It's not just that the left has no Charlie Kirk. The right has no spaces that compare to the left-leaning universities that he went into. Most universities, for a conservative, are 'ideologically hostile spaces', but the ideology is so widespread that it fades into the background. Everyone is a lefty because everyone is a lefty. By contrast, there are conservative students, but they are rare enough that even a declaration that they are conservative puts them into a space where they have better things to do than argue with the libs.
I've become addicted, this week, to watching Charlie Kirk. Ben Shapiro and Jonathan Sacerdoti debating in places like the Oxford Union and the Cambridge Union. I was extremely impressed by all of them, and I thought they won the majority of their debates largely by just having a better handle on the facts. But I watched many of Kirk's debates with my more-to-the-left daughter, and her opinion was that he had no intention to actually debate anyone; he just wanted to win arguments by intimidating his opponents. Most of his opponents were absolutely useless, and Kirk trounced them because he knew what he was talking about. But every time he encountered a worthy opponent, he switched into 'aggressive mode', where he was not even debating any more. He was just deflecting and mocking and insulting. He had no intention to engage intellectually or to persuade anyone. He just wanted to show that he was better than they were. As I said, I was very impressed by Charlie's and Ben's knowledge and debating skills, but if their intention was to persuade anyone, they failed spectacularly.
Back to your question, though, there is nowhere like the Oxford Union on the right where lefty intellectuals can engage with equals, and there are few right-leaning organisations where a lefty intellectual can just show up and start arguing with young conservatives. There is little need for a Leftish Charlie Kirk.
Lefties are usually welcome in conservative spaces, and the conservatives tend to be far more polite than what you see with Kirk's leftist audiences, though part of that is because these right-wing students are often at religious or military schools, so being on better behavior is not such a shocker. But it sounds as if you didn't see any of the videos of Kirk engaging students intellectually, not trying to dunk, but to persuade. Although even if he was only in it to sharpen his talking points and dunk on college kids in order to create YouTube clips, it's still better than not engaging, not going into ideological hostile spaces, because whatever his purposes, he created a ton of content of himself engaging students on a great variety of topics, and if you're a young Republican, you can pull up any number of his clips and listen to him lay out the Republican position on an issue in an entertaining way. Even if I accept such an interpretation of his political project, which I think is uncharitable, I would still say that we ought to have much more of it in this country.
One quick thought… of all the debates I watched, the opponents who were the best debaters were nearly always polite. It was the losers who were rudest.
Excellent point. I notice this in my personal life too. When people have the power of facts and logic on their side, they are rarely rude. Rudeness, and anger in general, is the result of feeling that your view is not being accepted and so you reach for anger or rudeness (soft anger) as a means of forcing the reaction, or attention, you desire. It’s a kind of Hail Mary. This is a bit of an oversimplification because sometimes you may have the facts and the logic and still get angry, but I would argue this is still, again, out of frustration that the issue is not being taken seriously, and anger/rudeness is used as a kind of emotional highlighter.
I think deep down some “progressives” must have doubts about their beliefs that men can become women. So, this makes their responses angry ones. Like the kid caught stealing from
I definitely agree that we need more people who will engage with their opponents. It's a good skill to have. I’ll keep watching videos to find a good one. Thanks for engaging.
This is spot on. The "my life isn't up for debate" viewpoint means that people on the left want to lecture rather than converse. A TED talk is a more fitting venue for them than a campus or town square. The "emotional labor" of educating combined with the "words are violence" schtick means that conformity to an ever narrowing set of correct viewpoints is the only acceptable course of action or you are a "literal fascist". I'm glad some people resist being told what to think but I'm not sure where this leaves those of us who support policies like universal healthcare but don't want to be badgered into other absurd viewpoints. As a side note: I'm coming out of 18 years working in academia. If I hadn't put in my notice to retire, there would be no way I would have responded to your post, linking myself publicly to it. Yes, that's how bad it has gotten.
Thank you Rebecca for sharing your thoughts, though it might cost you socially to a certain extent, despite the retirement. It gives me hope that not all in academia are insane. I come from Southeast Asia and the way our top universities have swallowed transgender / oppressor-victim ideology hook line and sinker has been mind-boggling, given the huge cultural and linguistic differences we have with the West.
For people on the Left, they ARE their beliefs, they are not people holding certain beliefs they are beliefs incarnated in people, beliefs that construct the whole person as much as a skeleton and nervous system does.
As politics now has become so totalizing, these political positions (that people don't develop through reading or reason but absorb through whichever social cohort they most identify with) are the decisive factor in everything from arts to sports to dating, they are akin to a fundamentalist faith enforced by cult dynamics.
People on the Left can't really publicly debate because their brains are ringed with so many taboos it's impossible to think out loud, there's too big a risk that you may step on an ideological mine and blow up your professional and personal life. It's much safer to do nothing but repeat the same tribal-approved slogans and jargon and hide behind them for safety. Also, as their side controls academia, culture and art, and most of the media, what do they have to gain? Total power doesn't debate, it dictates. Debate is part of open societies, and the Social Justice Left is a completely closed universe. They believe their dogma represents the apex of human wisdom and morality, so what's left to debate?
