wolftivy said in #4451 3d ago:
As you've all seen by now, Charlie Kirk was martyred for having the courage to openly proclaim the ideals and realities this country was built on. I didn't agree with him about many things, but I find that I agree with him a lot more now that I've watched him take a bullet for me. He took a bullet for all of us, and I am compelled to reflect on what we owe him for that.
He was not killed for being a radical, spreading hatred or lies, or any other imagined crime or shortcoming. There is no justice here. He was killed for being honest, courageous, sincere, and effective. He was killed for being better than the rest of us, and for beliefs most of us hold and all of us depend on. That's what hits close to home for me. Losing him sets this country back in a big way, and makes clear that the rest of us, who have even less of a claim on legitimacy than he did, are next. The people who did this and wanted this would round us up and kill us all if we let them. Charlie wasn't letting them, and now we've lost him and its up to the rest of us. I'll be damned if we're going to let him down.
First of all Trump needs to act decisively to dismantle the established networks of leftist radicalism that caused this. There are a lot more guilty parties here than one freak with a gun, and a lot more crimes than just one assassination. I'm not a legal or political expert, but RICO comes to mind here, as do the many laws on the books against exactly this kind of agitation. All that is needed is the will. That's the first kind of justice we owe to Charlie: to have the will to prosecute all of his murderers, and execute the worst, before they get the chance to murder any more of us.
But we also need to continue his legacy, and that's something the rest of us need to do. What Charlie showed was the unreasonable effectiveness of open, courageous, sincere, reasonable debate. He got out there and made people account for why they disagreed with normal conservative ideas of what this country is about. We might see things differently than he did, but his method was necessary and good. It is in open debate that truth can be found, lies deconstructed, and collective interests decided. There is no free marketplace of ideas and no republic without guys like Charlie, only whispering fearfully in private while his murderers terrorize and brainwash the public and pick us off one by one.
This is not an isolated case. The people who killed Charlie are the same people who killed Iryna Zarutska and many others, who trashed our cities, sold out our country, and turned our own institutions into weapons against us. We don't have to live like this. Charlie showed us a way out at the cost of his life: open courageous peaceful debate in support of normal common sense Americanism.
They can't kill us all. It took them years of effort to radicalize thousands against Charlie so that one would kill him. Their tyranny depends on there only being one or two guys like Charlie, with everyone else being cowards. We need to show them that there are many. We need to become many guys like Charlie, as fearless and levelheaded as he was. We need to pick up his flag.
I don't know yet what that looks like. It starts with not self censoring, with seeking out debate and dialog with people who disagree, being courageously willing to defend our nation in rhetoric and organizing. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said that was stupidly naive, you would be killed for your efforts, and no one would even be persuaded. But Charlie proved me wrong. He was killed, but millions were persuaded. There are far worse fates than martyrdom, when the alternative is slavery born of cowardice. The rest of us should feel infinitely blessed if we could achieve a hundredth of what he did with our lives and deaths.
So let's start with that: Charlie Kirk died a patriot and a martyr, and we must honor his legacy by being much bolder in defending the truth in public. Debate me.
He was not killed for being a radical, spreading hatred or lies, or any other imagined crime or shortcoming. There is no justice here. He was killed for being honest, courageous, sincere, and effective. He was killed for being better than the rest of us, and for beliefs most of us hold and all of us depend on. That's what hits close to home for me. Losing him sets this country back in a big way, and makes clear that the rest of us, who have even less of a claim on legitimacy than he did, are next. The people who did this and wanted this would round us up and kill us all if we let them. Charlie wasn't letting them, and now we've lost him and its up to the rest of us. I'll be damned if we're going to let him down.
First of all Trump needs to act decisively to dismantle the established networks of leftist radicalism that caused this. There are a lot more guilty parties here than one freak with a gun, and a lot more crimes than just one assassination. I'm not a legal or political expert, but RICO comes to mind here, as do the many laws on the books against exactly this kind of agitation. All that is needed is the will. That's the first kind of justice we owe to Charlie: to have the will to prosecute all of his murderers, and execute the worst, before they get the chance to murder any more of us.
But we also need to continue his legacy, and that's something the rest of us need to do. What Charlie showed was the unreasonable effectiveness of open, courageous, sincere, reasonable debate. He got out there and made people account for why they disagreed with normal conservative ideas of what this country is about. We might see things differently than he did, but his method was necessary and good. It is in open debate that truth can be found, lies deconstructed, and collective interests decided. There is no free marketplace of ideas and no republic without guys like Charlie, only whispering fearfully in private while his murderers terrorize and brainwash the public and pick us off one by one.
This is not an isolated case. The people who killed Charlie are the same people who killed Iryna Zarutska and many others, who trashed our cities, sold out our country, and turned our own institutions into weapons against us. We don't have to live like this. Charlie showed us a way out at the cost of his life: open courageous peaceful debate in support of normal common sense Americanism.
They can't kill us all. It took them years of effort to radicalize thousands against Charlie so that one would kill him. Their tyranny depends on there only being one or two guys like Charlie, with everyone else being cowards. We need to show them that there are many. We need to become many guys like Charlie, as fearless and levelheaded as he was. We need to pick up his flag.
I don't know yet what that looks like. It starts with not self censoring, with seeking out debate and dialog with people who disagree, being courageously willing to defend our nation in rhetoric and organizing. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said that was stupidly naive, you would be killed for your efforts, and no one would even be persuaded. But Charlie proved me wrong. He was killed, but millions were persuaded. There are far worse fates than martyrdom, when the alternative is slavery born of cowardice. The rest of us should feel infinitely blessed if we could achieve a hundredth of what he did with our lives and deaths.
So let's start with that: Charlie Kirk died a patriot and a martyr, and we must honor his legacy by being much bolder in defending the truth in public. Debate me.
As you've all seen b