You know that old (apocryphal?) quote, "I despise what you say, I will defend to the death your right to say it"? Since last Wednesday, there has for a certain sort of liberal been such an overemphasis on the second half of that quote, that there's a danger we forget the first half. Thank you for your corrective.
I’m so glad this showed up in my Substack feed. It’s THE most cogent and articulate response to both the murder of Charlie Kirk and the various responses and reactions I’ve come across. Thanks very much for taking the time to think about and share the above.
So... what's your point? You're blaming Kirk and those like him for the low standard of public dialogue?
I agree with most of what you say here; yes, lib-owning content is unproductive, obnoxious, and not always done in good faith (though I'm sure those that produce it may genuinely disagree). But in the current political environment, you can't seriously tell me that someone committed to open dialogue is the bottom of the intellectual barrel, or even anywhere close.
As someone who shares your yearning for higher tier public dialogue, I'm 110% for the lionizing of Kirk and his commitment to open debate! The reality of what he did and how he debated really doesn't matter, so long as he inspires others to engage freely and openly with the opposition. Will most of these people be unproductive theatrical debaters? Probably. But higher quality dialogue will not come about if there isn't already a safe and healthy environment for open discussion, which is what universities are supposed to be. It's not the theatrical nature of Kirk that's being lionized, it's the act of dialogue in and of itself.
This seems fairly obvious to me. I understand the frustration with shitty discourse, but it should go without saying that respectful engagement is preferable to no engagement, and that high quality intellectual exchanges only exist in places that respectful engagement is taken for granted. I'm sure you know that.
I hope I'm wrong, but I really see no reason that you would write this piece other than to dunk on a guy that is already dead. I didn't care for Kirk either, but it seems in poor taste to "well, akshually" about him now, especially in order to decry a lionization process that you have good reason to support.
And by the way, the reason why flags are at half mast and your Packers took a knee isn't because we expect everyone to feel loss for the guy or even for his family. It's because it was unbefitting of our country. Most Americans are in shock; no one ever wanted things to go this far. It's a loss of innocence on a national scale. It's completely appropriate to make show of mutual respect and unity, in order to discourage the situation from getting worse. Nonchalance invites further violence.
Blame for our low standard of dialogue is obviously diffuse. But I am saying that Kirk was a strong net negative on the standard of public dialogue. I don't know about his intellect, but he was near the bottom of the barrel in terms of responsible discourse, specifically in his fair-mindedness and relationship to the truth.
The words "open" and "free" are carrying a lot of weight in your positive framing of what Kirk contributed. Those adjectives do not impress me, because I don't see them as lacking in discourse elsewhere. Who is not free to speak their mind? Where is discourse not open? It was certainly open on college campuses without his tent of sneering word games. I went to college from 2011-2015 and again from 2020-2022 and had many productive conversations with left and right alike. There are debate teams, conservative speaking events, protests, class discussions. The student body leans left, yes - but that is precisely because today's right is so anti-intellectual that it doesn't appeal to most kids who get into college. Conservatives remain completely free to speak their mind; all they will receive in return are counterarguments.
Substack offers free and open dialogue. Even X offers this! The problem is not that X is closed or censored. It's that the temperature is cranked all the way up so the free and open dialogue is nonetheless unproductive.
High quality intellectual exchanges are something that I have never once seen Charlie Kirk even attempt to engage in. I have only seen him crowd them out, or polarize people so they're unable to follow or engage in them.
I agree that "open and free" are the load bearing members of my point, but we may have to agree to disagree on the rest. In my mind, the standard of dialogue that existed before the "debate me" bros was far worse, especially on college campuses and among young people generally. That was my experience at least, when I was in high school and college (graduated in '21).
It may be that we just had very different collegiate experiences; you were in undergrad before Trump, and were there as an adult in the crazy years. When I was in school, it was clear to me that openly touting conservative viewpoints, even fairly milquetoast ones, would result in two things: Social ostracization from the student body, and reduced support or even outright cancellation by the faculty/admin. I can get more into the specifics if you'd like. Suffice to say, I didn't see much in the way of meaningful debate around sacred cow issues like abortion, covid, social justice, etc. The campus-approved conservative discourse was limited to inoffensive topics, like foreign policy and fiscal issues.
The student body leans left because the faculty is overwhelmingly left, and morally committed to instilling those values into students. I agree that the right is largely anti-intellectual these days, but I believe that's a fairly new phenomenon, at least at this scale. Universities are liberal bubbles not because young conservatives don't want to be students, but because older conservatives didn't want to be professors.
