On a matter of free speech

Much has been made over the last few days over the killing of Charlie Kirk. I've seen and read much content involving how we should all reject this kind of thing outright because there is no room in our society for killing people over free speech - any kind of speech whatsoever.

I would like to analyze this for a moment in a philosophical way with a clear historical precedent: Josef Goebbels.

As Minister of Propaganda for Hitler, Goebbels never actually killed anyone himself. He merely used words to create the conditions which enabled people to carry out the Holocaust. All he ever used was Free Speech. However, given his role in the Holocaust, he surely would have ended up at the end of the hangman's noose had we managed to capture him alive before he killed himself. There was no room for the excuse of "Free Speech" when it came to crimes against humanity.

Charlie Kirk wasn't Goebbels - at least not yet. But we surely have been headed down that path for a while now, and we do have a tyrant and dictator in the White House who appears to model himself off of every other dictatorial madman in recent history. And remember this as well: Goebbels wasn't guilty of war crimes before the war, just as Hitler wasn't guilty of Genocide back in 1932. They had every intention, but they hadn't actually committed the crimes at the time.

Any speech in a debate, or a philosophy class, should be acceptable. Hence, when you take philosophy, you will get wildly inappropriate questions to answer which would never be allowed in polite society (such as: Why is it bad to eat babies? Justify your position).

However, speech in politics can, and often does, manipulate people. And when that speech is used to oppress, kill, or violate people's rights wholesale, it no longer is just about Free Speech; It's about action. It is speech which has become actionable, because it no longer is just words and debate. It has, at that point, become a literal weapon against others.

I don't condone the murder of Charlie Kirk, but I don't really care that he was murdered. Firstly, I have many more tears to shed for other - far more deserving - people in the world. Secondly, I have to ask everyone reading this: At which point do you think action is required?

We used to say that "We live in a free society" about America, but that clearly is no longer the case. Phrases such as "Leader of the Free World" no longer apply. America has fallen, and it has fallen by its own hand and doing. What I want to know, once again, is: At what point is it morally justified to take up arms against the ruling dictatorship?

For those who think that we still have the ballot box, you are most likely gravely mistaken. We have absolutely no evidence that this fantasy is still relevant today. Do you think that the people in charge have been governing as if they care about convincing the majority to vote for them again in a free and fair election? Or have they been putting in place a system of contrivances which are designed to undermine the next election altogether? I would contend the latter, and I think many people would agree - albeit far too remiss to actually say this in public and admit the truth: We are, and have been, in a civil war. It's not all out war, but it is definitely a war where people have already been killed and where many of our rights have been slowly eroded and removed.

So, when is it justified to actually fight back? Let's take Russia, for example. Would it have been justified to assassinate Putin in 2000? 2001? 2005? 2008? It would certainly be justified now and had someone done it before Putin had launched his dreadful wars, we might not be where we are today. But no one did, and we see the result. No one did because probably everyone thought that this isn't what is done in a society with laws, even when they are being bent and sometimes broken.

I know that Americans really dread thinking about this on the left but I think we need to. We need to make the counter-threat real. I don't mean actually assassinate people yet, but to show that we do have that resolve.

Much has been made about how Republicans in Congress could easily take Trump down if they would only decide to stand up to him. We've all read the reams of stories about how terrified they are because they fear his base so much that they will do anything he wants. The answer to this is simple: They have to fear us more than they fear his base. They have to be more terrified of us than they are of them. And if we don't start doing something very soon, your words, and mine, won't matter anymore, because we won't have the right to write them, and some of us may not even be around to express them with our voice.