September 12, 2025 • 28 mins
Political activist and author, Charlie Kirk, was recently shot at a university during a free-speech event. What are the social and political ramifications of this event? How has culture responded to it and why? In this bipartisan episode, we explore the direction of U.S. politics in light of this recent assassination and offer some suggestions for healing the ideological division in America.
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0:00 The Cultural Impact of Charlie Kirk's Killing
7:59 Debating Gun Control and Security Measures in Schools
11:21 The Purpose and Limitations of Laws in Society
12:31 Critique of Religious Leaders' Responses to Political Violence
17:36 The Importance of Open Discussion and Diverse Perspectives
24:33 The Power of Individual Actions Over Group Identities
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
Hello and welcome to Ideological.
I'm your host, Zach Lee, and theepisode today is going to be a
little different than most of myother episodes.
Usually I like to make jokes andtalk about philosophy.
There's times I'll talk about politics, but mainly the ideas
behind them because I'm a philosopher by training.
But there is a cultural issue that I wanted to discuss with
you and it is the recent killingof Charlie Kirk.
(00:32):
Now I want to talk about some ofthe social ramifications of
that. I, I feel like that event, it's
almost like right before the suncomes up, you can't see the sun
yet, but by that, you know, sun coming up, you can see
everything else. I think that that event showed a
lot of things about our culture.I think it showed a lot of
(00:52):
things about our education system.
I think it showed a lot of things about the state of
politics that we're in. So as I get into this lesson,
I'll be honest, I'm a little bitinsecure.
I'm a little bit afraid that somebody is going to think that
I'm being too political. They're going to put me in some
sort of box or some sort of camp.
And so let let me just be reallyclear.
(01:14):
I knew who Charlie Kirk was, butI've never listened to any of
his things. I've never listened to even one
like debate or something like that that he's done.
So he's not somebody like he's, he runs in different circles
than I do. They're probably some things
where I would agree with him, probably some things where I
wouldn't. This should be a bipartisan
issue, shooting somebody for expressing their freedom of
(01:36):
speech. Both sides should condemn.
And so I want to go through somethoughts that I have, some of
the social ramifications, some of the responses, some of the
things that I've seen and I wantto talk about it ideologically.
So this will be a little bit more somber, a little bit more
direct, a little bit more intense.
But I think that it, it can be, it can be helpful.
(01:58):
So let me go over a few thoughts.
There were many different responses to the, the, the death
of Charlie Kirk. Some of them were helpful and
some of them were not. One of the least helpful is when
people celebrated that he got shot.
Regardless of your view, that puts you on the weird fringe.
(02:21):
Like when? When, When Barack Obama, when
Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders and Gavin Newsom are all
condemning it, as are, you know,Donald Trump and JD Vance, when
everyone's condemning it. If you don't, you are the weird
fringe, like group the, the, the, the weirdo on the outside
of even whatever party you belong to.
And so for those that celebratedit, you have to understand if
(02:45):
you celebrate that somebody was shot because you disagree with
them, they weren't being violent.
They were just expressing their First Amendment rights and their
opinion. If that's you, you're an actual
Nazi. You're an actual totalitarian.
You're, you're trying to crush anybody that doesn't agree with
you. You are the oppressor.
You are the thing you probably say that you hate, but you
(03:07):
actually most embody. So anytime somebody is shot for
expressing their opinion on a university, both sides should
condemn it, right or left. So this is not, again, this is
not a pro Charlie Kirk, or again, it's to say, if you get
rid of people's right to disagree, if you get rid of
(03:27):
people's right to say and think and do what they want, I mean,
you, you are that, that is the first step towards the gulags.
That is the first step towards Auschwitz.
That's the first step towards all those kind of things.
So I, I do think that those thatcelebrated his death are true
enemies of freedom. I also want to mention that Kirk
(03:52):
is not some sort of weird extremist.
You, you see a lot of that with the people that celebrated his
death. There's a lot of like, he was a
white supremacist and he was a bigot and he was a transform.
Charlie Kirk was just a normal guy from 10 years ago.
He just held views that almost everybody held in America 10
years ago. He's not some sort of weird.
He's not a white nationalist or anything like that.
(04:14):
He actually has several times expressed that even his religion
would not allow him to be some sort of racist or whatever.
When he talks to students very kindly about, you know,
transgender issues, he holds a different view.
That doesn't make him some sort of mean monster or whatever.
So again, he's not a lot of people are like, yeah, he's got
to be killed because he's a neo Nazi fascist.
(04:36):
He's none of those things. He's a normal guy that disagrees
with some of the postmodern theory going on in the US.
That's it. He's not some crazy extremist.
He didn't have a bomb on him or something like that when he was
shot. Like he's just kind of a normal
guy might be annoying at at points.
Depending on your views, you might not like it, you might
think it's outdated. You're you're free to to have
(04:57):
whatever opinions you want. Again, I have my own opinions,
but he's not some sort of weird extremist.
I also think that I though I don't like everything that he
said. His method was 100% the answer.
So so listen to this. We are currently in a civil war
that just hasn't become hot yet.We are in a Cold War civil war
(05:20):
where there's misinformation andspying and propaganda and all
these things. It hasn't become hot yet, but it
is a Cold War civil war. The only way to prevent that
from becoming real war, a hot war, a real civil war, is to sit
down across the table with somebody to treat them like a
human and you both express your views and have an argument.
(05:42):
Arguing is not bad. Arguing is great.
It's a chance to sharpen your views and bounce them off other
people. It's a chance to change your
mind when you're corrected and you see that you're wrong.
It's a chance to change somebodyelse's mind if they're wrong.
Like sitting down with somebody else who's a human across the
table, not just tweeting out andstuff and having a deep
conversation about things that matter is the solution.
(06:02):
Because guess what? You can disagree with somebody
and still love them. You've been told you've been
indoctrinated. There's been propaganda against
this. You've been told you can't.
If somebody's not in my tribe, they're the enemy.
We must shoot them. Nope.
You can disagree and still be friends.
I've got friends all across the political spectrum.
I've got friends all across religious spectrums.
Cool. You know what we do?
(06:23):
We sit down and have a drink andtell dirty jokes and we talk
about deep things and it's awesome.
