Dear America,
I'm a child of the sixties, born in 1946 just a matter of a few weeks after the Trumper himself. As a kid, I always believed in my country...our country...and the promise of our constitution to protect my right to speak freely. While I was a young kid I believed almost anything my country said through the voices of our leaders. I remember sporting an "I like Ike" bumper sticker on my bike in 1956, and before reaching a certain level of awareness in 1967, I supported the war in Vietnam. But even before I achieved what I would consider to be a form of political enlightenment, I spoke my mind about everything regardless of who liked it or didn't. I was too young to appreciate the inimical effect on all speech rights that the McCarthy era constituted, and besides, like my neighbors, I liked Ike. But when I saw a fellow adolescent being bullied by our compatriots, or for that matter any situation that I deemed in my teenage sanctimony, I spoke up fearlessly and unabashed. I have to admit that I wasn't universally liked for it either, but there were no repercussions to fear other than perhaps some scattered opprobrium. I was able to live with that as long as I thought my cause was just, and I feared no censorship or punishment for my candor, even when I stood silently before the flag as my classmates mindlessly recited the pledge of allegiance. I was free to speak...or not to speak...as I saw fit. We all were.
Charlie Kirk said a lot of odious things about race and racism, women, black women in particular, equal opportunity and a host of other social policies and phenomena, but he had the right to say those things. That is consistent with the position of Charlie Kirk himself on free speech, possibly the only thing on which I agreed with him. I saw and heard him being interviewed on the subject of free speech, and the quintessence of his remarks on that occasion was that regardless of how despicable one's words are, everyone has the right to say whatever he wants. It's in my nature to laud him for that position, which included everything from anti-Semitic speech to racist calumny. In fact he disagreed with the Trump administration in its use of claims of failure to punish such speech on campus regarding Palestine and Israel in particular to punish several elite colleges and universities. Despite the fact that I find virtually all else that Kirk said to be reprehensible and he himself to be despicable, on that point I think he was indubitably right, though with some reservations. For example, legal precedent does not ascribe first amendment liberty to the false advertising, for example. It also doesn't protect preaching armed rebellion, such as it might be argued that Trump indulged in on the days leading to and including January 6th. Libel and slander are also not protected under the first amendment, so Kirk's ideas on free speech were, shall we say, a little ill-informed, but the principle that all but what is specifically excluded from protection by law is permissible is, indeed, the law of the land. Now someone has to inform our president that such is the case.
Many of his minions who find themselves in positions of leadership in important federal agencies are instructing their staffs to review the social media drivel of their fellow employees to find and report any who speak about the Kirk murder in a fashion that suggests antipathy toward Kirk or unsympathetic feelings about the murder itself. And I assume that the scrutiny will include negative thoughts about Kirk's wife. I saw her vitriolic screed on the news and I thought, I can see why she and Kirk married, but if I were a federal employee rather than an old retired guy, I might have just kept that opinion to myself if I liked or needed my job. That's the irony of what the Trump administration and all of Kirk's kindred spirits have descended into. Assuming that hypocrisy can't be added to Kirk's resume, he would have deplored the kind of repression on which the conservative guild in our country is embarking, especially in light of the things he was renowned for saying.
Despite what could be called Kirk's racism and misogyny, Trump is now planning to award him a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom. Of course you have to consider the basic disability that Trump is dealing with, sheer stupidity such as would allow him to claim he wants to help the nation heal in one breath followed by his verbal assault on everyone to the left of him on the political spectrum in the next. Only Trump could fail to consider that any rational person would have to reach from that garbled thought the conclusion that if the man isn't too stupid to see that he has just revealed inconsistent thought, he would have to be a calculating, manipulative hypocrite. Either way, those are not cardinal traits that any sane president would want to evince...unless of course he were Donald Trump.
Your friend,
Mike
I'm a child of the sixties, born in 1946 just a matter of a few weeks after the Trumper himself. As a kid, I always believed in my country...our country...and the promise of our constitution to protect my right to speak freely. While I was a young kid I believed almost anything my country said through the voices of our leaders. I remember sporting an "I like Ike" bumper sticker on my bike in 1956, and before reaching a certain level of awareness in 1967, I supported the war in Vietnam. But even before I achieved what I would consider to be a form of political enlightenment, I spoke my mind about everything regardless of who liked it or didn't. I was too young to appreciate the inimical effect on all speech rights that the McCarthy era constituted, and besides, like my neighbors, I liked Ike. But when I saw a fellow adolescent being bullied by our compatriots, or for that matter any situation that I deemed in my teenage sanctimony, I spoke up fearlessly and unabashed. I have to admit that I wasn't universally liked for it either, but there were no repercussions to fear other than perhaps some scattered opprobrium. I was able to live with that as long as I thought my cause was just, and I feared no censorship or punishment for my candor, even when I stood silently before the flag as my classmates mindlessly recited the pledge of allegiance. I was free to speak...or not to speak...as I saw fit. We all were.
Charlie Kirk said a lot of odious things about race and racism, women, black women in particular, equal opportunity and a host of other social policies and phenomena, but he had the right to say those things. That is consistent with the position of Charlie Kirk himself on free speech, possibly the only thing on which I agreed with him. I saw and heard him being interviewed on the subject of free speech, and the quintessence of his remarks on that occasion was that regardless of how despicable one's words are, everyone has the right to say whatever he wants. It's in my nature to laud him for that position, which included everything from anti-Semitic speech to racist calumny. In fact he disagreed with the Trump administration in its use of claims of failure to punish such speech on campus regarding Palestine and Israel in particular to punish several elite colleges and universities. Despite the fact that I find virtually all else that Kirk said to be reprehensible and he himself to be despicable, on that point I think he was indubitably right, though with some reservations. For example, legal precedent does not ascribe first amendment liberty to the false advertising, for example. It also doesn't protect preaching armed rebellion, such as it might be argued that Trump indulged in on the days leading to and including January 6th. Libel and slander are also not protected under the first amendment, so Kirk's ideas on free speech were, shall we say, a little ill-informed, but the principle that all but what is specifically excluded from protection by law is permissible is, indeed, the law of the land. Now someone has to inform our president that such is the case.
Many of his minions who find themselves in positions of leadership in important federal agencies are instructing their staffs to review the social media drivel of their fellow employees to find and report any who speak about the Kirk murder in a fashion that suggests antipathy toward Kirk or unsympathetic feelings about the murder itself. And I assume that the scrutiny will include negative thoughts about Kirk's wife. I saw her vitriolic screed on the news and I thought, I can see why she and Kirk married, but if I were a federal employee rather than an old retired guy, I might have just kept that opinion to myself if I liked or needed my job. That's the irony of what the Trump administration and all of Kirk's kindred spirits have descended into. Assuming that hypocrisy can't be added to Kirk's resume, he would have deplored the kind of repression on which the conservative guild in our country is embarking, especially in light of the things he was renowned for saying.
Despite what could be called Kirk's racism and misogyny, Trump is now planning to award him a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom. Of course you have to consider the basic disability that Trump is dealing with, sheer stupidity such as would allow him to claim he wants to help the nation heal in one breath followed by his verbal assault on everyone to the left of him on the political spectrum in the next. Only Trump could fail to consider that any rational person would have to reach from that garbled thought the conclusion that if the man isn't too stupid to see that he has just revealed inconsistent thought, he would have to be a calculating, manipulative hypocrite. Either way, those are not cardinal traits that any sane president would want to evince...unless of course he were Donald Trump.
Your friend,
Mike
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