatment of a Miscellaneous Philosophical Point
At the risk of detracting from the really important issues and making this post even that much longer than it needs to be, there's an issue that came up that I deferred until later, and I wanted to at least say a few words about it. (I might add others in future edits, as my time and interest dictates.)
Is the assassination of politicians who violate rights murder or a justified killing?
What constitutes being in the proximate causal chain of a rights violation requires its own treatise, but somewhat off the cuff, I'll say that there are two key factors to consider: (1) whether a person is directly participating in the administration of or logistical coordination of rights violations (such as a military commander or chief executive), and (2) the status of the volitional powers of the individuals involved. I think these can be interrelated in certain circumstances, but my point with (2) is that a person who directly commits the rights-violating act may have diminished volitional capacity and is effectively just the instrument of the actual rights violator. The bona fide examples of that may be few and far between, but a dramatic example might be someone who was coercively brainwashed so severely that they can't really appreciate what they're doing in a meaningful way.
I will say that I think that soldiers and police officers (and even other government bureaucrats), when they're "just following orders" do not have prima facie diminished volitional capacity, since they are able to choose whether to follow orders, even if it's in the difficult context of facing the loss of their job or enduring some rights-violating punishment themselves, so they still end up bearing moral culpability, even if we can also attribute culpability to their leaders. (Incidentally, it's tricky when the direct actor in a rights violation is themselves under coercive duress, so we'll just need to set that aside, but it is relevant to the consideration of their culpability.)
Now, if a speaker at a rally is directly calling for immediate and imminent violence (with a clear intent to incite a riot, for instance), that qualifies as participating in the administration of rights violations (even though that participation was "merely" speech). And the rioters? Well, I would say that in nearly all cases, their volitional powers were sufficiently online to render them culpable for their actions, but it may be relevant that they had been riled up and suffered a limbic system hijack that at least partially disabled their volitional power. But guess who's responsible for resilience to limbic system hijack and having cultivated the skills in advance to avoid being utterly dysregulated by one? Yep--the rioters themselves. So ultimately, there's no escaping culpability on those grounds, but I will say it's relevant when determining how to hold them accountable, in the same way that we treat the misdeeds of drunk people and sober people differently, even when the misdeed in question is the same.
So that brings me to politicians. When our congressional representatives pen bills or our President signs executive orders that violate rights, but they do not actually directly enforce them (after all, they're not the police officers or ICE agents who compel people at gunpoint), are they rights violators themselves? Unequivocally, yes.
What does this mean in terms of using retaliatory force against them?
I argued earlier that the principle of individual rights at least enables the use of retaliatory force against those who initiate its use, but I also said that there may be other considerations, prudential and otherwise, that might make some particular (or any) use of force immoral.
At the end of the day, however much our freedoms continue to erode, we still live in a relatively free society, and most crucially, we still largely have our freedom of speech intact. So we have more effective avenues for combating the rights violations of our politicians than assassinating them. It's the fact that these other advocacy and activist efforts are more effective that makes them moral and assassination immoral, but that's the inductive way of looking at it. (Remember the practical consequences of assassinating political opponents is the devolution into tribal barbarism.) Deductively, once you understand the principles involved, it should be clear that the use of retaliatory force, when not in the service of immediate defense of self or others, must be delegated to an objective legal process (however imperfect that legal process may be, even).
So while I can understand and empathize with the desire to strike back against someone who's hurting me, my loved ones, and innocent people in general, that is ultimately self-defeating because it will lead to much worse outcomes in the long run.
Now, I wanted to give this somewhat tangential topic some attention because some people who oppose Charlie Kirk are confused on a critical point: Not only was Charlie Kirk not a politician, but his expression of ideas (no matter how much they advocated for the violation of rights) did not rise to the level of administering the violation of rights. He was not organizing or directing the police powers of the state, and he most certainly was not inciting immediate violence (as, indeed, he often argued strongly for the exact opposite).
Why, then, are people confused? I go back to what my friend Jon Hersey said: "When speech is considered violence, real aggression is masked as self-defense." I think a lot of people are very unclear that Charlie Kirk's abstract advocacy for rights-violating ideas is not itself violating any rights. Speech that abstractly advocates for violence is not violence, so any retaliation that uses violence is itself the actual initiation of its use.
So even though Charlie Kirk and the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Clay Higgens are different in a crucial way (the latter are outright criminals under the principle of individual rights), in this society, it is unequivocally immoral to respond to either of them with violence: For the former, it would represent an initiation of force, and in the latter, it would be a disastrous failure to use retaliatory force in an appropriate (moral) way, both of which would hasten the descent into chaos and anarchy. But going back to the main thesis of this post, in all cases, any such death is a tragedy to be unreservedly mourned.
Conclusion
I want to get back to the essence of what motivated me to write anything at all: how heartbroken I am about the state of our culture and the gut-wrenchingly toxic and self-destructive ways that so many people are approaching nearly everything about this awful situation.
I think that my view, which counsels understanding, compassion, and empathy for everybody across the board, is the only consistent, coherent position. It doesn't erase the distinction between good and evil per se, since it makes it all the more urgent to judge good and evil ideas and actions, but it does make the job of holding people accountable more nuanced and thereby more difficult. Practically, the payoff is that we get more effective results with the people who do wrong; emotionally, it's that we get to go through life in a more pleasant way, without being so burdened by bitterness, anger, and hatred.
It doesn't matter how much you or I agree or disagree with any of the following people or groups, whether their ideas or actions led or would lead to good or bad results, or how much they would or would not extend to you, me, or anybody else the same grace--we are all, individually and collectively, better off by approaching them with understanding, compassion, and empathy, grieving for their suffering and celebrating their joy:
- Charlie Kirk
- his family
- the people who are gleeful about his death
- his murderer
- the people who would be impacted by the policies he advocated
- the right and left generally
- and, as I think you're getting now, everybody
So what did I mean by the title "Charlie Kirk and the Erosion of Compassion"?
Is it that Charlie Kirk was eroding compassion through his advocacy of certain viewpoints? Yes.
Is it that Charlie Kirk's murder itself, silencing ideas with violence, reflected a lack of compassion for a man who held civil debate sacrosanct? Yes.
Is it that so many responses to his murder reflect a lack of compassion and thereby normalize us-themming and being at least a little bit glad that people we disagree with are gone? Yes.
Is it that conservatives' hateful responses to the murderer fail to care or understand what could have led a person to commit such a heinous crime? Yes.
It's all this and more.
A lot of people are saying that, perhaps ironically, this is a major "turning point" for our culture, representing some kind of final straw that will finally catalyze a major blowblack from conservatives. I've heard that civil war may soon be upon us. I've heard all these things before, in response to previous crises, and frankly, I don't know whether this incident is that severe or whether it will fade into the background as some other drama du jour comes to dominate the social media news cycle. Regardless, this erosion of compassion is one more step in the wrong direction.
All this has dramatized an aspect of our culture and prevalent philosophical values and psychological proclivities that I find so deeply saddening. Because of my own journey, especially in the last decade or so, I felt compelled to write about it.
Thank you for reading.