OK, His method of coming to a campus and saying you can say
whatever you want and I can say whatever I want, You be
respectful. I'll be respectful.
And from what I know, the littleI know about him, supposedly,
you know, most of his stuff was pretty, it might be offensive in
the content, but his tone, he wasn't trying to be an ass or
(06:44):
something that his, his, his content is what mainly offended
people, not his tone. His tone seems to be, you know,
he, he's not somebody that's, that's just trying to, to, to
punch people that he disagrees with.
He, he is somebody that is trying to have a conversation.
So I think his method is 100% the solution.
How do we solve this? Freedom of speech, individual
(07:04):
freedom, individual rights, individual freedom of speech is
how you solve this issue for both right and left.
Somebody who's a leftist has a right to set up a tent on a
campus and let people ask questions and him give his
views. Somebody who's on the right is
allowed to do the same thing. Both can do it.
That would be great. Without yelling, without
chanting, without interrupting each other.
(07:25):
Let's let the best argument win.If you are correct, then your
argument will do the talking foryou.
You won't have to shoot your opponent.
Your logic will destroy the opponent.
The argument, your persuasion, your examples, those kind of
things will win. You see, you have to crush
dissent when you subconsciously and deep down know that you're
(07:47):
wrong because you know that you can't beat them in an actual
debate. And so then there's things like
shooting. I've also seen people say a lot
that they, they've used this event to try to push their
politics, which drives me nuts. Like bodies are not even cold
yet and people are climbing overthe dead to try to push their
view of gun control or their like that.
(08:08):
This, this is not the time for that.
Like after there's a school shooting or something is not the
time to push your politics. It's the time to mourn.
It's the time to be quiet. It's the time to try to figure
out what would actually prevent it in the future.
So I'm a little annoyed with people and this is right or left
that are trying to push too many.
Like, let's let's wait just a second.
Let's get all the details. Let's mourn with the family,
(08:28):
Then let's figure out what's going on.
But like the people pushing the gun control narrative on this
issue, well, Charlie Kirk believed in gun rights, so
therefore he deserves to get shot.
You know who else believed in gun rights?
Again, pretty much all of America.
For the longest time. The NRA used to go into schools
and teach kids how to shoot so that they would do it safely
like in the 50s. And so that that to me, the
(08:51):
reason that's frustrating is if you say, OK, Zach, the problem's
guns. Why did the gun shoot Charlie
Kirk? There's a lot of people at that
rally. Why not anybody else?
Why didn't you shoot people indiscriminately if it's the
gun? You can't answer that question
by talking about gun control. You have to talk about the
motive of the shooter. Also, what do you do when a
legally purchased firearm by a legal adult is used?
(09:13):
You know, maybe if it's even a hunting rifle or whatever it is,
I'm not sure that we even know yet is used just to shoot
somebody from a far off distance.
Like what gun control would stopthat?
Well, Zach, we should just get rid of all the guns.
There are more guns in America than there are people.
Even if you tried to do that, you wouldn't get all of them.
The bad guys would still keep them.
You can make them with a 3D printer.
Again, guns are 1000 year old technology.
(09:34):
It's not like hard to make and people would smuggle them across
the border. So that won't work.
That's a fake solution. I've got a whole episode, by the
way, coming out soon on gun control.
I'm just going to go over the statistics again.
I I don't give a lot of my political views.
I do on this though, because I think that just debating about
it keeps getting people killed. In the meantime, we need common
sense gun control. We already have that, you idiot.
(09:54):
You already have to be of a certain age.
You already have to have a background check.
You already have to not be a felon, not have a history of
mental illness. You have to like, we already
have very common sense gun control.
You know it it well. I mean, I, I, I, I put up a post
on social media recently just saying, hey, what would actually
protect kids? Get your politics out of it.
(10:14):
I'm tired of kids getting shot. What would actually protect
them? And you'd be surprised that all
the answers the people gave werejust stupid answers.
They're just giving their party line again.
They're not thinking, they're not being critical.
They're like, we should get rid of guns, OK?
You can't. The bad guys will still keep
them, OK? We should have gun control.
We already have gun control. When people break the law, they
don't care what the law is. I had mentioned maybe we have
security or something at schoolsand people like, what about
(10:36):
Uvalde, Zach? Uvalde, Like, we had security,
didn't work. We didn't have security.
They ran away. If the security guard runs away,
that's not having security at the school.
Again, think about it. I'm saying what if we had
security that actually stayed there and protected the kids?
Would that help at all? You haven't suggested anything
that would help other than something that's unrealistic.
(10:58):
Maybe bad guys will stop being bad and shooting people, which
is a terrible. I had one guy respond and say he
said you're an idiot because you, you know, what purpose does
laws even have then since bad guys are going to break them.
And I was like, again, assume that I've thought about this
first. The purpose of laws is not to
(11:18):
keep bad guys from breaking them.
Did you know that there are lawsagainst murder and bad guys
murder? There are laws against stealing
and bad guys steal. There's laws against drug use
and there's drugs. If you think that the purpose of
laws is to keep bad guys from breaking them, you're absurd.
The purpose of laws is to provide a standard whereby you
(11:42):
can judge and punish somebody ifthey do break them.
When you create a law, the good guys will follow it.
So it keeps the majority of people from doing it, and it
gives a standard to punish the bad people when they break it.
They're not scared of the law, they're scared of the
punishment. But what it doesn't do is
prevent them from breaking it. OK, so it was insane to me how
(12:04):
many people just thought, well, if we just make more laws, I
mean, that's not how laws work. But again, we'll get into that
in another lecture. My point here is to say stop
using the death of a father of Ithink a one year old and a
three-year old who's just expressing his opinion.
Whether you hate him or not. He could be the worst guy in the
world, but he has a right to express his opinion.
(12:25):
Stop using that to push your weird views on whatever
political issue is your hot topic, Right.
So perhaps let me let me let me punch against a lot of those
I've seen on the ride as well. Perhaps the thing I've been most
annoyed by with the death of Charlie Kirk is the response
(12:45):
that comes from religious leaders.
OK, now, now, let me be clear. If you're somebody who's posted,
you know my thoughts and prayerswith the family and I'm praying
for them and this shouldn't happen.