Yes, this makes sense. If you don’t have institutional power, you want to debate items on the merits (like Martin Luther). If you do have institutional power, you want to control who can say what (like the Western Church of 1517). The left has had enough power that opening up issues for honest contention would be a losing bet.
Love your work ! I just upgraded to paid. I live in a deep blue city in a black and white progressive neighborhood and I am literally in fear for my life every day. As I was waiting for the trolley in broad daylight this morning a man yelling curse words and kicking things walked aimlessly by. Screaming. Nothing happens. I will not politely wait to be stabbed. God bless Iryna’s soul and her memory will not be forgotten.
Absolutely fantastic piece, Mr. Volodzko. As someone who failed utterly get a group of leftier friends to explain to her why women should give up single-sex locker-rooms, this really resonated with me. I mean, I know I’m dealing with pseudo-religion when they start ranting, but the sheer speed at which they dropped their Me-Too affinities for the pleasures of adopting a new “marginalized group” still astonishes me. Thank you!
I feel the same, and sadly, I fear we're going to see that kind of topic shifting only more and more in the decades ahead. After the climate hysteria we we treated to the black genocide hysteria, the trans genocide hysteria, the Gaza genocide hysteria... Who can say how far this will go or where we'll end up in 20 years? Maybe one day, we'll wake up to learn that spelling "white" with an e is a sure sign of Holocaust denialism. Or that we are morally deviant if we do not hang flags in every coffee shops in the nation celebrating people who like to be peed on.
Jordan Peterson used to ask all the time, "When does the left go too far?" But I still have never seen leftists draw that line. Except for those liberals, like myself, who draw it between us and the woke. Whereas we liberals believe in individual rights and neutral laws, woke progressives emphasize collective justice and equity of outcomes.
We both want a better world, but liberals balance what we want against the limiting realities of human psychology, whereas progressives either ignore those realities, often at everyone else's expense, or they forcibly try to remake the human soul — think of the New Soviet Man, the "engineers of the human soul," as Stalin called them — which invariably ends in horror.
As David Garrow, King’s biographer, substantiated, King also presided over a rape in a hotel room by his minions. (No #metoo for Saint MLK.) Additionally, King was wrong to support stripping away freedom of association via anti-discrimination law. And he had no problem working with communists.
Progressives have no framework for disagreement, much less debate. Watching my progressive friends and family talk is like watching bats echolocate to find the "acceptable" consensus position about a topic. The consensus is based on not offending anyone's delicate sensibilities. There is no value placed on what is real or true.
The premise to this argument is false. Kirk had no interest in persuasion. He engaged in theatrical debate so Turning Points could post DESTROYS videos online. That is not dialogue.
Yes, universities lean left. But they are still fundamentally liberal spaces who were willing to invite Kirk in. If you could point me to the fundamentalist churches who have invited Medhi Hasan in to debate them then I will stand corrected. Conservatives only believe in debate in liberal spaces, not their own - which must remain safe.
Even if we change the phrasing from open dialogue to civil debate, it doesn't alter the argument. But also, I reject the idea that Kirk had no interest in persuasion. His entire project was getting young people to 1. become Christian and 2. become Republican.
I am increasingly uncomfortable with "right or left" and "conservative or liberal" as ideological tags. Our traditional labels and descriptors seem insufficient to describe who we really are.
I have friends across the political spectrum. I have found those on the extreme ends have much more in common with each other than I do with them - their willingness to force others to agree (or at least STFU), their eagerness to use political power and legal abuse to force those who disagree back in line, and even some of the things they believe are similar (though usually for different reasons).
I have found those in the middle believe the primary role of government is to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity". We will argue and quibble over how to accomplish these goals, but we will agree that enforcing ideological purity, for any ideology, is not permitted for any governmental body in the United States. We want to live our lives with as little interference as possible, but "with liberty and justice for all".
I am politically independent, ideologically difficult to pigeonhole, and in most things political have an affinity for libertarianism. I fancy myself a defender of enlightenment liberal values. If you are confused by this, it's OK, I am too sometimes. I believe most people in the US (or at least those not living on the coasts) are centerists and, right or left, have more in common with each other than those much further to the right or left. One of the things I believe we agree on is that it is wrong to force people to violate their own consciences, to silence those with whom one disagrees simply for having a different opinion, or to compel speech. So maybe the new divide should be between those who are anti-authoritarian and those who would use the power of government to force their ideology on everyone.
After Charlie Kirk's assassination, I wanted to speak out against those celebrating his death, but I realized that I knew too little about what he has said and done since starting TPUSA. (What if he really was a White Christian Nationalist nutbag?) So, with the freedom retirement has afforded me, I watched literally hundreds of hours of videos of his interactions with students. My perceptions shifted even as I watched. I saw the quick mind and the command of facts, the tactics, the styles. I saw him, at times, overwhelm his under-prepared interlocutors in a way that was deflating and frustrating for them. But I began to see other things.
