Civility, we are told, categorically does not condone joy expressed in the wake of an act of political violence. Political violence, we are told, is never okay because words must be fought with words. Words can never hurt you, it must be the case, because they are ephemeral, useless things, with no power, really, to inspire or effectuate ideas—and ideas, it must also be the case, are harmless because it’s only violence, physical violence, that harms. And harm, we are told to accept, does not follow from mere words, for the aforementioned reasons.
You may disagree with the words of another, we are told, but you must agree, as an American, with The First Amendment. You must agree that the First Amendment protects your right to free speech. You must agree that your right to free speech guarantees your ability to speak your mind.
But then we are told that if you express joy in the wake of an act of political violence, you’ve gone too far, because no matter how heinous the words or ideas of any one individual, that individual never physically hurt you. Their inspiring others to insult or exclude you, or advocacy for policy that actively denies and criminalizes some aspect of your identity—but of course not theirs—is not the problem or responsibility of the speaker.
Following in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, there was no shortage of headlines of the professional consequences (read: firings) that followed from private social media posts dug up by HR departments across the country, that celebrated, or justified, or called attention to the ironic circumstances of his killing. To be clear, some sentiments were also publicly expressed, for which public reprimand and consequence also followed. The irony of doling out professional consequences to those who exercised their right to free speech, by reacting to the killing of a “free speech” advocate, somehow did not register.
Or perhaps the irony did register, but it was overpowered by a commitment to someone’s idea of propriety. That “someone” is not necessarily a person, though we may count corporatism as that person, because “propriety” was expressed through the media in a one-sided way: Kirk’s killing was in no way to be celebrated. Outpouring of support over the “husband,” the “young father of two,” was to be highlighted as the proper response, while responses outside of these prepared remarks were to be demonized as completely unacceptable and outrageous. Kirk, the man, was to be separated and insulated from the ideas and words as espoused by Charlie Kirk.
Was Charlie Kirk a husband and father of two who merely existed on “debate” stages? Did he invite “debate” on college campuses to talk about being a husband and father of two? Or might the contrasting reaction to his killing be due to the ideas he spread? The media would have us believe that Charlie Kirk was a free speech warrior, because there are only so many available minutes in a segment, and that’s a tidy enough simplification of his persona. To evaluate the merit or substance of what he promoted was not the purpose of nightly segments. The media has grown tired of endless thoughts and prayers in the wake of school shootings, but at that moment, it would only accept thoughts and prayers. Whatever Kirk’s ideas were, the media was quick to point out, did not matter because you just didn’t shoot people. Implicit in the media’s eulogy was that no idea is worth dying for.
Our democracy, we are told, depends on the free and open debate of ideas. It is through lively debate in the agora of modern society that advocates and detractors alike may safely tussle in the intellectual arena, because we are far too civilized for physical altercations. One’s persuasive ability is to be one’s most effective tool for non-violent coercion. And we call it non-violent coercion because civilized society decided that the only legitimate forms of violence were to be reserved for The State. But civilized society also decided, or accepted, that violence perpetrated by The State was not, in fact, violence, but rather the carrying out of policy directives expressed by the vote of the people.
Philosophically, lively debate in the agora of modern society may elucidate largely agreeable points, against which certain reasonable debate may be had. But now we’re forced to make a bold observation: certain debate is no longer reasonable.
Realistically, someone is going to feel that your speech is as much a threat to their existence as a forecasted bullet would be to their life. But that’s the price we pay for the First Amendment? Charlie Kirk seemed to accept, in the context of the Second Amendment, that these fundamental freedoms come with existential risk. The question then is whether he ever considered the existential risk to include himself?
Charlie Kirk, I would hazard to guess, had no qualms making a decision when faced with the Trolley Problem: sacrifice the one for the benefit of the whole. Why do I think that? Because it takes a cavalier view of human life to so openly couch your hateful “ideas” behind the veneer of legitimate political discourse. A genuine answer to the Trolley Problem, in my opinion, is not—do you sacrifice the one for the benefit of the whole, but rather: Do you sacrifice the one—who is you; and also, you don’t know when your train is due. It’s not some random person tied up on the tracks, but yourself. And you have to live with the uncertainty that a train may arrive, and it may not. But you are certainly aware that, under similar circumstances, the train has arrived before. What’s the decision, then?
That’s the point here. Civilized society would have us believe that the only consequence to hateful rhetoric should be a loss at the ballot box. We can agree on what should happen, but why feign surprise when a predictable reaction follows from despicable action? The most politically involved would have us believe that the only consequence to spreading existential threats should be a shift in congressional seats. Modernity, they would have us believe, does not solve disputes with violence.
The problem with this view of American society, which is shared by anyone who categorically denounces all acts of political violence, is that it holds in its head at least two incompatible ideas. First, the principles of the Founding Fathers were correct. And second, the lived experiences of the Founding Fathers did not contradict those principles. If you accept the first idea, you cannot accept the second because the historical record is clear as to their violations of the enshrined principles. If you accept the second idea, you cannot accept that the principles were correct as written, because they would have been too broad, given the incompatibility between the words championed and the lived experiences of the champions. A believer of life and liberty would have to concede that the slaveowner was actively violating those principles for another. An advocate for civility would have to confront that the birth of this nation may have been possible through the long theoretical exercise of changing minds at the House of Commons, but that it actually came about through an armed and sustained uprising, i.e., through political violence. What’s more, that uprising is in fact celebrated for ushering in the then-revolutionary idea that no longer accepted the divine right of kings. The mandate to rule would instead be given by and in the service of “the people.”
People whose medical coverage or political power or livelihood or existence depends on the words of whoever is against them and who hold power, they understand the harm that is possible should they find themselves on the wrong side of current events. To that person facing harm, what believes itself to be civilized society would say, “Endure, organize, win in the next election,” all the while their very real, day-to-day world is made intolerable. Policy changes have very real consequences that we know lead to people going hungry or delaying medical care. Civilized society would have us tolerate political ideas and views that we wouldn’t hesitate to call repugnant in normal conversation. The beauty of the First Amendment, we are told, is that, in the course of lively, respectful discourse, society will be persuaded to adopt noble goals because “good” ideas prevail, eventually.
The “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” means nothing to the gay victims of a homophobe. It means nothing to the children killed in school shootings. It means nothing to the Latinos who are racially profiled and disappeared. Individuals within those communities may agree with the overall concept that we are indeed moving towards a more just society, but those individuals would also recognize that the tolerance of certain ideas, which are by their nature fringe, do a great disservice to that progress, delay it unnecessarily, and result in unnecessary death.
How are we still accepting as legitimate debate where a woman’s place should be? Or whether same-sex couples can get married? Or the merits of immigration? Or the merits of providing healthcare? Or whether climate change is real? Or whether anything should be done in response to an ongoing genocide? There have to be certain checkpoints from which it is no longer reasonable to re-debate matters that a majority of society’s members have agreed are no longer worth discussing. Anyone advocating for the return of slavery, for example, cannot be considered a serious thinker or contributor to societal discourse.
There has to be line drawing. That is, in fact, a prerequisite to debate. But there must also be boundaries. We may debate, for example, the best model for studying climatological data, but no one would seriously advocate that we return to making offerings and living off the good or bad fortune of (dis)satisfied deities. We may debate whether paternalism has a role for recipients of low-income food vouchers, but there should be agreement that people should have the means to avoid going hungry. Whatever the topic of debate, greater society has to agree to move on from certain viewpoints that don’t belong in what we understand to be modernity.
Otherwise, calls for civility merely become cover for prolonged barbarity.
