I've been feeling sick all day from this story. Seeing friends share the ridiculous headlines of 14 000 starving babies which got basically no push back in Swedish media. Genuinely worried about the future for Jews in the western world.
So honest question then what?You say Trump is going to misuse this opportunity but opportunity to do what. Give a speech, sign an EO , pass a resolution. What exactly should our government do to combat this evil that has been allowed to fester for the last 20 months. Should we just write letters to our congressman. I admire and obviously follow you and your commitment to free speech. But what should be done about Free Palestine protesters that are more than just a bunch of university students going along with the crowd. Has this not gone beyond free speech, when does this tolerance of violence make us say enough. Is the “red line” to complicated so that it is never enforced. I want to believe that we should stay the course but can’t help but think about November 1938.
Good question, though I think you sort of answered it yourself when you drew a line in the sand differentiating protesters and students who write op-eds, such as Rumeysa Ozturk, from those who "Are more than just a bunch of university students." I would draw the same line in the same place as you. And I would want America to be a free and open society right up to the line. But once you cross that line and commit incitement to imminent lawless action or perpetrate actual violence yourself, security concerns take over and it doesn't make us any less free to be brutally harsh on the other side of that line. On the contrary, that's how we preserve our freedom.
And remember, in the years leading up to November 1938, Hitler enacted a series of speech controls — the Reighstag Fire Decree, the establishment of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda headed by Goebbels, the Gleichschaltung or "coordination" policy, the book burnings, the censorship of "degenerate" paintings and films, the closure of free press, the firing of non-PC professors. My point being, the path to Kristallnacht was paved in censorship, not tolerance of speech.
Same story in every authoritarian regime. Mere days after the revolution, Lenin and his Bolsheviks banned opposition newspapers and established the Cheka to enforce ideological conformity. Stalin too got immediately to work purging opposition voices such as Trotsky and Zinoviev and tightening state control over the media. Before Mao even took power he was aggressively censoring people within the limits of his power, which reached only to members of the party. Mussolini has his Press Law, Franco had his Political Responsibility Law that retroactively punished speech that was uttered even before he took power.
Contrast this with the likes of Classical Athens, Abbasid Baghdad, Renaissance Rome, or Enlightenment London, none of which were bastions of free speech by modern American standards, but all of which were far freer than contemporary societies, and they flourished as a result. In fact, those were arguably the peaks of development for each of those cities, and in the case of Baghdad, the Islamic Golden Age was the peak of intellectual development for the entire faith.
Let the mind breathe and speak and it's amazing what can be done. Silence it off and it's amazing how bad things can get.
We need to do a better job distinguishing speech from consequences. Telling someone “That’s it, your provisional right to be in America is revoked because you’re a monster” is not a violation of speech rights in the slightest.
It’s not a violation of any right in the slightest.
Now of course, a lot of US citizens have also been groomed into monstrosity (often with our tax dollars), and we can’t simply remove them from the country. But we certainly ought to judge them as harshly as we can using our own freedoms.
The killer is the perfect model of a modern leftist: commit horrible acts against your fellow human beings while at the same time luxuriating in the thrill of moral superiority. Isn't that also the definition of sociopathy?
BREAKING: Hasan Piker—hailed by the New York Times as the “future of progressivism”—tells his audience that the DC attack might’ve been a false flag… then immediately says:
Murder is, rightfully, considered one of the most heinous crimes, and should be punished severely. But I am also concerned by the wider breakdown of civility, of which this is an extreme example. The idea that one can legitimately attack, verbally and physically, those with whom they disagree politically has apparently become commonplace. Restraining the movements of others, vandalism and destruction of others property because one associates them (sometimes mistakenly) for someone with differing beliefs, and murder of people because they represent to the killer a threat, not to themselves but to some other group with which the killer is not directly associated - this is the cancer that could kill our society.
I do not feel historical analogies are fitting, particularly regarding Nazi Germany. Those are the bogeymen some would use to frighten us into submission to their control (on both the right and left). What is the answer? It could start with comprehensive condemnation of all acts of political violence without any reservations or mitigation. When prominent public figures condemned the assassination of a healthcare executive, then added a "but ..." to their comments, it sent a message that the act was both distasteful and understandable. Let us be unequivocal in condemning all political violence. Anger in no way justifies violence. Visceral hatred does not justify murder. These cannot be tolerated.
Unfortunately the algorithms of social media reinforce isolation and create echo chambers where extremist rhetoric is constantly reinforced and amplified, and which requires an effort of will to break through in order to hear what others are saying. I frequently ask people what they read or listen to with which they disagree. The results are a bit depressing. Politicians know that fear, anger, and moral outrage are easily used to motivate people and "activate the base". Short of introducing antidepressants into public drinking water, there is no simple solution. The best long term strategy might be to have discussions by the most influential public figures around how to disagree and differentiate without exacerbating extremist fervor. Or perhaps I'm a dreamer. I do hope we can awaken from this nightmare before it destroys us.
Say their names.
I've been feeling sick all day from this story. Seeing friends share the ridiculous headlines of 14 000 starving babies which got basically no push back in Swedish media. Genuinely worried about the future for Jews in the western world.