I saw that in all things he was based on principles, such as freedom of speech, equality before the law, sanctity of life, primacy of the Constitution. He wasn't just parroting Republican talking points, he was arguing from first principles. He was rigid and unbending in those principles. He held positions I do not agree with, but he held them for reasons I understand.
I saw him treat the students with respect. He might be shorter with them if they entered the discussion with disrespect and name-calling, but he kept his cool. I saw him treat most people kindly and fairly. I saw him allow them to speak without interruption, or if he did interrupt, it was usually to clarify something they were saying (or to ask why they thought he was a fascist). I heard him paraphrase them, then ask if that was correct - he took pains to not put words into their mouths.
I saw him clearly delineate between his religious and political views where they did not overlap. For instance, his religious view was that homosexuality is wrong, but his political view was that the Constitution applies to all, no matter one's sexual orientation. I saw him tell a young, gay, black man that he was welcome in the conservative movement and in TPUSA (Kirk s organization) after the man explained who he was and asked if he could join.
It's true that I never saw him back down on any significant point, but I would not have expected him to. His Q&A time was short and so some responses felt rushed and preemptory. With the exception of a White Supremacist who he told to leave (after saying the racist was not welcome in the conservative movement), I didn't see him being rude to anyone. His confidence and the ruthless way he attacked Progressive talking points could be interpreted as arrogant, aggressive ,and even dismissive, but that is up to interpretation. I didn't see him engage in personal attacks. I did see a lot of young people who were unhappy with how their interaction went. I am unhappy when someone kills and guts my ideas in front of me, especially in a public forum. Usually he was kind and attempted to be persuasive. But persuasion is wasted on someone who begins the conversation with insults and false accusations, so he didn't bother trying to persuade those knuckleheads.
Charlie Kirk cared only about electing Republicans, period. He never “wandered into heterodoxy.” He was a Mitt Romney guy, Trump decided Romney sucks, so Charlie decided Romney sucks too. There is no one on the left outside the Pod Save types who are that committed to electing Democrats.
God, why are you even arguing this? The left is not listening to you and even if they were listening they do not have the substantive foundations to engage in debate. Conservatism is based on values and virtues that everyone recognizes while liberalism is intent on muddying the waters to achieve expedient, nominally greater, goods. Without its own foundation the left can't exist without duplicitousness about where the money comes from snd how it was earned.
One reason is because I write to think. Another is because I believe the practice of open dialogue and civil debate are virtues we should actively practice. Another is because silence can be complicity. Another is to possibly reach future readers. Or people who are on the fence. Or the rare lefties who are still exploring. Another is because even when you are preaching to the choir, reinforcement builds commitment, in politics as in love. I could go on.
David, please keep writing. Your reach is global, and in the non-Western country where I come from, people are indeed still on the fence. Most concerning to me is trans ideology, where our general attitude is still in the naive "be kind" stage, enthusiastically championed by the usual suspects -- elite academia, lawmakers, and "freethinker" organizations that have swapped Richard Dawkins for "Veronica Ivy" (the transgender cyclist).
Thank you for not being brainwashed by the (far?) right that liberal is a dirty word.
Ultimately I trust people who, in these polarized times, still understand and admire Christopher Hitchens. Much the same way he felt about fellow P.G. Wodehouse fans. Have a great day.
Thank you for your kind words. They are very much appreciated. Ah yes, Veronica Ivy, who went on the Daily Show and claimed to literally be a biological woman because he identifies as a woman and has biological body parts, all while Trevor Noah nodded along. Recently, Buckingham University politics professor Eric Kaufmann shared a chart showing that the percentage of nonbinary teens has fallen from almost 10% in 2023 to 2% now, according to data from Andover. He then wrongly concluded that this means *trans* identification is in "free fall." Putting that aside, Wesley Yang commented:
"The most obvious social contagion in world history is starting to peter out, but not before memeing into existence a subpopulation of 750K minors aged 13-17 who have been brainwashed into yearning to be chemically castrated and dismembered in pursuit of a delusion that can never be true. A crucial part of breaking this fever was simply people telling the truth about it just as the decisive aspect of stoking it was silencing those who told the truth about it."
Yang is uncritically adopting Kaufmann's unsupported claim, nevertheless I do think that when this vile, IQ-test contagion subsides, we will be left with a situation very much like what Yang describes.
1) The Left hates grifters and tends not to support them (cable news excepted)
2) Most folks on the Left don't want to debate Trans rights because debating anyone's human rights is dehumanizing but also, for most on the Left, these are settled issues. There's no need for debate on these topics.
