{"id":13276,"date":"2025-09-13T16:31:44","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T23:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/?p=13276"},"modified":"2025-09-15T04:34:46","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T11:34:46","slug":"charlies-murderers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/09\/13\/charlies-murderers\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlie’s Murderers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This catalog<\/a> should allay any doubts you may still have about the depth of human stupidity, depravity, and sheer viciousness. A friend, alluding to the world-wide celebration of Kirk’s life, tells me he has never been more hopeful. I believe he is fooling himself. We are spiraling downward. Hot civil war is now a clear and present danger.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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You are living in a dream world if you think mutually respectful free speech and unrestrained dialog can save us. Wonderful things, no doubt, but they come too late, presupposing as they do common ground<\/em> — which is precisely what we no longer have.\u00a0 The problem of common ground has several sides. I will mention just one now.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Suppose you agree with me that there is objective truth and that it is possible for us to know some of it. (That is something few will concede in these days of Claudine Gay and ‘my truth,’ but just suppose.) That concession’s a start, but if you and I are ‘siloed into our positions’ and we each believe we possess the truth about a particular question, then truth-seeking dialog is a sham<\/em>. For if you already know the truth, or rather think you do, you will not be working with me to find the truth: one does not seek what one possesses. And vice versa: if I am convinced that I have the truth, then my conversation with you cannot be truth-seeking dialog. What we will each be engaged in is an attempt to change the other person’s mind.\u00a0 For genuine truth-seeking dialog to occur, there must be a Socratic confession of ignorance on both sides, or at least an admission that one might be mistaken in one’s beliefs.\u00a0 \u00a0Kirk was no latter-day Socrates: he was not out to show people that they didn’t know what they thought they knew about things that he knew he knew little or nothing about so that they might reason together in search of the truth.\u00a0 Kirk lacked the doxastic modesty of Socrates. His doxastic stance was more like the firm conviction of Christ. Doxastic modesty is what is lacking today on so many issues that divide us. Neither side admits that it might be wrong.\u00a0 And this, I think, is a major source of all the rage, hatred, and violence, both verbal and physical.<\/span><\/div>\n
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So, while Charlie Kirk was morally superior to his enemies — and in particular greatly superior to those who rejoice in his assassination — he too was convinced that he was right as are his followers who are convinced\u00a0 that he is now with Jesus in heaven. Kirk was also intellectually superior to most of his enemies: he could give reasons for his positions and they were better than the ones they could give for theirs.\u00a0 He had unshakeable convictions and he could defend them rationally. Pressed on why he accepted the Resurrection of Christ, he replied that so many martyrs would not have gone to their deaths in that belief were it not true. The argument has some merit but it is hardly conclusive.\u00a0 That would not be a problem if his interlocutors were not adamantly opposed to Christianity and all of its presuppositions.\u00a0 But they are. Hence their hatred of him and his ideas and their fear that his powerful influence would lead to their suppression.\u00a0 This fear is one, though not the only, factor that fueled their desire to see him assassinated.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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When there was still a large chunk of common ground, mutual respect came easy and conversation among political opponents was fruitful for the ironing out of details against the backdrop of commonly held values and presuppositions.\u00a0 Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill differed politically but not as enemies; after hours they were on friendly terms. Those days are over. There is no longer any common ground to stand on.\u00a0 Political opponents are now political enemies, enemies who see each other as existential threats.\u00a0 When we see each other as existential threats is when the guns and knives come out, and when assassination becomes politically if not morally ‘justifiable.’<\/span><\/div>\n
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Related<\/em>: Jonathan Turley, “Prove Me Wrong”: Charlie Kirk’s Final Challenge on Free Speech<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
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Addendum (9\/15)<\/em><\/div>\n
Is political assassination ever morally<\/em> justifiable? I think most of us will agree that the 20 July 1944 plot<\/a> to assassinate Hitler, Operation Valkyrie,\u00a0 was morally justified, despite its being illegal by the laws of the Third Reich.\u00a0 Morality trumps legality. So if Trump really were another Hitler, as our political enemies madly assert, then his assassination would be morally justifiable, and by extension so would the assassination of others such as Kirk who strongly supported Trump and his MAGA agenda.\u00a0 Now surely seasoned politicians such as Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris who assert with a straight face that Trump is Hitler or a fascist do not believe what they assert, in fact, they know that what they assert is false: they are smearing him in an attempt to gain power for themselves and their party. Unfortunately, many naive, ignorant young people believe what their elders say, and some of these are willing to act on their beliefs. So I say that such contemptible liars as Clinton and Harris have Kirk’s blood on their hands, figuratively speaking, due to their egregiously irresponsible rhetoric.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This catalog should allay any doubts you may still have about the depth of human stupidity, depravity, and sheer viciousness. A friend, alluding to the world-wide celebration of Kirk’s life, tells me he has never been more hopeful. I believe he is fooling himself. We are spiraling downward. Hot civil war is now a clear … Continue reading “Charlie’s Murderers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,251,295,312,29,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-disagreement","category-pathocracy-and-totalitarianism","category-political-pessimism","category-political-ponerology","category-political-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13276"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13285,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13276\/revisions\/13285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}