a kind hearted sort with a sincere Christian faith — Hanover

Are you at all familiar with his, uh, less than kind hearted beliefs? I could compile a list.

From The Daily Beast via Apple News:

Kirk was no hero. The record is clear. If Kirk was a victim of a pernicious culture of violence in America, it must also be acknowledged that he was an author of that culture.

His primary accomplishment in life was to foment hatred and division across the United States. He blamed all of America’s ills on the left, and cheered violent attacks on Democrats. He fought against equal rights for many Americans; some of his last words were condemning women’s reproductive freedoms. He promoted America’s gun pathology, and asserted the death of innocents was an acceptable cost for that culture.

However, what is happening is far worse than simply devoting our national resources or devaluing our national reputation by elevating an unworthy individual.

In tributes from across the political spectrum, Kirk is being praised as a champion of “free speech.” He was not. He mercilessly attacked those with whom he did not agree. He was an enemy of truth and of equity. Kirk perverted the idea of our First Amendment rights to suggest they required universities to embrace lies, as though there were some obligation to present unfounded idiocy and malice simply because some special interest or political group supported them.

Much of his political identity was tied up in the dangerous promotion of white Christian nativism and its alliance with the most corrupt president in American history—a felon, a sex offender, a man who incited an insurrection against the United States government.

This president has already explicitly said he will use the attack on Kirk to justify going after his opponents, condemning the “left” in America as terrorists and lunatics and asserting—without presenting evidence—that they were responsible for Kirk’s murder. The State Department announced consular officials were being directed to revoke visas or deny them to people who might have commented on Kirk or his death in ways they did not approve of.

What a fitting tribute to a fake First Amendment warrior.

Depends on the nature of the support. If one supports, for example, the Gaza Health Foundation's efforts to give meals directly to Palestinians, that's laudable. Fundraising for Hamas and occupying college campuses is not. A student visa is a privilege.

If being distressed about Palestine leads to bloodlust for conservative assholes, it's probably time for a therapist and some meds.

This is, candidly, absurd. Nazis systematically herded 6 million Jews to death camps, gassed them, and set their remains on fire with the aim of bringing about thei extinction of their race. — Hanover

And they did so with the blessing of the law.

The American Revolution broke the law with respect to murder, too.

The law isn't a basis for making this decision -- that's just the way we do things at the moment. Part of the weather. It's not a moral or political code as much as a "If you do such and such and get caught and tried and persecuted then this punishment will follow"


Further, pointing to Hitler after the fact is to sidestep the question: If all we do is look to the past to decide when someone is a hero rather than a criminal then we'll always condemn heroes in the moment and then change our mind later. That's a policy of convenience, but it doesn't tell us about when one is justified in using political violence.

If it's just that there's a law for it it seems to much the same to me as the person who follows their own moral code -- since they wrote it down ahead of time and are consistent they are thereby justified.

But I know you'd see this as patently absurd -- I don't see how appeal to law gets around that absurdity though.


****

The pop question is "If you could go back in time to shoot Hitler, would you do it?" -- generically people unthinkingly say "Yes" -- but here the question isn't about one-off assassins as much as "How do you* live with the violence you are responsible for, and how do you* consistently condemn the violence of others with the blood on your hands?"

When I hear "The law", that sounds to me like the one-off manifesto -- because we gave ourselves permission this time.

EDIT: *You because I'm asking, not because I'm not guilty.

This is, candidly, absurd. Nazis systematically herded 6 million Jews to death camps, gassed them, and set their remains on fire with the aim of bringing about thei extinction of their race. — Hanover

Isn't this hindsight bias? You are comparing the end result of a shift in society with a society in shift. Nazi Germany started with "talk", with a rhetoric that slowly shifted how the public viewed jews. It wasn't "flipping a switch" and then they shipped them to extinction. A key question in this thread has been the problem of projecting where a society is heading, but there's no denying that the rhetoric of the extreme right erodes a large portion of the population's ability to show empathy and more and more opposing basic human rights. The indirect violence that this rhetoric causes, especially through much of it being supported by the very top of the government, means society could very well shift far into the extreme right, with more violence, more suicides, more suffering for certain groups in society. To compare the end result of the Nazi's transition into extreme right, to a time when we're balancing on such an extreme edge is a hindsight bias.

I saw him as a kind hearted sort with a sincere Christian faith, with views obviously inconsistent with my own on a variety of topics, but not the evil incarnate he's being painted as. — Hanover

So his ridicule of victims of other violent crimes, his homophobic, transphobic, and racist ideologies which he spread through his large reach into young people's hearts... were just him being a kind hearted Christian? Are you seriously arguing that?

