Friday Forward - Losing Debate (#502)

Rejoicing in another’s misfortune is, as the old proverb warns, like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die

Last week, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was tragically assassinated at his event at Utah Valley University. The killing sent shockwaves across the country and intensified growing concerns about political violence in America and abroad.

I’ve followed Kirk’s rise over the years. While I disagreed with many of his positions, there is still something to learn from his general approach to debate.

Early in his career, Kirk recognized that many universities had become ideologically lopsided: students with conservative views, particularly on topics like faith or family, often felt uncomfortable expressing themselves. Instead of venting online, Kirk did something different. He showed up on college campuses and talked with people face-to-face.

In his most popular event format, “Prove Me Wrong,” he’d set up a tent in a public space, pose a provocative thesis, and open the floor to anyone willing to challenge him. While Kirk expressed opinions many considered extreme, he often did so in a disciplined and respectful manner. He was rarely the first to raise his voice or get heated and would often ask people how they arrived at their beliefs. And when his audience booed or jeered Kirk’s debate opponents, Kirk would quiet the crowd and ask that they let the person be heard and respected.

Maybe this was a rhetorical strategy. But it was also a model of something important and rare: the practice of giving people space to be heard and trying to understand their beliefs before responding to them.

It’s also notable that Kirk chose college campuses to be his primary arena. Universities were once the proving grounds for ideas, a place where you put your thinking into the arena to be challenged, refined, or replaced—not shut down to protect people’s fragile sensibilities. The tension was the point. Engaging in debate and experiencing scrutiny were necessary to graduating as a sharper and, ideally, more open-minded thinker.

This is not the case today. According to a recent report by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), 34 percent of college students today believe violence is an acceptable way to stop speech on campus.

That so many believe words could justify violence is deeply alarming. Which is why it wasn’t surprising to see too many people in this demographic celebrating Kirk’s assassination or suggesting that his past statements had made his murder acceptable.

You can vehemently disagree with everything Kirk has ever said and still believe no one should be killed for arguing for their beliefs in a public forum. And if your first reaction is, “Well, this case is different,” consider that someone else could use the same logic to justify violence against you, your friends, or your family.

Celebrating someone else’s death or suffering is a symptom of moral depravity; it corrodes our humanity and damages our soul. Rejoicing in another’s misfortune is, as the old proverb warns, like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. And everyone loses freedom when they fear their words will be met with violence.

This is why parents, educators, and mentors must have early, regular conversations about the core values of a functioning democracy, before young people are shaped by the loudest voices around them—online, in classrooms led by activist educators, or among radicalized peers. When parents and those who work with kids don’t share values of treating others with respect and seeing humanity in others, those other voices, often loud, persistent, and corrosive, will gladly fill the vacuum.

This is where Kirk’s case had a particularly bleak ending: the suspect’s own father turned him in after being shocked to recognize his son in the FBI photos. This father will live forever with the heartbreak no parent ever wants experience.

At its best, democracy is not about ideological comfort. Democracy depends on conflict that is verbal, not physical. In a society where anonymous online rage displaces open face-to-face debate, the logical endpoint is violence. We should be testing assumptions in the presence of disagreement and do the work to persuade people to join our side, rather than only interacting with people who agree with us and dehumanizing everyone who does not.

Doing this requires practice. This week, engage sincerely with someone who sees the world differently: at work, in class, or around the dinner table. You don’t have to change your mind, but your thinking will evolve. And in doing so, you might help someone else feel heard before their ideas harden into something destructive.

Quote of The Week

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” – George Orwell

Have a great weekend!

-Bob
robertglazer.com

PS: Preorder The Compass Within in hardcover to get my core values course for free.