And how awful, that's totally fine, OK?
I'm not talking to you. If you're somebody that's
literally like, man, how awful. I want to pray for their family.
Go for it. I don't think you're doing
anything wrong. I think that's that is a kind
(13:06):
thing to do. My frustration is primarily with
religious leaders. I've seen this with imams.
I've seen this with Jewish rabbis, but I've mainly seen it
within, like, evangelical Christianity, where pastors, and
by the way, probably the people that give the most unsolicited
advice are pastors, where they say something like this, forgive
(13:27):
your enemies. Yeah, I'm fine with forgiving
your enemies. What the hell does that have to
do with this? Are you saying the government
shouldn't pursue a murderer? I don't have an the, the shooter
is not my enemy. I don't even know that guy.
Like it's a true thing. You should.
I, I, I, I like the idea of forgiving your enemies.
I keep that. I, I think that keeps, you know,
vengeance and all these kind of things away.
(13:49):
I think that's great. That's just not what we're
talking about. It's almost like if you said,
Hey, don't eat too many sweets and make sure to eat your
vegetables. I, I agree with that.
We're talking about what should we do to prevent more people
from getting shot, What should we do practically so that people
can express their opinion? And when you give just some sort
of religious platitude, that's not really relevant here.
(14:12):
I, I don't know if you know whatyou're doing.
I agree that if somebody personally offends you, you
should forgive them totally. That doesn't answer the question
people are asking. What should the government do in
finding this? How can we prevent this from
happening in the future? How can we tone down the violent
rhetoric between left and right so this stuff doesn't keep
happening? That's the question That has
nothing to do with forgiveness. Or there's, I've seen a lot of
again, and it's primarily Christian pastors that do this,
(14:35):
but I have seen it from some other religious groups too,
where they they just all of a sudden say things like, Oh my
gosh, one day God will make everything good or one day in
heaven, things will be great. We won't have to deal with this
or, you know, come quickly or it's these, again, religious
platitudes. That's not the question people
are asking. If God will one day make things
(14:58):
better, great. What about now?
We're talking about now again, you're you're most religious
leaders, especially evangelical pastors.
You should probably shut up whenevents like this happen because
you're not qualified to speak onit and you're not even saying
anything that's helpful. If God will one day make
everything right, awesome. That'll be awesome in the
future. What do we do now?
(15:20):
All I hear you doing is say be warmed and well fed and not
actually helping. Do you know why you're doing
that? It's because your virtue
signaling. You're too much of A coward and
you're too spineless to stand upand say what would actually help
people. You're too much of A coward to
stand up and say, hey, here's practically how we could do
this. Think this way.
(15:40):
Here's practically how we could do this.
Read these books. Here's practically how we could
stop things like this. Vote this way.
You're too much of A coward to do that.
And so you think that you can stay above it all, that you're
so enlightened that you don't have to say anything practical.
You don't actually have to help people.
Push back. What's evil now?
Because you can just deal with it later.
You're you're like a monk in theMiddle Ages.
(16:01):
That's like, hey, who cares about this life now?
We've got this better one coming, which causes you not to
make any change and causes you not to actually do something
that could love and help people now.
OK, for so for all of those thatare just sending out some sort
of third way ISM, both sides arebad and we should do better than
this. And maybe Jesus will come back
soon. And, you know, make sure that
(16:22):
you don't get what what they're saying to you is this.
Don't care too much about politics, don't care too much
about things that are going on, which again, regardless of your
worldview, I think is insane even to them.
I would say something like, I think it's first Timothy 2 says
that you should pray for your political leaders so that you
(16:44):
might live a peaceful and quiet life.
The Bible itself is going to saycare about what's going on
because God cares about you having a peaceful and quiet
life. So when pastors like don't make
it too political, don't care about living a peaceful and
guided life, don't talk, don't do anything practical.
What they're really doing is they're just trying to show you
what side they're actually on without saying it.
(17:05):
And the side that they're on might not be the same side
you're on. And so just know that that's
what they're doing. It's an attempt to virtue signal
and act like they're so holy. They're so above it all.
They're so above the politics that they, if you want to be
helpful, tell people how to havearguments with people they
disagree with and how to, you know, exist in a society that is
(17:26):
very torn by different ideas. If you want to tell people what
to do, talk about the good and bad parts on on both parties,
but don't make it sound even when it's not even all the time.
Sometimes one party's more at fault.
Other times another party's moreat fault.
Let's talk about that, dependingupon the issue.
This also brings up the issue The again, the, the, the, the
(17:49):
assassination of Charlie Kirk. What is the purpose of a
university? The purpose of a university is
where you as a student come in there and you come in with
ignorance. You don't know the things and
you are challenged. You are taught how to think.
This is why, and I'll have a whole episode on the history of
the university at some point, but This is why you originally
had to study the liberal arts and stuff.
(18:11):
Even if you wanted to be a doctor, even if you wanted to be
a lawyer. Before you could do that, you
had to learn how to think. You had to learn logic and
grammar and Latin and how to debate and all these kind of
things. That is no longer the purpose of
the university, especially not in the US.
It's, it's better in other places. the US, it's pure
indoctrination. You should come out of college
disagreeing with your professors, not parroting them.
(18:33):
If they've really done their joband they've taught you how to
think, you should come out of college disagreeing with them,
not parroting them. So when universities only admit
a certain type of student, they use certain policies to exclude
other types of students. They repeat and indoctrinate and
only push on one side over and over and over again.
That's not the purpose of a university.
Of all the places Charlie Kirk could have been shot, the one
(18:57):
that makes the least amount of sense is a college campus or a
university. The purpose of a university is
to be able to express ideas and hear ideas that you disagree
with without becoming emotional,without ranting and crying and
doing all these things that showthe lack of an educated mind.
You understand that most of world history passions were
(19:17):
thought to get in the way of truth.
Your emotions, you feel them very strongly, but they're not
logical all the time. And so I can sit down with
somebody that I totally disagreewith and they can go through all
their sides and I am chill. I'm like, OK, that's a good
point. Well, I don't agree at this
point. Here's why.
