Thoughts on Charlie Kirk, Polarization and Free Speech

Are we Beyond Conversation?

Why Jane Austen Still Matters in 60 Seconds 📖✨ | The Charlie Kirk Show #shorts - YouTube

Watch this video of Kirk shocked that a college English Lit student doesn’t know who Jane Austen is.

Nota bene: This is probably going to piss both sides off. I say good. I am exercising MY free speech rights both legally and culturally. Deal with it. Comments are on only for paid subs. This isn’t to “deflect” speech; it’s because, frankly, I don’t trust people publicly around this issue. It’s too controversial. I don’t want to get down into the mud with anyone. That doesn’t mean I am not willing to dialogue about it. If you’re a paid member, you can comment. Otherwise, if you REALLY feel the need to say something, do it privately via Substack messages or my email. Both are easy to locate. I’ll let you investigate that.

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I was going to record a short-ish (15-20 min?) podcast episode on Charlie Kirk, the right-wing pundit, podcaster and debater who was assassinated on 9/10/25, still less than two weeks ago now, at a college campus in Utah. But when I started writing down my thoughts it simply turned into an essay. So here you go.

I don’t know Kirk’s work well. I didn’t listen to him or watch his YouTube videos during his lifetime. (I did watch some after he was killed, as well as listening to his podcast and reading some articles about him. I also dialogued with several people who knew his work well.)

I’m not a Republican or a Trumper and he was both. He was pro-life, I am pro-choice. He was devotedly Christian, I do not like or agree with organized religion.

He had issues with gay marriage and trans people and I do not, though I agree and also have issues when it comes to trans-identifying minors getting hormones and/or surgery. He said that he felt the 1965 Civil Rights Act was a “bad idea” and has led to the “DEI Industrial Complex,” and I think that is absurd and a dumb conflation. The 1965 Voting Rights Act was about fundamental, necessary institutional change needed for Black Americans. He talked about modern DEI being a scam and I largely agree. He thought college was a scam and I think there’s some truth to that but in his videos he often cherry-picks his points and doesn’t fully seem to make a totally compelling argument here. He says that if there was a Black pilot in a plane he were in he’d “hope the guy was qualified.” Sadly, in 2025 I think this perspective has some juice to it. Look at Kamala Harris: Was she qualified to run for president or was it because she was a Black woman? Biden explicitly said he was using these qualities for his VP pick. And, smart as she may be as a prosecutor, had it not been for her biological sex and skin pigmentation I do not think she would have been the candidate. This seems irrefutable.

None of this matters though because the bigger picture here is Free Speech.

(Also, the fact that Kirk was not just simply a “symbol”: He was a 31-year-old human being with a wife and two small kids. He reminds me much of myself, not in our beliefs, but in the fiery intensity of free-thinking, civil disagreement, and debate. Some on the left have said things like: People all over the place are dying, surely died on the same day: Why don’t we mythologize and praise them? My answer is this: When half a million Syrians died in the Syrian Civil War: Why didn’t the left give a fuck? When Black Americans in low-income communities get killed by other low-income Black Americans: Why does the left not give a fuck? I’ll tell you why: Because, just like the Right, they cherry-pick, ignore, and focus only on certain groups. The Jews sadly seem to always make the list; if Israel does pretty much anything they get harsh criticism.)

Civil Disagreement. Dialogue. Conversation. The First Amendment relates to government censorship, but there is also such a thing as cultural censorship coming from the people and institutions which, let’s face it, much more often comes from the Left vs the Right. (Read: Academia, book publishing, etc.) At our current polarized moment Trump and Republicans also have no respect for Free Speech; look at the Book Banning they’ve done across the nation. Look at the Jimmy Kimmel fiasco, where the FCC under Trump has put pressure on ABC to fire the comedian, which they did. That is a violation of the 1^st amendment. But the Left also does it, both governmentally (Biden putting pressure on Facebook to censor certain Conservative voices during COVID for “misinformation,” some of which turned out to be accurate), but more often cultural, a la cancelling, de-platforming, trying to get certain books removed, censored, not taught in schools, etc. Both sides do it, both governmentally and culturally and it’s bad in both cases. The past decade, 15 years has been a lesson on bipartisan illiberalism.

Kirk—love or hate him—was doing the dirty, hard work of actually going to college campuses and dialoguing, conversing, debating students, especially about their Sacred Cow Beliefs. Many people on the Left called Kirk racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic. But the thing is: In a liberal western nation, especially in The United States of America, we have the first amendment, free speech. Equally important is not to culturally reject free speech or to use dehumanization, ad hominem or partisan biased rage to attempt to silence people.

And of course murder—assassination—is wrong, always. This should be obvious and easy to say without causing issues but, in 2025, it is not.