3) It is much easier to argue against something than it is to argue for something. This is why politicians love to be "against" anything. That's the easy position. It's being on the Negative in debate. Being on the Affirmative is much harder because you have the burden of proof. In the US, it is often the Left who is arguing for change on something while the Right, being conservative, doesn't have to promote any of their own views because they represent the status quo. They don't have to argue for anything, they just have to argue against the new ideas coming from the Left. It is much easier for people like Mr. Kirk to go around asking gotcha questions and making a fool out of liberal college students because they are arguing (badly) FOR something. He merely has to stand against it.
4) I enjoy talking with my conservative collegues and I've had some extremely raucous people on my show. But i also know that I am far more willing to compromise on various points (phrased poorly as acknowledging reality) than most people.
5) Speaking of "reality" that is a concept entirely predicated on a defense of normal and status quo. The Left, by its embrace of progress/new ideas is rejecting the status quo. That's the whole point of new ideas, progress and most liberal movements (at least in developed countries). So the right can simply say (as you did) "they deny reality!" Of course they do, because they want to change reality and conservatives (by definition) do not.
And that is why the Right has grifters and the Left does not and probably never will.
2) It's not settled. Not socially, and certainly not legally. But they simply claim it is to avoid having to argue their indefensible positions.
3) It is often easier, and more interesting, to argue against than for, and that's why the politics of opposition is so dominant.
5) I am not taking about the political status quo but about objective reality, like whether there's a literal genocide in the U.S. now, or whether a biological man can become a biological woman.
Whether the left has grifters, they do have people who weigh in on issues, without knowing much if anything about them, in order to remain relevant to their audiences, or grow their audiences.
2) For most of the left, this is a settled question socially, hence why there’s no debate about it. If you go back far enough, we’ve been through this for slavery, civil rights for women and minorities, and so on. The Right wants to have a chat about something that for most folks on the Left has been talked about, talked through and should be changed within society (incidentally, I hate that being trans has become fashionable, it is far too seriously to be trendy).
3) Truth
5) Your first statement is excellent at making your point, the second much less so.
2) The whole point is that the left acts as if this is settled and there is no debate to be had, which is fine on its own I suppose, except for the fact that they also want others to adopt controversial behaviors, reject scientific facts, change cultural practices, even vocabulary and grammar, not to mention laws. And all of this at profound potential cost to children.
So I'm sorry, but no one gets to have any of that without making a very damn good argument why. I'm not saying this is your position, of course. But the fact that they think making such arguments is beneath them, yet they still issue the same demands, is unhinged. It also illustrates their authoritarian streak and the old bit of wisdom about how people who cannot defend their terrible positions will naturally try to use force instead of persuasion.
“Oh, and in case you were wondering,” added Zarniwoop, “this Universe was created specifically for you to come to. You are therefore the most important person in this Universe. You would never,” he said with an even more brickable smile, “have survived the Total Perspective Vortex in the real one. Shall we go?”
We’ll leave the porch light on, in case you ever feel like entering the real universe
As I mentioned in a previous post of yours (in a different context) the requirement to believe six impossible things before breakfast makes debate a non-starter. You have admitted this here, and yet you persist as a left winger. A triumph of sentiment over reason; what else can explain it?
The left-wing includes communists, socialists, progressives, who are the ones you're probably thinking about believing six impossible things before breakfast, and liberals, which includes the subgroup Enlightenment liberals, whose views are based on science, reason, logic, facts... I am an Enlightenment liberal. No sentiment over reason involved.
I consider myself a classical liberal. I grew up with liberal politics. I am very pragmatic. Thus, I ultimately became a Republican because I realized that Democratic policies did not work (over and over again) and usually had unintended consequences that had very, very negative effects (e.g. removing fathers from homes). Not saying that Republican policies are always good. One of my motos is "Just because it sounds good doesn't mean it does good." And now the woke religion is definitely too much.
I mostly agree, although already I'm seeing some ugly over-corrections to woke ideology. The far ends on both sides are pretty evil. More and more, I care less about left or right as opposed to rationalism and civility versus its opposites. I get along far better with reasonable moderates on other side than with folks on my own side, but to my left.
Now if only Žižek took The Judgement to heart, ran across town faster and faster, then threw himself in the river, we'd all be relieved of at least one tedious marxist shit.
Kafka was an artist, Zizek is a con man in love with the sound of his own voice. "Marxists" should be prohibited from discussing art, I thought in their cosmology it's just one big "bourgeois illusion" designed to distract the oppressed from their chains. At least live your beliefs!
The rules of Marxism don't apply to Marxist intellectuals, duh. They get to carry on about the working class while never being a part of it, assign the proletariat to shovel shit, while they supervise the purity of their thoughts.
Amazing benefits come with being a member of the vanguard class blessed with the X-ray Spex they call "critical consciousness". They do it all for the workers and true Marxism has never been tried! lol
It's not just that the left has no Charlie Kirk. The right has no spaces that compare to the left-leaning universities that he went into. Most universities, for a conservative, are 'ideologically hostile spaces', but the ideology is so widespread that it fades into the background. Everyone is a lefty because everyone is a lefty. By contrast, there are conservative students, but they are rare enough that even a declaration that they are conservative puts them into a space where they have better things to do than argue with the libs.
