this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2025
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To your point 6: I think a lot of you on the left are deeply, deeply underestimating how influential Charlie Kirk is, or was, among young conservatives and young people in general.
I mean, Kirk was on Gavin Newsom's podcast in March and Newsom talked about how his kids loved Kirk. How his 13-year-old son refused to go to school because he wanted to stay home and meet Charlie. And if that doesn't tell you how wide Kirk's appeal is among young people I don't know what would.
And look. A lot of people on the left also discount or ignore how young conservatives feel discriminated against in higher education. Rightly or wrongly, I'm talking about their beliefs, not the validity of those beliefs. Kids who come from red states with conservative Christian beliefs about sex, about gender, about what it means to be a man, they're proud to go to college so they can earn a better living and do better for their future children than their parents did for them. And then they hit the culture shock of college and both students and teachers are telling them "everything you believe is wrong, you're a bad person for believing it, and if you even try to argue for it we will ostracize you".
It's not just the homeschool kids from Prager U, either. There has been a hell of a chilling effect on campuses for a long time now, when it comes to any belief that somebody might call racist or sexist or bigoted. And I think that just reinforces those racist, sexist, and bigoted beliefs - because people are afraid to have the debates and learning experiences that might convince them they're wrong, because they're afraid to admit to having those beliefs in the first place, so they just keep their heads down, feel oppressed, and don't learn anything new.
And Kirk tells those young men "you are oppressed, it's not right, and I'm going to go to your campus and speak for you when you can't safely speak for yourself."
And then he does it.
And then some piece of shit shoots him.
Some young conservatives consider Kirk not just a political activist but a civil rights leader.
And he may well have just died for his beliefs.
In other words: the reaction to this could be very, very bad.
Not even remotely close.
Yes, you're right that the reaction to this could be very bad. We'll see. I think it could go either way. The American public has a very short attention span and this sort of thing tends to burn brightly for a while then blow out as soon as the next big story breaks.
As for the rest of what you said...so....we should be more concerned about teachers and students hurting some kids' feelings than the Republicans taking away actual things like jobs, healthcare, housing, vaccines, trade agreements, and alliances that took generations to build and less than a year to destroy.
These emotionally damaged young men need to snap the fuck out of it and realize who is really hurting them and who really killed the American dream. It's not some dumbass underpaid woke college professor. Pieces of shit like Charlie Kirk come along and brainwash these same gullible kids into thinking the Republicans want to "help them" bootstrap their way out of the same crab bucket wage slavery that the Republicans created.
There are millions of teenagers and 20-somethings who grew up listening to Charlie Kirk. For kids on the right, this is like if Joe Rogan or Mr Beast was killed.
I don't think this is going away.
I can't predict the future, and there will be some short-term fallout (potentially very bad fallout) from this. These young men will hold a grudge for sure, but I think it's much harder to say how long of a lasting imprint this will make on them.
Many of them will grow up and realize "maybe I need to work on my mental health and general qualifications as a human being and stop thinking we can bully women into being barefoot pregnant tradwives". The differences between what young men and what young women want out of life right now is truly astonishing. Check the polling data.
Part of this phenomenon stems from the unfortunate biological fact that young men don't truly mature until about the age of 35. At that point, many of them (not all of them) have grown up and obtained some maturity and perspective. They finally realize that the world doesn't revolve around me and my shortcomings and grievances. If they want to become better men, they work at providing some actual value and to at least occasionally serve others unselfishly in a non-transactional manner. Thinking you're entitled to sex and children just because "that's what real men get" is a road to rejection and solitude. Some will figure this out. Some never do.
As for CK's legacy.... lies and bullshit travel orders of magnitude faster than the truth, but the truth tends to win the marathons.
No?
But it remains that the social dynamics at play make a lot of young conservatives ripe for grooming.
It's kinda like being a socially awkward teen, and later becoming an Incel (capital I), and later believing that feminism is ripping society apart at its seams—there are pipelines that move people from childhood to adulthood. And sometimes these pipes stem from really simple things, like that modern city design and culture have made people really, really lonely.