And then I'll give up, give, youknow, get up and give my view
and we can shake hands afterwards and we can go grab a
(19:39):
beer and everything is fine. The intentional, like stocking
people's emotions to make them activist only in One Direction
is not a real education. You're being used to to, again,
the Nazis, the communists under Stalin, all these mass genocides
(20:03):
and stuff that have happened in different places across the,
it's when people don't allow dissent.
If you're somebody right or leftand you don't think somebody
should get to think their own thoughts, say what they want to
say, have these kind of freedomsthat Americans have
traditionally believed in. You are the bad guy, you are the
oppressor, you are anti intellectual, you are anti
(20:23):
freedom, you're anti democracy. Well, let me say this, I I've
been pretty clear on this. I'm not a Donald Trump fan.
So let me be really clear beforeI say this.
I'm annoyed though when people are like, he's a Nazi fascist
taking over the country and I'm like, more people voted for him
than Kamala. He won the Electoral College
votes, he won most of the states.
(20:44):
So love him or hate him, he's the democratically legally
elected person that people wanted in America.
When you start saying oh he's the enemy and so are all the
people that voted for them, you're actually against
democracy. Again, not a Trump fan myself, I
actually have a lot of criticismfor him.
But you can't say that he wasn'tthe People's Choice.
(21:07):
So be careful. Again, the rhetoric of saying
everyone on the right's a fascist Nazi and or though even
those on the right saying everyone on the left is here to
murder me. I think I think those are those
are super unhelpful, almost done.
What is the solution? I think that open discussion is
(21:27):
the answer. The only way out of this is
through. Be wary of anybody that tries to
not let you hear the other side.That's what shooting somebody in
the middle of a free speech platform is, by the way.
They don't want people to hear Kirk's views.
That's why they did it. Remember canceling safe spaces,
(21:50):
taking certain books off Amazon,not because they're pornographic
and little children shouldn't read them.
You, you should certainly make sure that kids cannot get access
to something like that. But taking things off Amazon
because you don't like the ideas, there's no pictures, you
don't like the ideas that it supports, I mean, that is Nazi
book burning. Stop doing that.
Safe spaces, all these kind of things, Blacklisting people
(22:13):
because they have a different view from you, firing them
because they don't hold. You understand that is what
oppressors do. They don't want you to hear the
other side because if you hear the other side, you might not
agree with them. And the postmodern puppet
masters can't have dissent. They want you to agree with them
so they can control you, so thatthey can be in power.
(22:34):
That's what they're doing. You're a pawn.
We have a word to the right and to the left.
To the right. Do not retaliate.
Do not retaliate. Why is MLK?
Why was MLK so much more successful than Malcolm X?
They're both fighting for civil rights.
Here's why. Because MLK did it peacefully,
(22:57):
whereas Malcolm X was angry and aggressive.
If you retaliate, you just make it worse.
So this shooter, by killing Charlie Kirk didn't kill Charlie
Kirk. He just made a nation of Charlie
Kirk's. It's like a hydra.
You cut off 1 head and more heads grow.
So if you're on the right, do not retaliate.
Also, do not read all leftism onto one guy's action.
(23:23):
OK, that shouldn't have to be said.
Now, are there ideas then rhetoric that might have led to
this? Yeah, let's talk about that.
But in the same way, like, like if you're on the right and
somebody were to shoot somebody on the left, you would not want
the left saying everyone on the right agrees with that.
That's one person's lone action,those who are on the left.
(23:43):
I would not use this as a time to gloat that you've failed an
enemy. I would use this as a time to
consider if maybe the US versus them rhetoric, maybe the friend
enemy rhetoric. Maybe you've been indoctrinated.
Maybe you've been pushed only inOne Direction.
How many right leaning media sources do you follow without
(24:04):
just criticizing but actually tohear the argument?
How many friends on the right doyou have?
Those on the right. How many left wing media things
do you watch and read? Not just critically.
I always want everyone to be critical on both sides, but to
actually try to understand and not to just make fun of it and
send a meme. How many friends on the left do
you have? OK, I want to end by saying
this. Groups pay attention to this
(24:27):
because this will this, this could heal the situation in
America and it hopefully would change your politics.
Groups cannot act. Only individuals can act.
Pause for a second. What I just said is huge.
I'm not saying that you can't ever use group titles to
classify people, men, women, cops, black people, whatever it
(24:50):
is. What I'm saying is when you
start thinking that groups are not just collections of
individuals, pause for a second.Groups are just collections of
individuals. Without individuals, there are
no groups. That's what a group is.
It's a collection of individuals.
When you start thinking of all politics through groups, you
(25:10):
start thinking they did this to us, so we're going to do this to
them. That is asinine.
That makes no sense. If my family was killed by an
accountant, I would not be like,time to go get some accountants.
That would be ridiculous. But for some reason we think of
the world that way. It's very strange.
(25:32):
Black people as an amorphous group don't commit a crime or
whatever it might be. Maybe an individual black person
does. White people as a group are not
being racist. A group can't be racist, only
individuals in the group. Individual white people can be
racist cops. A faceless, nameless entity
(25:53):
doesn't shoot people. Individual police officers shoot
people. Sometimes they're justified and
sometimes they're not. Men, as a faceless, amorphous
title, doesn't sexually assault women.
Individual men might sexually assault women.
Stop thinking of the world as acting as groups.
(26:14):
You know, liberals as a whole did not shoot Charlie Kirk.
One individual did. Now did a bunch of other
liberals promote violent rhetoric?
Sure. But even that's individuals.
That's not all of them. OK, Are there right wing guys
that have called for some sort of retaliation and violence?
Yes. But that doesn't mean the right
has. It just means one weirdo has.
(26:34):
OK, if you would stop, if you would realize there are no
groups. There are only people within
groups and those individuals do actions, not the group.
It would solve so much of this. Stop thinking my group versus
their group. A group in the past oppressed
this group in the OR. This group owes individuals that
(26:55):
belong to certain groups. Sure, an individual can belong
to a group, but the individual'sthe one who acts, the group
doesn't vote, right? It's not like when there's an
election, whiteness votes or blackness votes, individual
white or black people vote, individual Democrats or
Republicans vote, or whatever itmight be.
Stop thinking of everything as groups and retaliation.
(27:16):
And like history remembers, likeHegel is wrong and Marx is
wrong, and I've got episodes coming out on both.
