this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2025
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No worries. I don't put an immense stock in the karma system or whatever. It all kinda balances out in the end. :)
But I do think saying the only difference is authority, while true, misses the point a bit. If I give a baby a sword and he wants to murder someone but can't because he's too weak to swing it, is he less culpable than the man who murders someone with a sword, even though they have the same intent? Absolutely. If Hitler had been a street urchin with no influence and never risen to power, he probably would still have been a loathsome person, but he wouldn't have been deserving of being out to death, as he would never have taken any actions deserving of that, even if he really wanted to. The fact Kirk didn't have authority does in fact matter.
I do see your point about soft power and don't wholly disagree. He did advocate for a lot of extremely harmful policies, and likely pushed a few people over the edge into extremist action. I certainly am not defending that. Again, I can't say it enough, I did not care for or support Charlie Kirk or anything he stood for.
But I do still believe that the freedom of speech is important if for no other reason than if it wasn't, this current administration would make talking about LGBT issues or immigration a felony and start throwing people in jail for it. It seems they're trying anyway, and things like the first amendment are one of the only remaining bulwarks against that.
The correct way to deal with rhetoric like Kirks (imo) is through community driven things like lobbying companies to deplatform him. His rhetoric should be heinous enough that places refuse to amplify him, and the fact it's not is a black mark on where the nation is at as a whole. But that doesn't mean that having the government limit his speech or murdering him outright is the correct call.
It may be harder to do things the right way and win things in the public sphere of ideas, but it's important to do things in the right way, even when they're hard. Which doesn't mean "do nothing" to be clear. I'm advocating for an MLKj version of civil disobedience and protest. Change can and will happen without banning speech or murdering people.