There was no kind hearted attitude from him at all. Even the worst people in the world treated their own family and loyalists with kindness. But calling someone with his track record a "kind hearted Christian" is wild. His behavior wasn't even consistent with Christian values [insert Jesus face-palming here]

I respect the unhappiness it brings to have questioned the ethical propriety of one's sexual or gender preference, which is hardly distinct from those telling me Jews like me are destined to hell for my beliefs, but that doesn't justify my declaration of victimhood and my right to lash out. The world is full of disagreement and the anti-social way a murderer handles that isn't cause to reassess whether the anti-social psychopaths might have it right. — Hanover

I don't think anyone defends the assassin. What we're doing are assessing why this happened. Based on the info at hand it's clear that Kirk wasn't a random target. It wasn't a case of a lunatic who just kills the first well known person to step in front of them (as have been the case with some political violence).

So, since he wasn't a random target, why did this happen? The problem at the core is the fact that the world has become extremely polarized. But rather than polarized as a specific political stance, which can be debated in a normal fashion, it has become the very behavior of polarization that has taken root.

Any topic that enters the online sphere becomes a polarized topic, it doesn't matter at all what it's about. And since the algorithms of social media and channels like Twitch and YouTube push content that has a lot of activity, and activity being more common when it's a conflict going on, driving interactions; the behavior of people becomes extreme, without many of them really understanding why.

It becomes a wrestling match, it becomes a simulacra of a real debate; pushing the extreme as much as allowed to drive attention. In this form of attention economy, people like Kirk and even Trump becomes really popular.

The problem with this is that it radicalizes everyone. The polarization itself radicalizes and we get people on the right who are radicalized into violence against trans people, homosexuals, different ethnicities, while on the left people are radicalized more and more into fighting fascism.

It doesn't really matter if the world ends up in the same form of fascism we've seen before, the thing we're seeing now, with all the political violence going on... is the result of radicalization by the very behavior of people like Kirk.

He's not a debater, he uses the defense by the second amendment to make it valid to spread hateful ideas. It's a strategy that the extreme right is always using, it's the reason Popper developed the Tolerance paradox as a concept. A free and tolerant society eventually leads to intolerance because the freedom of speech legitimizes spreading intolerance if there are no guardrails defending against it. And its naive to think that this intolerance being promoted won't radicalize people and cause radicalization in its opposition.

So the problem at its core is not really the extreme right or left, it's that society is too naive in regards to how we stop intolerance to spread in a free society with free speech. As long as we handle free speech this sloppy, we eventually invite radicalized extreme people into power and lose that freedom. Because Kirk and the extreme right aren't interested in upholding freedom of speech for all people, they want freedom of speech for THEIR speech.

What this strikes me then is not a legitimate philosophical question as to whether Kirk's murder constituted self-defense, but instead in his opponents searching for some possible mitigation in the evil iof his murder. As in, a hateful bastard who is killed for his hate can't be just like this murder of Mother Thersa. Well it is. The rule is not to do unto others as you think they would have done unto you. — Hanover

By that logic, Kirk's logic of the aftermath of violent acts against the left would legitimize that he falls victim of violence against the right?

I think you are blinded by the idea that people defend the murderer, but explaining why this assassination happened is not the same as defending it. I think we are all much more intellectually capable than the shallow reporting of news, social media and officials. Otherwise you are just summerizing this by the measure of "good vs evil", which isn't very respectful of the complexities of reality.

Depends on the nature of the support. If one supports, for example, the Gaza Health Foundation's efforts to give meals directly to Palestinians, that's laudable. Fundraising for Hamas and occupying college campuses is not. A student visa is a privilege. — BitconnectCarlos

This strikes me as backwards.

One can only give aid to the suffering, but if you dare try to resist the movement of weapons to actually prevent the genocide we will take away your privilege of being here.

What about the students who are citizens that put up a similar resistance? Ought we to deport them too?

If being distressed about Palestine leads to bloodlust for conservative assholes, it's probably time for a therapist and some meds. — frank

The feeling of absurdity I have is with respect to the condemnation of such violence.

Biblically we have some planks in our eyes. And to see the amount of emotional fervor this assassination produced vs the lack of response in the face of genocide -- an absurd reflection, an uncomfortable aporia.

It is rather remarkable that people think that the words spread by anyone isn't enough to cause shifting values and morals in society. The harmful, destructive rhetoric keeps being spread in society, radicalizing people into violence. But when people demonstrate, speak out and become vocal about the opposite, with words in favor of human rights, of compassion and empathy, they're being actively criticized for it.

This assassination seems to whitewash what Kirk spread around, and it was not to spread love. He's part of the same side that spread hate, calls for violence, and for dividing people into us vs them. This side has no political color. It just happens to be more common on the extreme right in this time in history.

The point being, we could actually divide the world into two sides of legitimate good and bad. The good stands for respecting human rights and rejecting the concept of an individual as a means to an end. Those who argues for equality, the respect of each individual, respect for another group than them etc. ...and the other argues in opposition to that.

Arguing for the good side is arguing for the side that, with evidence in living standards and quality of life in the world, produces the best living conditions in a society.

Right now we're seeing a rise in the spread of hateful, polarizing rhetoric. Something that divides and makes enemies of neighbors. This rhetoric is eroding society and causing a lot of suffering and even deaths.