And so that is not the way forward.
The way forward is to forgive. The way forward is to work for
more freedom of speech. It is to hold those accountable
who've done terrible things. Thank you for joining this
(27:39):
different, this unique kind of emergency session, if you will,
of ideological. I hope that you tune in next
time and we'll talk about something that maybe is not so
heavy. Thanks so much for joining.
Hello and welcome to Ideological.
I'm your host, Zach Lee, and theepisode today is going to be a
little different than most of myother episodes.
Usually I like to make jokes andtalk about philosophy.
There's times I'll talk about politics, but mainly the ideas
behind them because I'm a philosopher by training.
But there is a cultural issue that I wanted to discuss with
you and it is the recent killingof Charlie Kirk.
(00:32):
Now I want to talk about some ofthe social ramifications of
that. I, I feel like that event, it's
almost like right before the suncomes up, you can't see the sun
yet, but by that, you know, sun coming up, you can see
everything else. I think that that event showed a
lot of things about our culture.I think it showed a lot of
(00:52):
things about our education system.
I think it showed a lot of things about the state of
politics that we're in. So as I get into this lesson,
I'll be honest, I'm a little bitinsecure.
I'm a little bit afraid that somebody is going to think that
I'm being too political. They're going to put me in some
sort of box or some sort of camp.
And so let let me just be reallyclear.
(01:14):
I knew who Charlie Kirk was, butI've never listened to any of
his things. I've never listened to even one
like debate or something like that that he's done.
So he's not somebody like he's, he runs in different circles
than I do. They're probably some things
where I would agree with him, probably some things where I
wouldn't. This should be a bipartisan
issue, shooting somebody for expressing their freedom of
(01:36):
speech. Both sides should condemn.
And so I want to go through somethoughts that I have, some of
the social ramifications, some of the responses, some of the
things that I've seen and I wantto talk about it ideologically.
So this will be a little bit more somber, a little bit more
direct, a little bit more intense.
But I think that it, it can be, it can be helpful.
(01:58):
So let me go over a few thoughts.
There were many different responses to the, the, the death
of Charlie Kirk. Some of them were helpful and
some of them were not. One of the least helpful is when
people celebrated that he got shot.
Regardless of your view, that puts you on the weird fringe.
(02:21):
Like when? When, When Barack Obama, when
Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders and Gavin Newsom are all
condemning it, as are, you know,Donald Trump and JD Vance, when
everyone's condemning it. If you don't, you are the weird
fringe, like group the, the, the, the weirdo on the outside
of even whatever party you belong to.
And so for those that celebratedit, you have to understand if
(02:45):
you celebrate that somebody was shot because you disagree with
them, they weren't being violent.
They were just expressing their First Amendment rights and their
opinion. If that's you, you're an actual
Nazi. You're an actual totalitarian.
You're, you're trying to crush anybody that doesn't agree with
you. You are the oppressor.
You are the thing you probably say that you hate, but you
(03:07):
actually most embody. So anytime somebody is shot for
expressing their opinion on a university, both sides should
condemn it, right or left. So this is not, again, this is
not a pro Charlie Kirk, or again, it's to say, if you get
rid of people's right to disagree, if you get rid of
(03:27):
people's right to say and think and do what they want, I mean,
you, you are that, that is the first step towards the gulags.
That is the first step towards Auschwitz.
That's the first step towards all those kind of things.
So I, I do think that those thatcelebrated his death are true
enemies of freedom. I also want to mention that Kirk
(03:52):
is not some sort of weird extremist.
You, you see a lot of that with the people that celebrated his
death. There's a lot of like, he was a
white supremacist and he was a bigot and he was a transform.
Charlie Kirk was just a normal guy from 10 years ago.
He just held views that almost everybody held in America 10
years ago. He's not some sort of weird.
He's not a white nationalist or anything like that.
(04:14):
He actually has several times expressed that even his religion
would not allow him to be some sort of racist or whatever.
When he talks to students very kindly about, you know,
transgender issues, he holds a different view.
That doesn't make him some sort of mean monster or whatever.
So again, he's not a lot of people are like, yeah, he's got
to be killed because he's a neo Nazi fascist.
(04:36):
He's none of those things. He's a normal guy that disagrees
with some of the postmodern theory going on in the US.
That's it. He's not some crazy extremist.
He didn't have a bomb on him or something like that when he was
shot. Like he's just kind of a normal
guy might be annoying at at points.
Depending on your views, you might not like it, you might
think it's outdated. You're you're free to to have
(04:57):
whatever opinions you want. Again, I have my own opinions,
but he's not some sort of weird extremist.
I also think that I though I don't like everything that he
said. His method was 100% the answer.
So so listen to this. We are currently in a civil war
that just hasn't become hot yet.We are in a Cold War civil war
(05:20):
where there's misinformation andspying and propaganda and all
these things. It hasn't become hot yet, but it
is a Cold War civil war. The only way to prevent that
from becoming real war, a hot war, a real civil war, is to sit
down across the table with somebody to treat them like a
human and you both express your views and have an argument.
(05:42):
Arguing is not bad. Arguing is great.
It's a chance to sharpen your views and bounce them off other
people. It's a chance to change your
mind when you're corrected and you see that you're wrong.
It's a chance to change somebodyelse's mind if they're wrong.
Like sitting down with somebody else who's a human across the
table, not just tweeting out andstuff and having a deep
conversation about things that matter is the solution.
(06:02):
Because guess what? You can disagree with somebody
and still love them. You've been told you've been
indoctrinated. There's been propaganda against
this. You've been told you can't.
If somebody's not in my tribe, they're the enemy.
We must shoot them. Nope.
You can disagree and still be friends.
I've got friends all across the political spectrum.
I've got friends all across religious spectrums.
Cool. You know what we do?
(06:23):
We sit down and have a drink andtell dirty jokes and we talk
about deep things and it's awesome.
OK, His method of coming to a campus and saying you can say
whatever you want and I can say whatever I want, You be
respectful. I'll be respectful.
And from what I know, the littleI know about him, supposedly,
you know, most of his stuff was pretty, it might be offensive in
the content, but his tone, he wasn't trying to be an ass or
(06:44):
something that his, his, his content is what mainly offended
people, not his tone. His tone seems to be, you know,
he, he's not somebody that's, that's just trying to, to, to
punch people that he disagrees with.