I did my best to engage in quality discourse throughout high school and college, mostly coming from a conservative angle, and in my experience, the debate me bros did a lot to normalize dialogue in places where it wasn't happening before. A lot of conservative students who were previously afraid to speak their mind started to find their voice, and yes, many were vulgar rhetoricians, but some were good. Those good few are worth a lot, and I credit Kirk to some degree for buying them the room to speak.
Agreed, substack is great. Thanks for engaging respectfully and thoughtfully.
I don't know about "gold standard." The most responsible figures are rarely famous anymore because the algorithms don't reward it. But some are better than others. Ironically, Ezra Klein is better than most. Scott Alexander is a national treasure. Conservatives I respect include Coleman Hughes, David Brooks, and Andrew Sullivan. I like Conor Friedersdorf and George Packer at The Atlantic, though they're more long thinkpieces than punditry. Yascha Mounk and Shikha Dalmia are great. And a lot more people on Substack seem to be at least trying than people on other social media. You can check my subscriptions for folks I'm forgetting.
Obviously, holding a gun to a non-pregnant woman's stomach is not a great mark of character either - but making up garish details like this is a good example of the little lies Kirk told every day. It's like saying the immigrants are eating your dogs, and then when pressed, falling back on some immigrant somewhere committing a crime; or, like Israeli warhawks making up stories of Hamas decapitating babies, and then saying "oh, so you're saying what they did was ok?" when you ask for evidence that's true. The clear intent is to hijack people's especially intense emotional attachments to pets, babies, and defenseless women to shut down critical thinking and demonize a racial group. It's one of the oldest propaganda techniques in the books.
If Kirk were generally very careful with the truth and prone to correcting himself when shown evidence that he'd gotten something wrong, he'd have earned our benefit of the doubt on things like this. But he obviously wasn't, as the rest of that paragraph hopefully highlights. Kirk played fast and loose with the truth on purpose because his speech was never intended reason towards it; it was intended to fan the flames of tribal warfare.
You know that old (apocryphal?) quote, "I despise what you say, I will defend to the death your right to say it"? Since last Wednesday, there has for a certain sort of liberal been such an overemphasis on the second half of that quote, that there's a danger we forget the first half. Thank you for your corrective.
This is just comprehensively everything I wish I could have mustered the words to say.
I’m so glad this showed up in my Substack feed. It’s THE most cogent and articulate response to both the murder of Charlie Kirk and the various responses and reactions I’ve come across. Thanks very much for taking the time to think about and share the above.
So... what's your point? You're blaming Kirk and those like him for the low standard of public dialogue?
I agree with most of what you say here; yes, lib-owning content is unproductive, obnoxious, and not always done in good faith (though I'm sure those that produce it may genuinely disagree). But in the current political environment, you can't seriously tell me that someone committed to open dialogue is the bottom of the intellectual barrel, or even anywhere close.
As someone who shares your yearning for higher tier public dialogue, I'm 110% for the lionizing of Kirk and his commitment to open debate! The reality of what he did and how he debated really doesn't matter, so long as he inspires others to engage freely and openly with the opposition. Will most of these people be unproductive theatrical debaters? Probably. But higher quality dialogue will not come about if there isn't already a safe and healthy environment for open discussion, which is what universities are supposed to be. It's not the theatrical nature of Kirk that's being lionized, it's the act of dialogue in and of itself.
This seems fairly obvious to me. I understand the frustration with shitty discourse, but it should go without saying that respectful engagement is preferable to no engagement, and that high quality intellectual exchanges only exist in places that respectful engagement is taken for granted. I'm sure you know that.
I hope I'm wrong, but I really see no reason that you would write this piece other than to dunk on a guy that is already dead. I didn't care for Kirk either, but it seems in poor taste to "well, akshually" about him now, especially in order to decry a lionization process that you have good reason to support.
And by the way, the reason why flags are at half mast and your Packers took a knee isn't because we expect everyone to feel loss for the guy or even for his family. It's because it was unbefitting of our country. Most Americans are in shock; no one ever wanted things to go this far. It's a loss of innocence on a national scale. It's completely appropriate to make show of mutual respect and unity, in order to discourage the situation from getting worse. Nonchalance invites further violence.
Blame for our low standard of dialogue is obviously diffuse. But I am saying that Kirk was a strong net negative on the standard of public dialogue. I don't know about his intellect, but he was near the bottom of the barrel in terms of responsible discourse, specifically in his fair-mindedness and relationship to the truth.