That's like telling a depressed person to just be happy...
"Pieces of shit like Charlie Kirk come along and" address these people's issues for better or for worse, while "some dumbass underpaid woke college professor" isn't (socially) allowed to do so or doesn't want to
No, it's more like telling an addict to stop using.
There is no 'rightly or wrongly' -- what you're describing is indoctrination and brainwashing. They are and should be discriminated against, but not because of where they're from or the color of their skin, but because they have been taught wrong, and most importantly have been taught to see challenges to their beliefs as a threat. The purpose of a school is not to validate your pre-existing beliefs, but to give you a space to challenge your ideas and learn new ones. Ignorance should not have a safe space there, and people who do not come to learn should not feel welcome.
That's what Kirk did. Went to a school and challenged people's ideas instead of validating their pre-existing beliefs.
And somebody killed him for it.
Kirk's ideas were wrong. Bad for the people who believe them and bad for America.
Colleges should be places where you learn to confront and argue against bad ideas - places where you learn the critical thinking skills people need in a world full of lies, misinformation, and political propaganda like Charlie Kirk's.
But you can't learn critical thinking skills if you don't have bad ideas to think critically about.
And you can't question your own beliefs if you're afraid to talk openly about what you believe.
You say "Ignorance should not have a safe space there" - but that's exactly wrong. In a school, it should be safe to admit your ignorance. Students need the right to be wrong. Because it's only by admitting to, and arguing for, their wrong beliefs, that they can learn why their beliefs are wrong.
If I feel safe to admit my (shitty, wrong) beliefs and argue for them, then other people feel safe to argue with me, and then, hopefully, I can learn why my beliefs are shitty and wrong and change them.
If I'm afraid to talk about my beliefs because I'll be ostracized or punished or expelled, then I'm much less likely to learn my beliefs are wrong. Instead, like so many of the young conservatives that Kirk appealed to, I'm going to believe I'm right and that liberals are using their power and authority to silence me.
This is why colleges are historically free speech zones. It's why we have the goddamn First Amendment in the first place.
Censoring ideas just makes them stronger.
And somebody just applied the ultimate form of censorship to one of the most popular conservatives in America.
I didn't write very much, and I clearly didn't write that you shouldn't be able to admit ignorance at school. If you actually care about reading and understanding what I'm saying, then this is your opportunity to demonstrate you can roll it back, tone it down, and read what I wrote again. If some of it is ambiguous to you, you can ask me questions.
It seems like you're looking for a leftist punching bag, and that will just make you look like another hateful violent right-wing brute. Are you afraid to talk about your beliefs? Are you afraid to talk about them anonymously and online?
Alright. What did you mean by "ignorance should not have a safe space there"?
Last week, a student at Texas A&M objected to the professor teaching about "transgenderism" in the classroom. The teacher was doing their job, teaching the scientific consensus. Instead of challenging the teacher's ideas, the student challenged the legality of teaching science. The student was ignorant. Instead of admitting ignorance, or even assuming their own competence and trying to argue their ideas, the student took the third route: threats of political violence. The student warned the teacher that police could come and force the teacher from teaching the truth.
Campuses should be very intolerant to ignorance like this student displayed. But instead the teacher, department head, and dean were all penalized for standing up against an enemy of free thought. That is the goal of this administration - to force indoctrination on American children, and shut down all the spaces where having discussions like this one we're having right now might open their eyes up to the lies they've been taught.
I had to hold off until actually watching the video, which, ugh. I'm confident that was a setup by the student and their handlers (for example, whoever was filming) to get that teacher fired and make the school look bad. There was no "ignorance" involved there, one way or another. The student was not ignorant. The student was carrying out a very deliberate step in the Trump administration's campaign of political repression against universities.
And if the student had been asking an ignorant question in good faith, the teacher handled it more or less correctly. It would have been nice to have a learning opportunity there, for example, the difference between executive orders and laws, or the difference between laws and science. But that would require a student who is willing to learn, and that wasn't in the cards.
