Michael Shellenberger on 'Moral Sickness' and Dehumanizing Rhetoric After Charlie Kirk's Assassination

Defense of Free Speech and Charlie Kirk

• 📜 The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, a principle Charlie Kirk championed and defended tirelessly.
• 💬 Kirk believed in the power of argument and good faith debate to find truth and foster mutual understanding.
• 🎯 Tragically, Charlie Kirk was killed for engaging in debate, an activity fundamental to the country's founding principles.

Left-Wing Rhetoric and Violence

• ⚠️ Polling data indicated that over half of people surveyed on the left believed the murder of Donald Trump could be partly justified.
• 🌍 Around the world, including in Europe and Brazil, the left is demanding censorship.
• 🗣️ Kirk's factual statements on transgenderism, racial issues, and the unhappiness of liberal women led to left-wing outrage and calls for censorship.
• 💥 It is not unreasonable to imagine that the shooter was motivated by the left's rhetoric and desire to censor Kirk.

Dehumanization of Political Opponents

• 🎭 The assassination and the demonization of Charlie Kirk, President Trump, and the MAGA movement frame them as Nazis and fascists.
• 🤯 This dehumanization creates an environment where many on the left justify or suggest that Kirk's death was a result of the environment he helped create.
• 📢 The media, the left, and universities need to take responsibility for participating in the dehumanization of roughly half the country.

Protecting Free Speech and Debate

• 🎓 A response to such events should involve more open debates in universities, with significantly better security for controversial speakers.
• 📈 The share of college students who believe violence may be necessary to cancel controversial speakers has risen from 24% to 35% in the last 5 years.
• 🧠 This trend reflects a 'moral sickness' where people become violent when reality challenges their ideological 'dream world'.
• ⚖️ Healing is unlikely without an acknowledgement of decades of dehumanization directed at a significant portion of the population.
• 🚨 Censorship laws and restrictions on speech in Europe and Britain pose an existential threat to foundational republican beliefs.