So honest question then what?You say Trump is going to misuse this opportunity but opportunity to do what. Give a speech, sign an EO , pass a resolution. What exactly should our government do to combat this evil that has been allowed to fester for the last 20 months. Should we just write letters to our congressman. I admire and obviously follow you and your commitment to free speech. But what should be done about Free Palestine protesters that are more than just a bunch of university students going along with the crowd. Has this not gone beyond free speech, when does this tolerance of violence make us say enough. Is the “red line” to complicated so that it is never enforced. I want to believe that we should stay the course but can’t help but think about November 1938.
Good question, though I think you sort of answered it yourself when you drew a line in the sand differentiating protesters and students who write op-eds, such as Rumeysa Ozturk, from those who "Are more than just a bunch of university students." I would draw the same line in the same place as you. And I would want America to be a free and open society right up to the line. But once you cross that line and commit incitement to imminent lawless action or perpetrate actual violence yourself, security concerns take over and it doesn't make us any less free to be brutally harsh on the other side of that line. On the contrary, that's how we preserve our freedom.
And remember, in the years leading up to November 1938, Hitler enacted a series of speech controls — the Reighstag Fire Decree, the establishment of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda headed by Goebbels, the Gleichschaltung or "coordination" policy, the book burnings, the censorship of "degenerate" paintings and films, the closure of free press, the firing of non-PC professors. My point being, the path to Kristallnacht was paved in censorship, not tolerance of speech.
Same story in every authoritarian regime. Mere days after the revolution, Lenin and his Bolsheviks banned opposition newspapers and established the Cheka to enforce ideological conformity. Stalin too got immediately to work purging opposition voices such as Trotsky and Zinoviev and tightening state control over the media. Before Mao even took power he was aggressively censoring people within the limits of his power, which reached only to members of the party. Mussolini has his Press Law, Franco had his Political Responsibility Law that retroactively punished speech that was uttered even before he took power.
Contrast this with the likes of Classical Athens, Abbasid Baghdad, Renaissance Rome, or Enlightenment London, none of which were bastions of free speech by modern American standards, but all of which were far freer than contemporary societies, and they flourished as a result. In fact, those were arguably the peaks of development for each of those cities, and in the case of Baghdad, the Islamic Golden Age was the peak of intellectual development for the entire faith.
Let the mind breathe and speak and it's amazing what can be done. Silence it off and it's amazing how bad things can get.
We need to do a better job distinguishing speech from consequences. Telling someone “That’s it, your provisional right to be in America is revoked because you’re a monster” is not a violation of speech rights in the slightest.
It’s not a violation of any right in the slightest.
Now of course, a lot of US citizens have also been groomed into monstrosity (often with our tax dollars), and we can’t simply remove them from the country. But we certainly ought to judge them as harshly as we can using our own freedoms.
If we don’t, they will eradicate our freedoms.
The killer is the perfect model of a modern leftist: commit horrible acts against your fellow human beings while at the same time luxuriating in the thrill of moral superiority. Isn't that also the definition of sociopathy?
A few weeks ago the NYTimes wrote a glowing article about podcaster Hasan Piker:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/style/hasan-piker-twitch-youtube.html?searchResultPosition=2
Well,
BREAKING: Hasan Piker—hailed by the New York Times as the “future of progressivism”—tells his audience that the DC attack might’ve been a false flag… then immediately says:
“The guy was genuine with his actions!”
https://x.com/EYakoby/status/1925720548270576011
Join the death cult and murder with impunity.
I thought it would happen first on a college campus.
Murder is, rightfully, considered one of the most heinous crimes, and should be punished severely. But I am also concerned by the wider breakdown of civility, of which this is an extreme example. The idea that one can legitimately attack, verbally and physically, those with whom they disagree politically has apparently become commonplace. Restraining the movements of others, vandalism and destruction of others property because one associates them (sometimes mistakenly) for someone with differing beliefs, and murder of people because they represent to the killer a threat, not to themselves but to some other group with which the killer is not directly associated - this is the cancer that could kill our society.
I do not feel historical analogies are fitting, particularly regarding Nazi Germany. Those are the bogeymen some would use to frighten us into submission to their control (on both the right and left). What is the answer? It could start with comprehensive condemnation of all acts of political violence without any reservations or mitigation. When prominent public figures condemned the assassination of a healthcare executive, then added a "but ..." to their comments, it sent a message that the act was both distasteful and understandable. Let us be unequivocal in condemning all political violence. Anger in no way justifies violence. Visceral hatred does not justify murder. These cannot be tolerated.
Unfortunately the algorithms of social media reinforce isolation and create echo chambers where extremist rhetoric is constantly reinforced and amplified, and which requires an effort of will to break through in order to hear what others are saying. I frequently ask people what they read or listen to with which they disagree. The results are a bit depressing. Politicians know that fear, anger, and moral outrage are easily used to motivate people and "activate the base". Short of introducing antidepressants into public drinking water, there is no simple solution. The best long term strategy might be to have discussions by the most influential public figures around how to disagree and differentiate without exacerbating extremist fervor. Or perhaps I'm a dreamer. I do hope we can awaken from this nightmare before it destroys us.