Innocent blood is a powerful reality. It turns the wheel of history. I believe Kirk’s murder will have this effect.
The evil deed of September 10, 2025, will expose the desperation of the old and failed consensus that Kirk opposed. The consensus he hoped to turn us toward, one that restores faith, family, and flag, will triumph.
This has been the weirdest experience. I didn't know of Kirk before he was killed, so I have kind of a blank slate about who he was. More so than I can ever recall, the opinions that developed about this guy are completely oppositional.
ReplyDeleteThe college professors I know -- and I know quite a few -- have been universal in their condemnation of him. Only a few have actively celebrated his death, but almost all think it was completely justified. They've used phrases like "it isn't celebrating death not to mourn the passing of a monster." They've used profane language to discuss him, and to suggest that his murder was something that he plainly had coming. They've quoted a selection (I assume often without complete context) of things he's said or allegedly said that they thought were clear incitement. And many, many of them have pointed out that Republicans seem to care about this but not about the actual innocents -- usually school shootings -- that their intransigent refusal to give up their guns is clearly the sole cause of occurring. So much hate from so many highly educated people who think of themselves as, and in some respects are, decent, educated, upright people.
Then I read the other side, and it reads like this. He was an innocent; a martyr; kind hearted; generous to his opponents in debate. He was a man of peace and reason who just wanted to bring people to understand each other and begin to work out their disputes in a peaceful way.
Richard Fernandez used to talk about how the different parts of America were somehow 'watching different movies.' But this one is completely detached from the other. It's not just that the heroes and villains are reversed; there's not even the same plot being played out on the screen.
I'm not surprised that they didn't like him, or only know the leftist caricatures of him and don't bother looking to see if there's any truth there- but I'd have thought they could at the least see his assassination as a quite literal attack on the First Amendment right to Freedom of Speech. That they do not- perhaps cannot- is a bit shocking to me. I suppose, given that the ACLU gave up on being actual defenders of speech some years ago after openly declaring that they would not do what they did at Skokie those years ago, that I should have seen it coming. My bad.
DeleteWe've been there for a while, I think.
ReplyDeleteI suspect the intensity of the hate from the college professors has to do with the fact that his organization tended to target colleges and universities in order to challenge the beliefs that almost all professors have inculcated in their hearts and minds (if only to fit in with the tribe). So he was a special insult to them, I guess. But it's just been amazing to watch.
ReplyDeleteEvery party of totalitarians has lots of highly educated people in their ranks.
ReplyDeleteThat does not imply any moral standard.
I don't know a thing about Kirk. Except that he was sitting down talking with someone and a POS blew his throat out.
This is not defensible. In any way at all.
And the people who suggest that it was, have a psychological void that may be un-fillable.
I really don't give a shit how erudite they present, or how fine their suits are or what their taste in wine is- they stink like 6 day dead in the underbrush.
What got murdered along with Mr. Kirk was moderation.
As of now, it is war footing. Finland, 1918.
When I was a kid, I had a box of .303 shells.(my brothers, he was over in VN). And firecrackers in yankeeland were verboten. But us kids found some fuse cord, and we drilled holes in the rifle rounds, for the fuse, pulled the bullets and crimped over the case end. Then we stuck a couple inches of fuse in and ran like hell, to evade the case shrapnel. The boom was awesome. But we soon realized that we had way more shells than fuze, and kept cutting them shorter and shorter. Pretty soon they were to the point of only having a 1/4" of so sticking out. It started to get sporty, because the time between lighting it, and detonation, was 1 full second. We had to light them behind a stump.
That is where we are now, politically.
We have a bunch of people, wide swathes of people, millions openly celebrating the murder of a man who dealt in ideas.
You all tell me- how do we negotiate with that? They smoked the idea of compromise, discussion, negotiation- - if there was ever a "my way or the highway" that was it.
Kirk's assassination was terrible, but it fit into a pattern I thought I knew. The public support for and even rejoicing over his murder is changing how I view the Left. It is the first thing that's made me think a civil war really is possible. Not probable, mind you, just possible. Still, it's pretty alarming.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, my FB feed is running about 40-1 against the argument that Kirk "had it coming." The two sad individuals who are gamely taking the minority position haven't much to say for themselves and seem to be regarded generally as unpleasant examples of weak mind and character unfortunately present in our community. Of course, this is a rural red county, and my FB following is fairly conservative.
ReplyDeleteMy following also is pretty aged.
ReplyDeleteI would just add one more comment about the university professor demographic... It's been a common observation from the right, that the left does an extraordinary amount of projection. Any accusation that the left makes against the right, quite regularly turns out to be a description of what the left is actually doing-- and the more bizarre the accusation sounds to the right, the more likely that it's literal truth about the left. So, a prosecutor chasing Trump for playing fast and loose with a real estate loan application, turns out to have been playing fast and loose with a real estate loan application, etc.
ReplyDeleteWith that in mind, let's go look again at the recent fad for things like "White Fragility", the idea that white people can't cope with losing societal power, and so must "other" racial and sexual minorities to maintain their fragile emotional sense of superiority. This sounds so bizarre to me, yet was so immediately adopted by academics, that I have been looking for what kind of service this is doing for the academics supporting it. My initial take on this was, given that it's coming from predominantly white academics, it was a subconscious attempt to eliminate some close-in rivals for the dwindling opportunities within academia. There's probably something to that, but now I'm also thinking that, maybe, this is just straight-up projection: they themselves feel "fragile" in that they are visibly losing status and money to those "outsiders". Outsiders that they have been feeling massively superior to, pegging their relative self-worth to being better than "those people"-- better both intellectually and morally.
Not sure what to do with that, in practice, but that's sure what it looks like from here in the cheap seats.
--Janet