As for the rest, I am a deep believer in free speech on campuses, which has to include the right to ask ignorant questions, and express ignorant beliefs, including offensive and hateful beliefs, and have those beliefs debated and corrected, without being judged or punished for your ignorance.
I think a safe space for ignorance is a place where you can ask questions and express beliefs without being afraid people will judge or punish you if what you say is ignorant or offensive due to your ignorance. And I think those are these sorts of spaces you need to have in schools and on campuses if you want space for ignorant people to learn. If that's not what you meant by the term, I apologize for misunderstanding you.
What the hell are u talking about? The shooter most definetly was not a piece of shit, the shooter is a hero! If someones beliefs are about opressing people and taking their rights away it's only right they are corrected or kicked the hell out of higher education.
Charlie was an awful human being, but his death will be used to harm a whole lot of people. I'd put the blame for that harm largely on the person that shot him
Nah. I blame the sychopantic psychopath who has been driving hateful and violent rhetoric to begin with for years. Charlie Kirk birthed this situation. Either one of the right wing loons shot him or someone shot him who was fighting back against a dude saying "Hey, those people, they are lesser than human and should be gone".
I'ma blame the nazi, thanks.
They would have harmed even more people weather kirk was alive or not. They may use the death of that piece of shit as a justification but they would have found some other thing to use as a justification anyways.
Damn, Gavrilo Princip must be in super hell then
You make a great point about how people feel that way, regardless of the reality. Many conservatives feel like it was illegal not to get the COVID vaccine, despite nowhere in the US having a legal requirement. It was simply businesses requiring it for their employees and/or customers
To them the legal threat was very real, regardless of reality. Progressives need to understand that and work to alleviate the concerns of conservatives. We can shout all we want about how we shouldn't have to cater to them, or how basic empathy should be enough for conservatives, but that isn't the reality. If you genuinely feel immigrants are why you can't get a job, all empathy goes out the window. Telling them they're a bad person for doing something they think will help them feed their family will never work
Yeah. And ironically, part of the issue is a lack of empathy on the left. Instead of asking why conservatives believe these things and trying to understand how to convince them otherwise, the American left just wants to call them fascists and deplatform them. "It's not my job to educate you" is smug and contemptuous and one of the nicer ways the left respond to conservatives.
The reason Charlie Kirk is so beloved on the right is because when the feminist movement wrote young men off - telling them "everything you know about being a man is misogynist, stop doing it, but it's not our job to teach you how to be a better man" and leaving millions of young men at a loss about how to be men, Kirk came along and told them it was okay to be a traditional man and here's how to do it.
Kirk was an idol to millions of teenage boys who are now seeing the online left cheering for his death. And if you think Trump is bad, just wait until those kids are old enough to vote.
They were and are fascists. That's no longer a question or a hypothetical outcome. It is our current reality. We have ICE acting as a paramilitary going through the streets rounding up anyone that looks Hispanic, including many citizens and legal residents. We've built special camps to house large numbers of detainees in a small area
We have the National Guard deployed across the country - armed military members walking our streets. We've renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War and threatened war with many other countries - Canada, Greenland/Denmark, Panama, Iran, and more
Anyone opposing Trump is being retaliated against. He threatened to revoke all of Musk's contracts for being critical of The Big Beautiful Bill. John Bolton, Trump's former national security advisor had his home raided by the FBI in clear retribution to his publicly critical statements about Trump. Kamala Harris had her Secret Service detail revoked at a time when political violence is at an all time high. What possible reason could Trump have for revoking her security detail other than in the hopes she is assassinated?
It's quintessential fascism. What more needs to happen before people admit it?
That was not the platform of the feminist movement. It was the views of a small fringe group. One of the problems with far-right commentators is they like to look at a tiny extreme group that very few people agree with and claim they represent the whole left. Somehow it worked and now people, like you, are convinced of crazy things
Kirk himself was cheering when a guy tried to assassinate Paul Pelosi. He even "joked" about getting someone to pay the bail of Pelosi's attacker
It's been tit-for-tat for a while. It's not getting better
No wonder you delete all of your comments. That's a pretty terrible take.