Q&A: Where Are We Headed
Where Are We Headed
Question
After the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk yesterday (the Rabbi surely heard about it), which shows that freedom of speech is a supreme value only if you’re on the right side, how can one deal with the situation the world is moving toward, where global progressivism keeps growing stronger and destroys anyone who tries to resist it? (The guy would make substantive arguments in a charming way, never shouting, never talking dirty, and he absolutely wiped the floor with leftists and queers and Muslims to the point of tears for years just using fourth-grade logic they didn’t have.)
Are we reaching a period where it’s better to keep your mouth shut so you don’t get murdered? Is this the “progress” we’ve made from ancient periods in history?
A sad day for democracy, for logic, for respectful discourse, and for the human race
Answer
This “question,” which is really nothing but a hysterical declaration, should have been deleted. But I’m leaving it up because it serves as an excellent example of the shallow discourse that you supposedly came to save.
A. As far as I’ve seen, they still haven’t caught the murderer. You’ve already decided who he is and why it happened.
B. The murder of one person by another says nothing whatsoever about the direction of humanity. That is true even if your claim itself is correct. This murder is not what proves it.
C. You are indeed right that progressivism adopts violent approaches of silencing and intolerance, but of course it isn’t only them.
D. That same Kirk, whose exploits I hadn’t known until now, seems to me far from being the saintly figure you described here. It’s worth taking a look at his Wikipedia entry. Of course that doesn’t mean he deserved to be killed, or that he wasn’t pro-Israel. But he appears to have been a very complex and problematic person (unless Wikipedia too is part of the protocols of the elders of cosmic progressivism).
E. I haven’t heard or read his statements, but even so I doubt how much you can dismantle all the arguments of progressivism and the arguments against Israel with fourth-grade logic, and how overwhelmingly superior his logic really was. But I truly haven’t checked that.
Discussion on Answer
Did the Rabbi read the cherry-picking about the Rabbi on Hamichlol?
From reading it, one gets the impression that Epicurus was more religious than the Rabbi.
I didn’t read it. I’m aware of the agendas on Wikipedia (my son was a very central Wikipedian in the early years). But there are statements there about the COVID medicine and so on that sounded bizarre. Like Trump’s. But never mind. My points don’t depend on any of that.
Certainly. I wasn’t criticizing the Rabbi, Heaven forbid, only informing him.
I reacted strongly on this issue because the murder shook me for several reasons, mainly because he’s a person it’s easy to connect with on a personal level (not necessarily politically): a family man and a politician who doesn’t curse his rivals but discusses things with them respectfully. He was a very beloved figure (you can see that the shock in the U.S. is very great; right-wing TV hosts cried on air, people not known for being very sensitive like Ben Shapiro or Patrick Bet-David also cried {authentically, not like Deri and the onion} in broadcasts around the event), and for years I’ve been disgusted by how people are labeled delusional, messianic, extreme, spreaders of hate, etc., by people who don’t know a single word of what they say firsthand, just because they’re on the other side. And then, on a respectable platform like this site, I find exactly that—immediately after the man was murdered (needless to say, you don’t murder a person you disagree with, even if he really were a genuine antisemite)—and it bothered me very much. In the first question I commented on, someone accused Kirk of “a whole slew of antisemitic expressions”; anyone who has heard even a little of what Kirk said would laugh at that accusation. He was a first-rate public diplomacy asset for Israel (long before the war). It’s clear that the questioner (who wasn’t really trying to ask) learned about Kirk from that same Wikipedia entry, and then, absurdly enough, accused Kirk of lies and hatred.
I’ll note that support for Israel does not prove that he had no antisemitic expressions. Those two can easily coexist. Especially when Israel is against Muslims.
True. I noticed that when I wrote it; I assumed the Rabbi would catch that point and I thought of expanding, but I had gone on long enough. There is no doubt that he was not an antisemite; ironically, that’s a false libel. You can read in the Wikipedia talk pages that readers were astonished by this classification, which was given on such a pitiful excuse.
Thank you that the Rabbi decided not to delete it and answered. (I didn’t get an email notification so I only saw it now.)
If the Rabbi doesn’t know him, then it really is a pointless question. (Makes sense given that most of his activity is on social media.)
The points the Rabbi raised are important. Maybe I exaggerated in the descriptions, but we’re talking about an important figure in the public diplomacy arena on Israel’s side and on the right’s side more generally.
(- maybe not all of the left’s arguments can be refuted easily, but the level of argumentation in the U.S. among students is very low, so in this case it was easy and amusing.) In any case, thank you
Ironically, blood libel*
The Rabbi doesn’t know Kirk at all, so I’ll note that the Wikipedia entry is very hostile and unfair (or heaven forbid neutral). As the Rabbi guessed, the entry is part of the protocol of progressivism, as unfortunately happens with many entries.
The whole part about an antisemitic conspiracy is fabricated and absurd, and so on. Since this is the third response I’m writing in his defense, I’ll note that I don’t feel any ideological identification with him at all; this is the American right, less my taste, but he certainly isn’t bizarre or extreme. His statements were legitimate and calm and aligned with the mainstream American right. The bit with COVID is shared by the American right, and most of it is not conspiratorial like the version we got to know in Israel, more a philosophical dispute about freedom in a democracy.
His character is no more problematic than any other well-known right-wing figure in the U.S., and more moderate than figures like Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, or Trump, Heaven have mercy.