I've become addicted, this week, to watching Charlie Kirk. Ben Shapiro and Jonathan Sacerdoti debating in places like the Oxford Union and the Cambridge Union. I was extremely impressed by all of them, and I thought they won the majority of their debates largely by just having a better handle on the facts. But I watched many of Kirk's debates with my more-to-the-left daughter, and her opinion was that he had no intention to actually debate anyone; he just wanted to win arguments by intimidating his opponents. Most of his opponents were absolutely useless, and Kirk trounced them because he knew what he was talking about. But every time he encountered a worthy opponent, he switched into 'aggressive mode', where he was not even debating any more. He was just deflecting and mocking and insulting. He had no intention to engage intellectually or to persuade anyone. He just wanted to show that he was better than they were. As I said, I was very impressed by Charlie's and Ben's knowledge and debating skills, but if their intention was to persuade anyone, they failed spectacularly.
Back to your question, though, there is nowhere like the Oxford Union on the right where lefty intellectuals can engage with equals, and there are few right-leaning organisations where a lefty intellectual can just show up and start arguing with young conservatives. There is little need for a Leftish Charlie Kirk.
Lefties are usually welcome in conservative spaces, and the conservatives tend to be far more polite than what you see with Kirk's leftist audiences, though part of that is because these right-wing students are often at religious or military schools, so being on better behavior is not such a shocker. But it sounds as if you didn't see any of the videos of Kirk engaging students intellectually, not trying to dunk, but to persuade. Although even if he was only in it to sharpen his talking points and dunk on college kids in order to create YouTube clips, it's still better than not engaging, not going into ideological hostile spaces, because whatever his purposes, he created a ton of content of himself engaging students on a great variety of topics, and if you're a young Republican, you can pull up any number of his clips and listen to him lay out the Republican position on an issue in an entertaining way. Even if I accept such an interpretation of his political project, which I think is uncharitable, I would still say that we ought to have much more of it in this country.
One quick thought… of all the debates I watched, the opponents who were the best debaters were nearly always polite. It was the losers who were rudest.
Excellent point. I notice this in my personal life too. When people have the power of facts and logic on their side, they are rarely rude. Rudeness, and anger in general, is the result of feeling that your view is not being accepted and so you reach for anger or rudeness (soft anger) as a means of forcing the reaction, or attention, you desire. It’s a kind of Hail Mary. This is a bit of an oversimplification because sometimes you may have the facts and the logic and still get angry, but I would argue this is still, again, out of frustration that the issue is not being taken seriously, and anger/rudeness is used as a kind of emotional highlighter.
I think deep down some “progressives” must have doubts about their beliefs that men can become women. So, this makes their responses angry ones. Like the kid caught stealing from
the cookie jar.
I definitely agree that we need more people who will engage with their opponents. It's a good skill to have. I’ll keep watching videos to find a good one. Thanks for engaging.
This is spot on. The "my life isn't up for debate" viewpoint means that people on the left want to lecture rather than converse. A TED talk is a more fitting venue for them than a campus or town square. The "emotional labor" of educating combined with the "words are violence" schtick means that conformity to an ever narrowing set of correct viewpoints is the only acceptable course of action or you are a "literal fascist". I'm glad some people resist being told what to think but I'm not sure where this leaves those of us who support policies like universal healthcare but don't want to be badgered into other absurd viewpoints. As a side note: I'm coming out of 18 years working in academia. If I hadn't put in my notice to retire, there would be no way I would have responded to your post, linking myself publicly to it. Yes, that's how bad it has gotten.
Leftism defines disagreement as dehumanization. There is no room for debate in that ideology.
That really says something! You have to censor yourself to stay in Academia?
Thank you Rebecca for sharing your thoughts, though it might cost you socially to a certain extent, despite the retirement. It gives me hope that not all in academia are insane. I come from Southeast Asia and the way our top universities have swallowed transgender / oppressor-victim ideology hook line and sinker has been mind-boggling, given the huge cultural and linguistic differences we have with the West.
For people on the Left, they ARE their beliefs, they are not people holding certain beliefs they are beliefs incarnated in people, beliefs that construct the whole person as much as a skeleton and nervous system does.
As politics now has become so totalizing, these political positions (that people don't develop through reading or reason but absorb through whichever social cohort they most identify with) are the decisive factor in everything from arts to sports to dating, they are akin to a fundamentalist faith enforced by cult dynamics.
People on the Left can't really publicly debate because their brains are ringed with so many taboos it's impossible to think out loud, there's too big a risk that you may step on an ideological mine and blow up your professional and personal life. It's much safer to do nothing but repeat the same tribal-approved slogans and jargon and hide behind them for safety. Also, as their side controls academia, culture and art, and most of the media, what do they have to gain? Total power doesn't debate, it dictates. Debate is part of open societies, and the Social Justice Left is a completely closed universe. They believe their dogma represents the apex of human wisdom and morality, so what's left to debate?