He, he is somebody that is trying to have a conversation.
So I think his method is 100% the solution.
How do we solve this? Freedom of speech, individual
(07:04):
freedom, individual rights, individual freedom of speech is
how you solve this issue for both right and left.
Somebody who's a leftist has a right to set up a tent on a
campus and let people ask questions and him give his
views. Somebody who's on the right is
allowed to do the same thing. Both can do it.
That would be great. Without yelling, without
chanting, without interrupting each other.
(07:25):
Let's let the best argument win.If you are correct, then your
argument will do the talking foryou.
You won't have to shoot your opponent.
Your logic will destroy the opponent.
The argument, your persuasion, your examples, those kind of
things will win. You see, you have to crush
dissent when you subconsciously and deep down know that you're
(07:47):
wrong because you know that you can't beat them in an actual
debate. And so then there's things like
shooting. I've also seen people say a lot
that they, they've used this event to try to push their
politics, which drives me nuts. Like bodies are not even cold
yet and people are climbing overthe dead to try to push their
view of gun control or their like that.
(08:08):
This, this is not the time for that.
Like after there's a school shooting or something is not the
time to push your politics. It's the time to mourn.
It's the time to be quiet. It's the time to try to figure
out what would actually prevent it in the future.
So I'm a little annoyed with people and this is right or left
that are trying to push too many.
Like, let's let's wait just a second.
Let's get all the details. Let's mourn with the family,
(08:28):
Then let's figure out what's going on.
But like the people pushing the gun control narrative on this
issue, well, Charlie Kirk believed in gun rights, so
therefore he deserves to get shot.
You know who else believed in gun rights?
Again, pretty much all of America.
For the longest time. The NRA used to go into schools
and teach kids how to shoot so that they would do it safely
like in the 50s. And so that that to me, the
(08:51):
reason that's frustrating is if you say, OK, Zach, the problem's
guns. Why did the gun shoot Charlie
Kirk? There's a lot of people at that
rally. Why not anybody else?
Why didn't you shoot people indiscriminately if it's the
gun? You can't answer that question
by talking about gun control. You have to talk about the
motive of the shooter. Also, what do you do when a
legally purchased firearm by a legal adult is used?
(09:13):
You know, maybe if it's even a hunting rifle or whatever it is,
I'm not sure that we even know yet is used just to shoot
somebody from a far off distance.
Like what gun control would stopthat?
Well, Zach, we should just get rid of all the guns.
There are more guns in America than there are people.
Even if you tried to do that, you wouldn't get all of them.
The bad guys would still keep them.
You can make them with a 3D printer.
Again, guns are 1000 year old technology.
(09:34):
It's not like hard to make and people would smuggle them across
the border. So that won't work.
That's a fake solution. I've got a whole episode, by the
way, coming out soon on gun control.
I'm just going to go over the statistics again.
I I don't give a lot of my political views.
I do on this though, because I think that just debating about
it keeps getting people killed. In the meantime, we need common
sense gun control. We already have that, you idiot.
(09:54):
You already have to be of a certain age.
You already have to have a background check.
You already have to not be a felon, not have a history of
mental illness. You have to like, we already
have very common sense gun control.
You know it it well. I mean, I, I, I, I put up a post
on social media recently just saying, hey, what would actually
protect kids? Get your politics out of it.
(10:14):
I'm tired of kids getting shot. What would actually protect
them? And you'd be surprised that all
the answers the people gave werejust stupid answers.
They're just giving their party line again.
They're not thinking, they're not being critical.
They're like, we should get rid of guns, OK?
You can't. The bad guys will still keep
them, OK? We should have gun control.
We already have gun control. When people break the law, they
don't care what the law is. I had mentioned maybe we have
security or something at schoolsand people like, what about
(10:36):
Uvalde, Zach? Uvalde, Like, we had security,
didn't work. We didn't have security.
They ran away. If the security guard runs away,
that's not having security at the school.
Again, think about it. I'm saying what if we had
security that actually stayed there and protected the kids?
Would that help at all? You haven't suggested anything
that would help other than something that's unrealistic.
(10:58):
Maybe bad guys will stop being bad and shooting people, which
is a terrible. I had one guy respond and say he
said you're an idiot because you, you know, what purpose does
laws even have then since bad guys are going to break them.
And I was like, again, assume that I've thought about this
first. The purpose of laws is not to
(11:18):
keep bad guys from breaking them.
Did you know that there are lawsagainst murder and bad guys
murder? There are laws against stealing
and bad guys steal. There's laws against drug use
and there's drugs. If you think that the purpose of
laws is to keep bad guys from breaking them, you're absurd.
The purpose of laws is to provide a standard whereby you
(11:42):
can judge and punish somebody ifthey do break them.
When you create a law, the good guys will follow it.
So it keeps the majority of people from doing it, and it
gives a standard to punish the bad people when they break it.
They're not scared of the law, they're scared of the
punishment. But what it doesn't do is
prevent them from breaking it. OK, so it was insane to me how
(12:04):
many people just thought, well, if we just make more laws, I
mean, that's not how laws work. But again, we'll get into that
in another lecture. My point here is to say stop
using the death of a father of Ithink a one year old and a
three-year old who's just expressing his opinion.
Whether you hate him or not. He could be the worst guy in the
world, but he has a right to express his opinion.
(12:25):
Stop using that to push your weird views on whatever
political issue is your hot topic, Right.
So perhaps let me let me let me punch against a lot of those
I've seen on the ride as well. Perhaps the thing I've been most
annoyed by with the death of Charlie Kirk is the response
(12:45):
that comes from religious leaders.
OK, now, now, let me be clear. If you're somebody who's posted,
you know my thoughts and prayerswith the family and I'm praying
for them and this shouldn't happen.
And how awful, that's totally fine, OK?
I'm not talking to you. If you're somebody that's
literally like, man, how awful. I want to pray for their family.
Go for it. I don't think you're doing
anything wrong. I think that's that is a kind
(13:06):
thing to do. My frustration is primarily with
religious leaders. I've seen this with imams.
