Ezra Klein: Charlie Kirk was practicing politics the right way

ThatRobGuy said:

You can dislike much of what Kirk believed, and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him.

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It really sounds like he's never watched the guy holding court on campuses.

Bradskii said:

It really sounds like he's never watched the guy holding court on campuses.

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Yeah, but the gig sort of demands it, no?, the beyond-the-pale rhetoric keeps people talking, which is all we ultimately have.
Not talking is even worse, no matter how badly the talking is “going”.

ThatRobGuy said:

Ezra Klein: Charlie Kirk was practicing politics the right way

The foundation of a free society is the ability to participate in politics without fear of violence. To lose that is to risk losing everything, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein writes.

www.sltrib.com

You can dislike much of what Kirk believed, and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion. When the left thought its hold on the hearts and minds of college students was nearly absolute, Kirk showed up again and again to break it. Slowly, then all at once, he did. College-age voters shifted sharply right in the 2024 election.

Kirk and I were on different sides of most political arguments. We were on the same side on the continued possibility of American politics. It is supposed to be an argument, not a war; it is supposed to be won with words, not ended with bullets. I wanted Kirk to be safe for his sake, but I also wanted him to be safe for mine and for the sake of our larger shared project. The same is true for Shapiro, for Hoffman, for Hortman, for Thompson, for Trump, for Pelosi, for Whitmer. We are all safe, or none of us are.


Ezra Klein has been catching some hate for this piece...

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The essence of the piece seems to be lets give Mr Kirk a medal for using words rather than violence.

Seems a low bar for handing out medals imo.

ThatRobGuy said:

Ezra Klein has been catching some hate for this piece...

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Rightfully so, because he got Kirk partially wrong and more-or-less whitewashed his project.

I think it's more accurate to think of Kirk as an evangelist rather than a debater. He didn't go to campuses to listen or to understand or to have his mind expanded. He went to convince others and he used the valance of debate to sell his message. That's not an inherently bad thing, but it's not quite the pinnacle of free speech that it's been made out to be. In person, he may have been genteel, but on his podcast and on the TPUSA website, he and his organization were more likely to throw around the vitriol that others have talked about and that EK managed to overlook.

I've seen some EKFans steelman his case by saying that what he's arguing is that Kirk was more effective at politics than a lot of Dems. Maybe that's a better read of EK's argument (I'm skeptical). Either way, it's certainly true that Kirk was highly effective.

What a lot of folks in my political camp are tired of what I would describe as a form of emotional abuse being perpetrated by the right, and them getting away with it, while we're supposed to just take it and be polite.

I don't think for a second that the left is innocent or that it doesn't have a bunch of rot that needs to be excised. It does. But when we compare the things that are said and done on the left and the right by people with equivalent levels of influence and public stature, it's not even close.

I resurrected this in another thread:

Can you imagine the outrage if one of Biden's advisors had written the forward to a book describing conservatives as subhuman? Or if Tim Walz had written a blurb for it? What prominent individual on the left just casually tosses around claims that Republican politicians deserve the death penalty? But this gets a pass. And that's just one example of the hypocrisy rampant on the right.

IME, right-wing commentators throw around a lot of things that, if you take them at face value, are objectively terrible, but they do so with a sort of snickering gentility that buys them enough wiggle room to avoid getting associated with that terrible message. Left-wing commentators do sort of the opposite - the emotion goes ahead of the language, and people respond to the sneering or angry emotion even if the words themselves are more reasonable.

ETA: Here's Steve Bannon again: "A third of teachers are terrorists" Can you imagine a Dem saying "A third of Baptist pastors are terrorists"?

iluvatar5150 said:

Can you imagine the outrage if one of Biden's advisors had written the forward to a book describing conservatives as subhuman? Or if Tim Walz had written a blurb for it? What prominent individual on the left just casually tosses around claims that Republican politicians deserve the death penalty? But this gets a pass. And that's just one example of the hypocrisy rampant on the right.

IME, right-wing commentators throw around a lot of things that, if you take them at face value, are objectively terrible, but they do so with a sort of snickering gentility that buys them enough wiggle room to avoid getting associated with that terrible message. Left-wing commentators do sort of the opposite - the emotion goes ahead of the language, and people respond to the sneering or angry emotion even if the words themselves are more reasonable.

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I keep about how often they keep bringing up "deplorables". I guess there hasn't been too many others.