Yes, this makes sense. If you don’t have institutional power, you want to debate items on the merits (like Martin Luther). If you do have institutional power, you want to control who can say what (like the Western Church of 1517). The left has had enough power that opening up issues for honest contention would be a losing bet.
Love your work ! I just upgraded to paid. I live in a deep blue city in a black and white progressive neighborhood and I am literally in fear for my life every day. As I was waiting for the trolley in broad daylight this morning a man yelling curse words and kicking things walked aimlessly by. Screaming. Nothing happens. I will not politely wait to be stabbed. God bless Iryna’s soul and her memory will not be forgotten.
Thank you! I hope you stay safe. There are a lot of crazies out there. And yes, God bless Iryna.
Absolutely fantastic piece, Mr. Volodzko. As someone who failed utterly get a group of leftier friends to explain to her why women should give up single-sex locker-rooms, this really resonated with me. I mean, I know I’m dealing with pseudo-religion when they start ranting, but the sheer speed at which they dropped their Me-Too affinities for the pleasures of adopting a new “marginalized group” still astonishes me. Thank you!
I feel the same, and sadly, I fear we're going to see that kind of topic shifting only more and more in the decades ahead. After the climate hysteria we we treated to the black genocide hysteria, the trans genocide hysteria, the Gaza genocide hysteria... Who can say how far this will go or where we'll end up in 20 years? Maybe one day, we'll wake up to learn that spelling "white" with an e is a sure sign of Holocaust denialism. Or that we are morally deviant if we do not hang flags in every coffee shops in the nation celebrating people who like to be peed on.
Jordan Peterson used to ask all the time, "When does the left go too far?" But I still have never seen leftists draw that line. Except for those liberals, like myself, who draw it between us and the woke. Whereas we liberals believe in individual rights and neutral laws, woke progressives emphasize collective justice and equity of outcomes.
We both want a better world, but liberals balance what we want against the limiting realities of human psychology, whereas progressives either ignore those realities, often at everyone else's expense, or they forcibly try to remake the human soul — think of the New Soviet Man, the "engineers of the human soul," as Stalin called them — which invariably ends in horror.
As David Garrow, King’s biographer, substantiated, King also presided over a rape in a hotel room by his minions. (No #metoo for Saint MLK.) Additionally, King was wrong to support stripping away freedom of association via anti-discrimination law. And he had no problem working with communists.
Thanks, Spencer. I added a line about this and edited the paragraph accordingly.
Progressives have no framework for disagreement, much less debate. Watching my progressive friends and family talk is like watching bats echolocate to find the "acceptable" consensus position about a topic. The consensus is based on not offending anyone's delicate sensibilities. There is no value placed on what is real or true.
Fantastic piece. Thanks very much.
The premise to this argument is false. Kirk had no interest in persuasion. He engaged in theatrical debate so Turning Points could post DESTROYS videos online. That is not dialogue.
Yes, universities lean left. But they are still fundamentally liberal spaces who were willing to invite Kirk in. If you could point me to the fundamentalist churches who have invited Medhi Hasan in to debate them then I will stand corrected. Conservatives only believe in debate in liberal spaces, not their own - which must remain safe.
Even if we change the phrasing from open dialogue to civil debate, it doesn't alter the argument. But also, I reject the idea that Kirk had no interest in persuasion. His entire project was getting young people to 1. become Christian and 2. become Republican.
I think he’s really good at getting the Republican-curious to sign up.
I am increasingly uncomfortable with "right or left" and "conservative or liberal" as ideological tags. Our traditional labels and descriptors seem insufficient to describe who we really are.
I have friends across the political spectrum. I have found those on the extreme ends have much more in common with each other than I do with them - their willingness to force others to agree (or at least STFU), their eagerness to use political power and legal abuse to force those who disagree back in line, and even some of the things they believe are similar (though usually for different reasons).
I have found those in the middle believe the primary role of government is to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity". We will argue and quibble over how to accomplish these goals, but we will agree that enforcing ideological purity, for any ideology, is not permitted for any governmental body in the United States. We want to live our lives with as little interference as possible, but "with liberty and justice for all".
I am politically independent, ideologically difficult to pigeonhole, and in most things political have an affinity for libertarianism. I fancy myself a defender of enlightenment liberal values. If you are confused by this, it's OK, I am too sometimes. I believe most people in the US (or at least those not living on the coasts) are centerists and, right or left, have more in common with each other than those much further to the right or left. One of the things I believe we agree on is that it is wrong to force people to violate their own consciences, to silence those with whom one disagrees simply for having a different opinion, or to compel speech. So maybe the new divide should be between those who are anti-authoritarian and those who would use the power of government to force their ideology on everyone.