I've seen this with Jewish rabbis, but I've mainly seen it
within, like, evangelical Christianity, where pastors, and
by the way, probably the people that give the most unsolicited
advice are pastors, where they say something like this, forgive
(13:27):
your enemies. Yeah, I'm fine with forgiving
your enemies. What the hell does that have to
do with this? Are you saying the government
shouldn't pursue a murderer? I don't have an the, the shooter
is not my enemy. I don't even know that guy.
Like it's a true thing. You should.
I, I, I, I like the idea of forgiving your enemies.
I keep that. I, I think that keeps, you know,
vengeance and all these kind of things away.
(13:49):
I think that's great. That's just not what we're
talking about. It's almost like if you said,
Hey, don't eat too many sweets and make sure to eat your
vegetables. I, I agree with that.
We're talking about what should we do to prevent more people
from getting shot, What should we do practically so that people
can express their opinion? And when you give just some sort
of religious platitude, that's not really relevant here.
(14:12):
I, I don't know if you know whatyou're doing.
I agree that if somebody personally offends you, you
should forgive them totally. That doesn't answer the question
people are asking. What should the government do in
finding this? How can we prevent this from
happening in the future? How can we tone down the violent
rhetoric between left and right so this stuff doesn't keep
happening? That's the question That has
nothing to do with forgiveness. Or there's, I've seen a lot of
again, and it's primarily Christian pastors that do this,
(14:35):
but I have seen it from some other religious groups too,
where they they just all of a sudden say things like, Oh my
gosh, one day God will make everything good or one day in
heaven, things will be great. We won't have to deal with this
or, you know, come quickly or it's these, again, religious
platitudes. That's not the question people
are asking. If God will one day make things
(14:58):
better, great. What about now?
We're talking about now again, you're you're most religious
leaders, especially evangelical pastors.
You should probably shut up whenevents like this happen because
you're not qualified to speak onit and you're not even saying
anything that's helpful. If God will one day make
everything right, awesome. That'll be awesome in the
future. What do we do now?
(15:20):
All I hear you doing is say be warmed and well fed and not
actually helping. Do you know why you're doing
that? It's because your virtue
signaling. You're too much of A coward and
you're too spineless to stand upand say what would actually help
people. You're too much of A coward to
stand up and say, hey, here's practically how we could do
this. Think this way.
(15:40):
Here's practically how we could do this.
Read these books. Here's practically how we could
stop things like this. Vote this way.
You're too much of A coward to do that.
And so you think that you can stay above it all, that you're
so enlightened that you don't have to say anything practical.
You don't actually have to help people.
Push back. What's evil now?
Because you can just deal with it later.
You're you're like a monk in theMiddle Ages.
(16:01):
That's like, hey, who cares about this life now?
We've got this better one coming, which causes you not to
make any change and causes you not to actually do something
that could love and help people now.
OK, for so for all of those thatare just sending out some sort
of third way ISM, both sides arebad and we should do better than
this. And maybe Jesus will come back
soon. And, you know, make sure that
(16:22):
you don't get what what they're saying to you is this.
Don't care too much about politics, don't care too much
about things that are going on, which again, regardless of your
worldview, I think is insane even to them.
I would say something like, I think it's first Timothy 2 says
that you should pray for your political leaders so that you
(16:44):
might live a peaceful and quiet life.
The Bible itself is going to saycare about what's going on
because God cares about you having a peaceful and quiet
life. So when pastors like don't make
it too political, don't care about living a peaceful and
guided life, don't talk, don't do anything practical.
What they're really doing is they're just trying to show you
what side they're actually on without saying it.
(17:05):
And the side that they're on might not be the same side
you're on. And so just know that that's
what they're doing. It's an attempt to virtue signal
and act like they're so holy. They're so above it all.
They're so above the politics that they, if you want to be
helpful, tell people how to havearguments with people they
disagree with and how to, you know, exist in a society that is
(17:26):
very torn by different ideas. If you want to tell people what
to do, talk about the good and bad parts on on both parties,
but don't make it sound even when it's not even all the time.
Sometimes one party's more at fault.
Other times another party's moreat fault.
Let's talk about that, dependingupon the issue.
This also brings up the issue The again, the, the, the, the
(17:49):
assassination of Charlie Kirk. What is the purpose of a
university? The purpose of a university is
where you as a student come in there and you come in with
ignorance. You don't know the things and
you are challenged. You are taught how to think.
This is why, and I'll have a whole episode on the history of
the university at some point, but This is why you originally
had to study the liberal arts and stuff.
(18:11):
Even if you wanted to be a doctor, even if you wanted to be
a lawyer. Before you could do that, you
had to learn how to think. You had to learn logic and
grammar and Latin and how to debate and all these kind of
things. That is no longer the purpose of
the university, especially not in the US.
It's, it's better in other places. the US, it's pure
indoctrination. You should come out of college
disagreeing with your professors, not parroting them.
(18:33):
If they've really done their joband they've taught you how to
think, you should come out of college disagreeing with them,
not parroting them. So when universities only admit
a certain type of student, they use certain policies to exclude
other types of students. They repeat and indoctrinate and
only push on one side over and over and over again.
That's not the purpose of a university.
Of all the places Charlie Kirk could have been shot, the one
(18:57):
that makes the least amount of sense is a college campus or a
university. The purpose of a university is
to be able to express ideas and hear ideas that you disagree
with without becoming emotional,without ranting and crying and
doing all these things that showthe lack of an educated mind.
You understand that most of world history passions were
(19:17):
thought to get in the way of truth.
Your emotions, you feel them very strongly, but they're not
logical all the time. And so I can sit down with
somebody that I totally disagreewith and they can go through all
their sides and I am chill. I'm like, OK, that's a good
point. Well, I don't agree at this
point. Here's why.
And then I'll give up, give, youknow, get up and give my view
and we can shake hands afterwards and we can go grab a
(19:39):
beer and everything is fine. The intentional, like stocking
people's emotions to make them activist only in One Direction
is not a real education. You're being used to to, again,
the Nazis, the communists under Stalin, all these mass genocides
(20:03):
and stuff that have happened in different places across the,
it's when people don't allow dissent.
