I have been trying to process the fall out over Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Stunned by the quickness with which the likes of Stephen Miller and others have weaponized his murder. They blame the so-called radical left for creating the environment for deadly violence. On social media platforms lists have been compiled of people who celebrated Kirk’s death. They have exposed personal information and urged employers to fire them. People have lost their livelihoods as MAGA conservatives demand that the nation mourns as they do or stand by silently as they make Kirk a martyr.
Of course, what’s interesting, at least to me, is the assault on what many of these same people supposedly hold dear: free speech. They have argued repeatedly that the commitment to the value of free speech makes for what many think (what I think for that matter) is hateful speech.
Free speech advocates defend Kirk’s right to say what he said about Joy-Ann Reid, Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson, and Vice President Kamala Harris or what he said about the LGBTQ community or about George Floyd. No matter how noxious one may have found those views, they maintain, the first amendment guaranteed his right to express those views.
Ezra Klein even suggested in a recent New York Times op-ed that Kirk engaged in politics the right way: that Kirk’s objective was to convince others, especially on college campuses, of the merits of his arguments while taking on his opponents. I take it that the content or the quality of those arguments did not matter as long as he argued with others.
To my mind, this approach is indicative of the broader problem we face in this country: that the spaces for reasoned and informed deliberation in this country have, for the most part, disappeared. And, to my mind, this is a consequence of the rapid contraction of the public square.
For the last forty years or so, we have experienced an all-out assault on the idea of a vibrant public square and any idea of the public good that might animate it. Instead, we have been reduced to self-interested persons in competition with each other in pursuit of our own aims and ends. Those who fall within the sphere of our moral concern (i.e., our tribe) are the ones who matter. Others, not so much.
There is what I call a selfish calculus that undermines much of the efforts to address the brokenness of our society. And it begins with a basic question: does this affect me and mine? One can be horrified by mass shootings, for example, but as long as “me and mine” are not harmed or involved, people refuse to press seriously for gun control. This calculus reflects an anemic idea of the public good. In fact, we cannot imagine the good apart from what it means for us individually.
This selfishness stands alongside our inability to argue with one another. Maybe this is a result of the collapse of background agreement about certain values we supposedly share. Today, disagreement doesn’t have as one of its objectives to convince another that he or she may be mistaken or wrong. Disagreement is the point.
It's as if public deliberation has been reduced to “cross-fire” — the old CNN news show where you have debate between the right and left. No one ever, that I can recall, convinced anyone to change their mind on that show. Disagreement was the entertainment. Matters have only deteriorated with social media and the deepening divides in our politics.
Political identities have calcified. They have become a part of who we take ourselves to be. They work almost like racial and religious identities. In fact, these are bound up with political affiliation. We don’t disagree with our fellows these days. We disagree with enemies — people we hold with contempt.
Disagreement comes then with hard battle lines. And this has happened in a society awash in guns and where people are moved about by algorithms that stoke hatred and resentment. It makes life in this place extremely dangerous.
Those on the right have complained loudly about what they call cancel culture. They believe that the left’s (I don’t even know what the word signifies politically) so-called illiberal intolerance for MAGAism have led them to destroy the lives of people with whom they disagree.
But the response to Charlie Kirk’s death reveals that outrage was/is, in some ways, projection. Free speech only applies to speech associated with their tribe. These people are perfectly willing to destroy the lives of those with whom they disagree and who they view as enemies. Gaslighting the country along the way. I mean listen to Stephen Miller here.
In the end, we have to figure out how to build a public square where we can do the work that democracy requires. Donald Trump and his ilk “could care less” about doing that work. But we must. Because of public prejudices and hatred, a vibrant public square has always been a challenge in this country. But the public square is even more important today, given the divisions that threaten the foundations of the Republic and the people who readily weaponize those divisions in their exercise of power.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination and its aftermath have revealed that Americans have not simply forgotten how to disagree, but that many want to use his death for their own insidious ends. We cannot fall for it, even as they try to browbeat the country into submission and threaten our livelihoods. We also have to understand that we need to build a viable public square so that we can do the work of self-governance. Not one for entertainment where disagreements are on display and enemies are castigated or stoned, but a place where honest and earnest debate can help us bring about a different and more loving way of being together.
I saw you speak at the Univ of Wisconsin in 2012 (I think) when I was in graduate school, just start in my major in Af Am history. You gave a talk about the meaning of the public and the public square. It was powerful then and even more crucial now. I talk about it all the time since it shapes the way I think about the public sphere to this day. Plus I believe in citing my sources haha!
Thank you Eddie, The most reasonable and thoughtful comment on the whole mess!