When speaking on a topic like this thread, I think it's important to be aware of which stance people holds in an argument. Which also means we can't ignore what someone like Kirk spread around. We can't whitewash what he did with spreading hate because he was the target of political violence, just as much as we can't ignore that the assassin acted out according to the bad side as well through his violence.

I think it's important not to get lost in these basic ideas about what is good and what is bad. The reality is that we can't justify the assassination, but we can't justify what Kirk stood for either.

Both sides of this thing were part of the bad and the way out is not cheering for either of them, but acknowledge the truth of why it happened, the reasons why, and help finding a path that moves away from the bad towards the good of humanity.

I don't think it should be this hard for anyone with a working intellectual mind to function by.

So, since he wasn't a random target, why did this happen? — Christoffer

And why does it continue to happen?

And, the bigger political question -- what's with the intuition that killing is wrong and our constant habit of making exceptions for ourselves?

When speaking on a topic like this thread, I think it's important to be aware of which stance people holds in an argument. Which also means we can't ignore what someone like Kirk spread around. We can't whitewash what he did with spreading hate because he was the target of political violence, just as much as we can't ignore that the assassin acted out according to the bad side as well through his violence. — Christoffer

There's a sense in which I think of Kirk as an early fascist agitator. To use the time travelling assassin scenario one would not go back in time to kill some random propagandist who is close enough to count. That seems cruel, and probably ineffective.

I think it's important not to get lost in these basic ideas about what is good and what is bad. The reality is that we can't justify the assassination, but we can't justify what Kirk stood for either.

Both sides of this thing were part of the bad and the way out is not cheering for either of them, but acknowledge the truth of why it happened, the reasons why, and help finding a path that moves away from the bad towards the good of humanity.

I don't think it should be this hard for anyone with a working intellectual mind to function by.

I like this as an ideal.

Partially what the debate is about are "these basic ideas about what is good and what is bad" -- hence @Hanover's point that I don't know good from evil and my admission that this is exactly what I'm saying: I don't know good from evil.

That one person gives themself permission to kill for some political reason vs that a state writes it down a head of time and goes on doing the same seems like a distinction that makes no difference with respect to the sanctity of life, AND with respect to the practical realities of life. The first is easily seen as absurd, and the latter isn't answered.

The feeling of absurdity I have is with respect to the condemnation of such violence.

Biblically we have some planks in our eyes. And to see the amount of emotional fervor this assassination produced vs the lack of response in the face of genocide -- an absurd reflection, an uncomfortable aporia. — Moliere

I have a thing for unhonored victims. For instance, in the Atlantic slave trade, about 9 million went to Brazil and the Caribbean where they died young of disease and being worked to death. How often do you hear anyone speak of these millions of people? They aren't honored because most people don't know anything about them. And yet we despair to no end over 100,000 in Gaza? See how that works?

Does the fact that Gaza sticks in your craw have anything to do with the political scene surrounding it in the US? If so, you aren't honoring those victims anymore than anyone else is. You're just engaging in more tit for tat. Really coming to terms with humanity's potential for horror and bloodshed, now that's a philosophical problem. It's called Nietzsche's eternal return.

Also, Israel won't be there for long. In 2100, the only livable areas will be right on the coast. Soon after that, the final diaspora will take place silently. Only historians will know about Israel.

Does the fact that Gaza sticks in your craw have anything to do with the political scene surrounding it in the US? If so, you aren't honoring those victims anymore than anyone else is. You're just engaging in more tit for tat. Really coming to terms with humanity's potential for horror and bloodshed, now that's a philosophical problem. It's called Nietzsche's eternal return. — frank

The reason Gaza "sticks in my craw" is because I went to a conference and spoke to various Palestinians there. I did this because I had a friend from Gaza and he suggested I go. I looked into the history and am basically on the Palestinian side in terms of rights, such as the right of return, though these things are so far off the table due to what Israel has done.

Now if Israel happened to be manufacturing their own weapons on their own soil by their own means it'd be just another genocide -- but it's a genocide the country I live in supports. Not in a small way either.

So the answer to your first question is "yes", but "political scene" denigrates the efforts of people in the United States who have pushed for non-violent change even in the face of genocide. Truly moral giants to my mind. BDS is such a movement, and the US equates it with "Hamas"

Did Nietzsche come to terms with our potential for horror? I'm not sure. If so, that's a shame that that's all we could come up with is an eternal return to the same.

I have a thing for unhonored victims. For instance, in the Atlantic slave trade, about 9 million went to Brazil and the Caribbean where they died young of disease and being worked to death. How often do you hear anyone speak of these millions of people? They aren't honored because most people don't know anything about them. And yet we despair to no end over 100,000 in Gaza? See how that works? — frank

There's a big difference here -- I'm not looking to honor death, since there is nothing to honor there. Remembering death is worthwhile insofar that we can prevent death. There may be other valences, spiritual respect and such.

I figure if we really care about life we'd not give excuses to the killers on the basis of the forgotten tortured -- if anything that there are forgotten tortured should connect you to the now suffering.

Honor the dead in peace, but there are bodies piling.