The words "open" and "free" are carrying a lot of weight in your positive framing of what Kirk contributed. Those adjectives do not impress me, because I don't see them as lacking in discourse elsewhere. Who is not free to speak their mind? Where is discourse not open? It was certainly open on college campuses without his tent of sneering word games. I went to college from 2011-2015 and again from 2020-2022 and had many productive conversations with left and right alike. There are debate teams, conservative speaking events, protests, class discussions. The student body leans left, yes - but that is precisely because today's right is so anti-intellectual that it doesn't appeal to most kids who get into college. Conservatives remain completely free to speak their mind; all they will receive in return are counterarguments.
Substack offers free and open dialogue. Even X offers this! The problem is not that X is closed or censored. It's that the temperature is cranked all the way up so the free and open dialogue is nonetheless unproductive.
High quality intellectual exchanges are something that I have never once seen Charlie Kirk even attempt to engage in. I have only seen him crowd them out, or polarize people so they're unable to follow or engage in them.
I agree that "open and free" are the load bearing members of my point, but we may have to agree to disagree on the rest. In my mind, the standard of dialogue that existed before the "debate me" bros was far worse, especially on college campuses and among young people generally. That was my experience at least, when I was in high school and college (graduated in '21).
It may be that we just had very different collegiate experiences; you were in undergrad before Trump, and were there as an adult in the crazy years. When I was in school, it was clear to me that openly touting conservative viewpoints, even fairly milquetoast ones, would result in two things: Social ostracization from the student body, and reduced support or even outright cancellation by the faculty/admin. I can get more into the specifics if you'd like. Suffice to say, I didn't see much in the way of meaningful debate around sacred cow issues like abortion, covid, social justice, etc. The campus-approved conservative discourse was limited to inoffensive topics, like foreign policy and fiscal issues.
The student body leans left because the faculty is overwhelmingly left, and morally committed to instilling those values into students. I agree that the right is largely anti-intellectual these days, but I believe that's a fairly new phenomenon, at least at this scale. Universities are liberal bubbles not because young conservatives don't want to be students, but because older conservatives didn't want to be professors.
I did my best to engage in quality discourse throughout high school and college, mostly coming from a conservative angle, and in my experience, the debate me bros did a lot to normalize dialogue in places where it wasn't happening before. A lot of conservative students who were previously afraid to speak their mind started to find their voice, and yes, many were vulgar rhetoricians, but some were good. Those good few are worth a lot, and I credit Kirk to some degree for buying them the room to speak.
Agreed, substack is great. Thanks for engaging respectfully and thoughtfully.
Question: Which debtor/commentators/heads are the gold standard in this regard?
I don't know about "gold standard." The most responsible figures are rarely famous anymore because the algorithms don't reward it. But some are better than others. Ironically, Ezra Klein is better than most. Scott Alexander is a national treasure. Conservatives I respect include Coleman Hughes, David Brooks, and Andrew Sullivan. I like Conor Friedersdorf and George Packer at The Atlantic, though they're more long thinkpieces than punditry. Yascha Mounk and Shikha Dalmia are great. And a lot more people on Substack seem to be at least trying than people on other social media. You can check my subscriptions for folks I'm forgetting.
Wait isn’t the pregnant woman’s stomach thing true? https://www.factcheck.org/2020/06/meme-spreads-wrong-photo-details-in-floyd-criminal-case/
I’m also not sure why you think he was lying instead of genuinely mistaken.
The woman wasn't pregnant, or at least there's no evidence she was. Your link agrees with this, as does Politifact. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/08/facebook-posts/evidence-shows-george-floyds-death-was-not-result-/
Obviously, holding a gun to a non-pregnant woman's stomach is not a great mark of character either - but making up garish details like this is a good example of the little lies Kirk told every day. It's like saying the immigrants are eating your dogs, and then when pressed, falling back on some immigrant somewhere committing a crime; or, like Israeli warhawks making up stories of Hamas decapitating babies, and then saying "oh, so you're saying what they did was ok?" when you ask for evidence that's true. The clear intent is to hijack people's especially intense emotional attachments to pets, babies, and defenseless women to shut down critical thinking and demonize a racial group. It's one of the oldest propaganda techniques in the books.
If Kirk were generally very careful with the truth and prone to correcting himself when shown evidence that he'd gotten something wrong, he'd have earned our benefit of the doubt on things like this. But he obviously wasn't, as the rest of that paragraph hopefully highlights. Kirk played fast and loose with the truth on purpose because his speech was never intended reason towards it; it was intended to fan the flames of tribal warfare.
I got halfway down your post and spotted several aggregate actual lies. Then I stopped reading.
I could elaborate later, but the gist is, "not highly, though I admit that assessment is founded on limited information."