After Charlie Kirk's assassination, I wanted to speak out against those celebrating his death, but I realized that I knew too little about what he has said and done since starting TPUSA. (What if he really was a White Christian Nationalist nutbag?) So, with the freedom retirement has afforded me, I watched literally hundreds of hours of videos of his interactions with students. My perceptions shifted even as I watched. I saw the quick mind and the command of facts, the tactics, the styles. I saw him, at times, overwhelm his under-prepared interlocutors in a way that was deflating and frustrating for them. But I began to see other things.
I saw that in all things he was based on principles, such as freedom of speech, equality before the law, sanctity of life, primacy of the Constitution. He wasn't just parroting Republican talking points, he was arguing from first principles. He was rigid and unbending in those principles. He held positions I do not agree with, but he held them for reasons I understand.
I saw him treat the students with respect. He might be shorter with them if they entered the discussion with disrespect and name-calling, but he kept his cool. I saw him treat most people kindly and fairly. I saw him allow them to speak without interruption, or if he did interrupt, it was usually to clarify something they were saying (or to ask why they thought he was a fascist). I heard him paraphrase them, then ask if that was correct - he took pains to not put words into their mouths.
I saw him clearly delineate between his religious and political views where they did not overlap. For instance, his religious view was that homosexuality is wrong, but his political view was that the Constitution applies to all, no matter one's sexual orientation. I saw him tell a young, gay, black man that he was welcome in the conservative movement and in TPUSA (Kirk s organization) after the man explained who he was and asked if he could join.
It's true that I never saw him back down on any significant point, but I would not have expected him to. His Q&A time was short and so some responses felt rushed and preemptory. With the exception of a White Supremacist who he told to leave (after saying the racist was not welcome in the conservative movement), I didn't see him being rude to anyone. His confidence and the ruthless way he attacked Progressive talking points could be interpreted as arrogant, aggressive ,and even dismissive, but that is up to interpretation. I didn't see him engage in personal attacks. I did see a lot of young people who were unhappy with how their interaction went. I am unhappy when someone kills and guts my ideas in front of me, especially in a public forum. Usually he was kind and attempted to be persuasive. But persuasion is wasted on someone who begins the conversation with insults and false accusations, so he didn't bother trying to persuade those knuckleheads.
Charlie Kirk cared only about electing Republicans, period. He never “wandered into heterodoxy.” He was a Mitt Romney guy, Trump decided Romney sucks, so Charlie decided Romney sucks too. There is no one on the left outside the Pod Save types who are that committed to electing Democrats.
God, why are you even arguing this? The left is not listening to you and even if they were listening they do not have the substantive foundations to engage in debate. Conservatism is based on values and virtues that everyone recognizes while liberalism is intent on muddying the waters to achieve expedient, nominally greater, goods. Without its own foundation the left can't exist without duplicitousness about where the money comes from snd how it was earned.
One reason is because I write to think. Another is because I believe the practice of open dialogue and civil debate are virtues we should actively practice. Another is because silence can be complicity. Another is to possibly reach future readers. Or people who are on the fence. Or the rare lefties who are still exploring. Another is because even when you are preaching to the choir, reinforcement builds commitment, in politics as in love. I could go on.
David, please keep writing. Your reach is global, and in the non-Western country where I come from, people are indeed still on the fence. Most concerning to me is trans ideology, where our general attitude is still in the naive "be kind" stage, enthusiastically championed by the usual suspects -- elite academia, lawmakers, and "freethinker" organizations that have swapped Richard Dawkins for "Veronica Ivy" (the transgender cyclist).
Thank you for not being brainwashed by the (far?) right that liberal is a dirty word.
Ultimately I trust people who, in these polarized times, still understand and admire Christopher Hitchens. Much the same way he felt about fellow P.G. Wodehouse fans. Have a great day.
Thank you for your kind words. They are very much appreciated. Ah yes, Veronica Ivy, who went on the Daily Show and claimed to literally be a biological woman because he identifies as a woman and has biological body parts, all while Trevor Noah nodded along. Recently, Buckingham University politics professor Eric Kaufmann shared a chart showing that the percentage of nonbinary teens has fallen from almost 10% in 2023 to 2% now, according to data from Andover. He then wrongly concluded that this means *trans* identification is in "free fall." Putting that aside, Wesley Yang commented:
"The most obvious social contagion in world history is starting to peter out, but not before memeing into existence a subpopulation of 750K minors aged 13-17 who have been brainwashed into yearning to be chemically castrated and dismembered in pursuit of a delusion that can never be true. A crucial part of breaking this fever was simply people telling the truth about it just as the decisive aspect of stoking it was silencing those who told the truth about it."
Yang is uncritically adopting Kaufmann's unsupported claim, nevertheless I do think that when this vile, IQ-test contagion subsides, we will be left with a situation very much like what Yang describes.
A few points:
1) The Left hates grifters and tends not to support them (cable news excepted)
2) Most folks on the Left don't want to debate Trans rights because debating anyone's human rights is dehumanizing but also, for most on the Left, these are settled issues. There's no need for debate on these topics.