We need to divorce ourselves nationally from this New Age idea that to criticize anyone’s (but especially the Left’s) Sacred Cow Ideas (Feminism, trans, social justice, etc) somehow means you are a moral monster and are engaging in “Hate Speech.” Hate Speech is a cultural idea; it is NOT in the U.S. Constitution. We have the first amendment which covers speech except: Incitement to violence; true threats; fighting words; harassment, defamation, or targeted conduct. In other words: You can more less say anything you want in America…unless you’re clearly trying to incite direct violence, you’re libeling someone, or you are legally defaming or harassing someone, OR you use language that seems clearly and obviously intended to encourage violence on a person or group.

Kirk saying he disagrees with gay marriage or that he doesn’t agree with the idea (which the vast amount of Americans agree with) of trans minors getting hormones and using surgery to transition, does NOT violate any of these tenants. Just like Jimmy Kimmel, Donald Trump, Rachel Maddow and anyone else on any side, Kirk had the right to speak his mind openly.

Like I said I didn’t know anything about Kirk before he was killed. I don’t consume most political stuff on either side: I tend to listen to independent thinkers who criticize any and all sides, such as Sam Harris, Bill Maher, The 5^th Column, Coleman Hughes, Reason Roundtable, as well as honest brokers like Ezra Klein, Ross Douthat and the NYT Daily. But all these people—especially the people I firmly disagree with whether that be Rachel Maddow or Charlie Kirk—have the right, both legally and culturally, to speak their minds freely and openly and honestly.

The fact that some (too many) folks on the Left, broadly speaking, seem in some corners (to be fair, mostly not mainstream Democratic politicians) to be praising Kirk’s very public and brutal murder, is shocking and awful. We are still learning more about the shooter. It does seem, however, that he was almost certainly on the political/ideological Left. He wrote leftist phrases on the bullet casings. He was dating a trans person. His family said he hated Kirk who he felt was “spreading hate.” It all reminds one of the Luigi Mangioni fiasco, which was also praised by too many on the left culturally speaking.

Now, as Bill Maher recently said on his latest episode of Real Time: Trying to shoehorn in a political identity to mass shooters and assassins is probably pointless and only in the end serves to polarize the body politic even more. Further, it’s probably irrational. The kid who shot at and nearly killed Trump was a nut and a mixed bag politically. We’ve seen violence from the right and from the left. There doesn’t seem to be realistically any organized “method to the madness,” it’s just usually young, usually white, almost always male, almost always mentally ill Americans caught up in extremism online, violent videogame culture, a thirst for fame at any cost, and probably some level of sociopathy.

Does Kirk’s shooter seem “of the Left”? Yes. Does that mean we should blame “The Left” more broadly for his assassination? Of course not. The closest we get to this kind of thing was when Trump told the Jan 6 rioters to do what they did…and even that is more blurry and complex because: Did Trump really literally “intend” for them to storm the capitol? How literal was he being? Did he fully grasp what he was saying? Did he mean to start a violent riot? What were his motives and intentions? Can the case necessarily 100% be made that he literally said, start a riot and storm the capitol?

I’m not here to adjudicate that and I don’t have the answer. But that’s the closest we’ve come in very recent times, I think, to a direct call for violence, aka potential Hate Speech. Kirk, to my knowledge, got nowhere near that. (Although some of the antisemitic chants and tweets from people on the Left a la Israel have been very bad, too.)

The notion of painting a whole cultural ideology as “evil” and claiming there’s some mass organized “phenomenon” which must be stopped…is flat out crazy. I disagree with all the firings across the country of people who said terrible, immoral and amoral things about Kirk after his death…but I respect the fact that these institutions are not technically violating the First Amendment; they are private companies and corporations, not government. Kimmel is different because ABC was under the jurisdiction of the FCC, which is government. And Trump clearly added pressure and enjoyed the firing. (Thank God for organizations like F.I.R.E.—Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression—who have picked up the slack from the formerly-good-but-now-Progressive-ideology-captured ACLU.)

The Berkely students in the 1960s, ironically, were the loudest ones to scream about free speech in the modern era, and they were far-left. (And the 1960s free speech fights partially morphed into the violence of the 1970s from the Left, a la The Weather Underground and similar groups.)

F.I.R.E. did a recent study which found, among many other things, this fact: “A majority of very liberal students (63%) and almost half of very conservative students (45%) agree that it is important to be part of a campus community where they are not exposed to intolerant or offensive ideas.” Sixty-three percent of liberal students do not want to be part of a campus where they hear things they don’t want to hear, that hurt their feelings or make them feel “unsafe.” This is very, very bad, folks.

