By Alexander Lomax
I apparently couldn’t go more than a week without some reactionary bullocks regarding Scottsdale and Charlie Kirk came across my screen. Literally just last week I wrote this piece where I questioned why Scottsdale officials were considering a memorial for Charlie Kirk. And just like Isaac Newton said, with every action comes an equal and opposite reaction.
Unfortunately that equal but opposite reaction manifested itself in the strangest of ways: hundreds of people signed a petition to attempt to eliminate Turning Point USA clubs in the Scottsdale Unified School District (Turning Point USA was the organization that Kirk founded). Yes, let’s fight the things we don’t like by trying to ban them as we unironically rail against conservative politicians attempting to ban some books.
The petition talks about the organization as one that “promote(s) hate, division, or discrimination under the guise of ‘religious’ or ‘political’ values.” And yet again, the political left loses the plot completely.
And let me be clear…Charlie Kirk said some fairly disagreeable stuff. That was his job as a provocateur. He debated, he provoked a response. And in the modern age where everything is somewhere on the internet, 100% of the people who are in the political influencing industry have said some gross things. Right or left, all you need to do is ask ChatGPT for the worst things they’ve ever said. This is in the same time period where one of the most popular progressive influencers, Hasan Piker, is accused of shocking his dog on camera.
These people are not heroes. And this goes for everyone in the comments who deifies Kirk and talks about what a godly man he was. You didn’t know him. You didn’t know his heart. In reality he probably wasn’t a good person because EXTREMELY few people whose careers are in political influencing are truly good people. It’s the wrong line of work for the good.
But that’s not the point. This is another example of a disturbing tendency from those on the left over the last decade plus: if they don’t like something they would rather silence it. They don’t want to offer a better argument. They will liken any effort to have a free exchange of ideas with a conservative as “platforming” “dangerous ideas”. The same brain trust that wouldn’t let Kamala Harris go on the Joe Rogan podcast because she would be “platforming right-wingers” and instead put her in front of a friendly progressive audience would simply prefer that the other side didn’t exist.
While I may lean more to the left than the right nationally, I’ve never known a conservative that wouldn’t talk to a liberal because of their beliefs. But I have known many on the left who cut conservatives out of their lives because they liked Trump.
The political left needs to grow the hell up. Develop a better argument instead of trying to silence everyone. Voters have made it clear that they’re not buying your attempts to shut everyone up. If you don’t like free speech, perhaps North Korea or Russia are more to your liking.