3) It is much easier to argue against something than it is to argue for something. This is why politicians love to be "against" anything. That's the easy position. It's being on the Negative in debate. Being on the Affirmative is much harder because you have the burden of proof. In the US, it is often the Left who is arguing for change on something while the Right, being conservative, doesn't have to promote any of their own views because they represent the status quo. They don't have to argue for anything, they just have to argue against the new ideas coming from the Left. It is much easier for people like Mr. Kirk to go around asking gotcha questions and making a fool out of liberal college students because they are arguing (badly) FOR something. He merely has to stand against it.
4) I enjoy talking with my conservative collegues and I've had some extremely raucous people on my show. But i also know that I am far more willing to compromise on various points (phrased poorly as acknowledging reality) than most people.
5) Speaking of "reality" that is a concept entirely predicated on a defense of normal and status quo. The Left, by its embrace of progress/new ideas is rejecting the status quo. That's the whole point of new ideas, progress and most liberal movements (at least in developed countries). So the right can simply say (as you did) "they deny reality!" Of course they do, because they want to change reality and conservatives (by definition) do not.
And that is why the Right has grifters and the Left does not and probably never will.
2) It's not settled. Not socially, and certainly not legally. But they simply claim it is to avoid having to argue their indefensible positions.
3) It is often easier, and more interesting, to argue against than for, and that's why the politics of opposition is so dominant.
5) I am not taking about the political status quo but about objective reality, like whether there's a literal genocide in the U.S. now, or whether a biological man can become a biological woman.
Whether the left has grifters, they do have people who weigh in on issues, without knowing much if anything about them, in order to remain relevant to their audiences, or grow their audiences.
2) For most of the left, this is a settled question socially, hence why there’s no debate about it. If you go back far enough, we’ve been through this for slavery, civil rights for women and minorities, and so on. The Right wants to have a chat about something that for most folks on the Left has been talked about, talked through and should be changed within society (incidentally, I hate that being trans has become fashionable, it is far too seriously to be trendy).
3) Truth
5) Your first statement is excellent at making your point, the second much less so.
2) The whole point is that the left acts as if this is settled and there is no debate to be had, which is fine on its own I suppose, except for the fact that they also want others to adopt controversial behaviors, reject scientific facts, change cultural practices, even vocabulary and grammar, not to mention laws. And all of this at profound potential cost to children.
So I'm sorry, but no one gets to have any of that without making a very damn good argument why. I'm not saying this is your position, of course. But the fact that they think making such arguments is beneath them, yet they still issue the same demands, is unhinged. It also illustrates their authoritarian streak and the old bit of wisdom about how people who cannot defend their terrible positions will naturally try to use force instead of persuasion.
“Oh, and in case you were wondering,” added Zarniwoop, “this Universe was created specifically for you to come to. You are therefore the most important person in this Universe. You would never,” he said with an even more brickable smile, “have survived the Total Perspective Vortex in the real one. Shall we go?”
We’ll leave the porch light on, in case you ever feel like entering the real universe
I live far closer to reality (in all it’s messiness) than you do. So please turn off your porch light, I don’t like stopping on Delusional Avenue.
As I mentioned in a previous post of yours (in a different context) the requirement to believe six impossible things before breakfast makes debate a non-starter. You have admitted this here, and yet you persist as a left winger. A triumph of sentiment over reason; what else can explain it?
The left-wing includes communists, socialists, progressives, who are the ones you're probably thinking about believing six impossible things before breakfast, and liberals, which includes the subgroup Enlightenment liberals, whose views are based on science, reason, logic, facts... I am an Enlightenment liberal. No sentiment over reason involved.
I consider myself a classical liberal. I grew up with liberal politics. I am very pragmatic. Thus, I ultimately became a Republican because I realized that Democratic policies did not work (over and over again) and usually had unintended consequences that had very, very negative effects (e.g. removing fathers from homes). Not saying that Republican policies are always good. One of my motos is "Just because it sounds good doesn't mean it does good." And now the woke religion is definitely too much.
I mostly agree, although already I'm seeing some ugly over-corrections to woke ideology. The far ends on both sides are pretty evil. More and more, I care less about left or right as opposed to rationalism and civility versus its opposites. I get along far better with reasonable moderates on other side than with folks on my own side, but to my left.
Now if only Žižek took The Judgement to heart, ran across town faster and faster, then threw himself in the river, we'd all be relieved of at least one tedious marxist shit.
Amen!
Kafka was an artist, Zizek is a con man in love with the sound of his own voice. "Marxists" should be prohibited from discussing art, I thought in their cosmology it's just one big "bourgeois illusion" designed to distract the oppressed from their chains. At least live your beliefs!
The rules of Marxism don't apply to Marxist intellectuals, duh. They get to carry on about the working class while never being a part of it, assign the proletariat to shovel shit, while they supervise the purity of their thoughts.
Amazing benefits come with being a member of the vanguard class blessed with the X-ray Spex they call "critical consciousness". They do it all for the workers and true Marxism has never been tried! lol