If you're somebody right or leftand you don't think somebody
should get to think their own thoughts, say what they want to
say, have these kind of freedomsthat Americans have
traditionally believed in. You are the bad guy, you are the
oppressor, you are anti intellectual, you are anti
(20:23):
freedom, you're anti democracy. Well, let me say this, I I've
been pretty clear on this. I'm not a Donald Trump fan.
So let me be really clear beforeI say this.
I'm annoyed though when people are like, he's a Nazi fascist
taking over the country and I'm like, more people voted for him
than Kamala. He won the Electoral College
votes, he won most of the states.
(20:44):
So love him or hate him, he's the democratically legally
elected person that people wanted in America.
When you start saying oh he's the enemy and so are all the
people that voted for them, you're actually against
democracy. Again, not a Trump fan myself, I
actually have a lot of criticismfor him.
But you can't say that he wasn'tthe People's Choice.
(21:07):
So be careful. Again, the rhetoric of saying
everyone on the right's a fascist Nazi and or though even
those on the right saying everyone on the left is here to
murder me. I think I think those are those
are super unhelpful, almost done.
What is the solution? I think that open discussion is
(21:27):
the answer. The only way out of this is
through. Be wary of anybody that tries to
not let you hear the other side.That's what shooting somebody in
the middle of a free speech platform is, by the way.
They don't want people to hear Kirk's views.
That's why they did it. Remember canceling safe spaces,
(21:50):
taking certain books off Amazon,not because they're pornographic
and little children shouldn't read them.
You, you should certainly make sure that kids cannot get access
to something like that. But taking things off Amazon
because you don't like the ideas, there's no pictures, you
don't like the ideas that it supports, I mean, that is Nazi
book burning. Stop doing that.
Safe spaces, all these kind of things, Blacklisting people
(22:13):
because they have a different view from you, firing them
because they don't hold. You understand that is what
oppressors do. They don't want you to hear the
other side because if you hear the other side, you might not
agree with them. And the postmodern puppet
masters can't have dissent. They want you to agree with them
so they can control you, so thatthey can be in power.
(22:34):
That's what they're doing. You're a pawn.
We have a word to the right and to the left.
To the right. Do not retaliate.
Do not retaliate. Why is MLK?
Why was MLK so much more successful than Malcolm X?
They're both fighting for civil rights.
Here's why. Because MLK did it peacefully,
(22:57):
whereas Malcolm X was angry and aggressive.
If you retaliate, you just make it worse.
So this shooter, by killing Charlie Kirk didn't kill Charlie
Kirk. He just made a nation of Charlie
Kirk's. It's like a hydra.
You cut off 1 head and more heads grow.
So if you're on the right, do not retaliate.
Also, do not read all leftism onto one guy's action.
(23:23):
OK, that shouldn't have to be said.
Now, are there ideas then rhetoric that might have led to
this? Yeah, let's talk about that.
But in the same way, like, like if you're on the right and
somebody were to shoot somebody on the left, you would not want
the left saying everyone on the right agrees with that.
That's one person's lone action,those who are on the left.
(23:43):
I would not use this as a time to gloat that you've failed an
enemy. I would use this as a time to
consider if maybe the US versus them rhetoric, maybe the friend
enemy rhetoric. Maybe you've been indoctrinated.
Maybe you've been pushed only inOne Direction.
How many right leaning media sources do you follow without
(24:04):
just criticizing but actually tohear the argument?
How many friends on the right doyou have?
Those on the right. How many left wing media things
do you watch and read? Not just critically.
I always want everyone to be critical on both sides, but to
actually try to understand and not to just make fun of it and
send a meme. How many friends on the left do
you have? OK, I want to end by saying
this. Groups pay attention to this
(24:27):
because this will this, this could heal the situation in
America and it hopefully would change your politics.
Groups cannot act. Only individuals can act.
Pause for a second. What I just said is huge.
I'm not saying that you can't ever use group titles to
classify people, men, women, cops, black people, whatever it
(24:50):
is. What I'm saying is when you
start thinking that groups are not just collections of
individuals, pause for a second.Groups are just collections of
individuals. Without individuals, there are
no groups. That's what a group is.
It's a collection of individuals.
When you start thinking of all politics through groups, you
(25:10):
start thinking they did this to us, so we're going to do this to
them. That is asinine.
That makes no sense. If my family was killed by an
accountant, I would not be like,time to go get some accountants.
That would be ridiculous. But for some reason we think of
the world that way. It's very strange.
(25:32):
Black people as an amorphous group don't commit a crime or
whatever it might be. Maybe an individual black person
does. White people as a group are not
being racist. A group can't be racist, only
individuals in the group. Individual white people can be
racist cops. A faceless, nameless entity
(25:53):
doesn't shoot people. Individual police officers shoot
people. Sometimes they're justified and
sometimes they're not. Men, as a faceless, amorphous
title, doesn't sexually assault women.
Individual men might sexually assault women.
Stop thinking of the world as acting as groups.
(26:14):
You know, liberals as a whole did not shoot Charlie Kirk.
One individual did. Now did a bunch of other
liberals promote violent rhetoric?
Sure. But even that's individuals.
That's not all of them. OK, Are there right wing guys
that have called for some sort of retaliation and violence?
Yes. But that doesn't mean the right
has. It just means one weirdo has.
(26:34):
OK, if you would stop, if you would realize there are no
groups. There are only people within
groups and those individuals do actions, not the group.
It would solve so much of this. Stop thinking my group versus
their group. A group in the past oppressed
this group in the OR. This group owes individuals that
(26:55):
belong to certain groups. Sure, an individual can belong
to a group, but the individual'sthe one who acts, the group
doesn't vote, right? It's not like when there's an
election, whiteness votes or blackness votes, individual
white or black people vote, individual Democrats or
Republicans vote, or whatever itmight be.
Stop thinking of everything as groups and retaliation.
(27:16):
And like history remembers, likeHegel is wrong and Marx is
wrong, and I've got episodes coming out on both.
And so that is not the way forward.
The way forward is to forgive. The way forward is to work for
more freedom of speech. It is to hold those accountable
who've done terrible things. Thank you for joining this
(27:39):
different, this unique kind of emergency session, if you will,
of ideological. I hope that you tune in next
time and we'll talk about something that maybe is not so
heavy. Thanks so much for joining.
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