Social media makes things worse, keeping everyone in their myopic, contained, ideologically homogenous silos. Add to this the fragmentation of media over the past thirty years, the rise of YouTube and streaming and the crumbling of broadcast news companies which most Americans enjoy together, and you have different groups getting different news—different biased “realities”— from each other. This ultimately leads to less human connection, less human empathy, less tolerance for divergent views, and a deeper schism between “left and right.” Gen Z statistically has been polled; we found this: “Gen Z respondents are least likely among age groups to say the First Amendment is “extremely vital.” Further, from the same study: “only about 47% of young Americans (ages 18‑34) said speech from controversial figures (e.g. communists) should be allowed, which is far less than older groups.”

Meanwhile we no longer teach American Civics to our kids in most schools; students are often being brainwashed (in liberal cities at least) to believe that human beings should be identified most importantly by their race or skin color and America should be seen and judged not by her accomplishments but by slavery, imperialism, meddling in the Middle East, and all her other tragic mistakes; this lens tends to zoom the historical camera in, in a sort of narcissistic way, instead of broadening the view to 30,000 feet and seeing global history which actually makes America, for the most part, look pretty damn good.

Add to all this the lack of book reading in America, especially by young people. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences found this:

“The American Academy of Arts & Sciences reports that in 1992, ~61% of U.S. adults had read at least one book for pleasure during the previous year; by 2022, this fell to about 48.5%. The greatest declines have occurred among adults under age 55; older adults have also declined, but less so.”

So a lack of civics education. Less book reading. More indoctrination in many schools around identity, race, gender, and American history. A distaste among younger people for free speech and the first amendment more broadly. Social media echo chambers. The clinging to the notion of Hate Speech. Vitriolic polarization and partisanship. The never-ending push-pull between Left and Right, which Bill Maher brilliantly mocks, where each side claims the other side is Evil and is the one who “started it” (as if we’re 5-year-olds), denying that “their side” had anything to do with it. There is plenty of evidence: Political violence; book banning; free speech problems: Whether legally, governmentally, politically ideologically or culturally: This shit IS happening on both sides. “He said it first” or “I know you are but what am I” is never, EVER going to fix our problems.

Can’t you see that BOTH political sides fuel each other? Can’t you see that the far right can’t exist without the far left? Can’t you see that, even if you blame Trump circa 2015 when he came down the escalator for “starting” the extremism (not a bad argument), that The Left’s REACTION to that extremism with their own extremism has been a huge part of the problem ever since then?

Hate begets hate. Denial begets denial. Violence fuels more violence. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” as Gandhi famously said. “Another reason why we must love our enemies is that hate scars the soul and distorts the personality,” as Martin Luther King said. Cultural and institutional decrying of free speech encourages whatever “side” is in power (right now Trump and Republicans) to use legal means to censor and silence debate that way.

This is not a hard concept to understand. And yet we don’t seem to understand it. Sam Harris, and so many people, including, ironically, right before he died, Charlie Kirk, knew and spoke about the obvious reality: Without conversation, all that’s left is violence. And that’s the problem of our time, our moment: We’re not dialoguing anymore. We’re talking past each other. We don’t even see each other anymore. We’ve mutually dehumanized the other side. It’s killing us. The debates about which side “is worse” are irrelevant and are incredibly missing the point. Both sides fail to live up to liberalism’s basic creed. Without the radical left the radical right (Trump) could not exist. Without the radical right the radical left cannot exist.

During COVID we were lied to and manipulated too many times, by Biden’s administration. Trump in both terms lied and still lies so much it’s hard to even process. News has largely become totally partisan to the point of Mark-Twain-like satire: Bias leads the way; News has become the new WWF Wrestling.

I defend a pro-Palestinian student’s right to say they strongly oppose Israel, even to call Israel “Nazis” and “fascists” and to call their war a “Genocide.” I disagree with all of these statements…but I defend the right for anyone to say it. Ditto Rachel Maddow, Zohran Mamdani, any social justice warrior.

If you can’t comprehend how this ALSO extends to people on the “other side,” yes, very much including Charlie Kirk…you are deeply, stupidly missing the point. You are the problem. And murder is never, EVER the fucking answer. Violence of any kind is never the answer. We don’t resolve our differences through violence, cancelling, de-platforming, or government speech suppression. Not in western Democracies, certainly not in the United States of America.

Agree with Kirk or disagree with him—and I disagree with a lot—he was following the classical American creed. He was expressing his first amendment free speech rights, trying to TALK to people instead of removing them or denouncing them. He wanted to communicate. And that is what we’re all ultimately missing here, folks.

We're no longer trying to communicate. We’re only trying to gain power, control the narrative, and win.

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*By the way, listen to this interview with Ezra Klein: He is one of the clearest, most honest voices on the Left right now. God bless him.