Free speech needs protecting, but we have to accept that it is not absolute. It is also critical to grasp, as a reminder, that private entities are not bound by it. Actual defamation is not protected, nor is demonstrable incitement to violence. This last bit is crucial as regards the celebratory social updates, as well as the wealth of pro-violence rhetoric from anyone, anywhere, at any time.
Consider the numerous suspensions and terminations of employees who were triggered by the public and brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk, most of whom know nothing about him past what proglodytes in politics and the media have told them. Individuals expressing joy at the death of someone whom they believe to be their enemy. Who told them that someone else was their enemy? An exercise of First Amendment speech that, like any other that wanders off the reservation of public moral decency, is worthy of as much ridicule as can be managed in response.
Robby Soave, writing at Reason Magazine, said it well enough.
Anybody celebrating Kirk’s assassination should be roundly mocked and criticized, and can suffer whatever professional consequences are appropriate. But the government must not pressure private organizations, large tech companies, and schools to “cancel with extreme prejudice.”
Amendment One confines the government, which should not, under the guise of leadership from anyone in any elected office, imply, infer, or make law or policy to force non-government entities to infringe the right to free speech. People have a natural right to be a tone-deaf ass who has completely failed to read the room.
And, in more than a few instances, termination of their employment.
Companies across the United States have issued warnings to employees that they won’t have a job to go back to on Monday if they post comments celebrating or mocking the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd, teachers, University employees, and others have lost their jobs, while at least one Secret Service Agent was put on leave. Others in government have found themselves in a similar situation. Violations of codes of conduct and just plain old-fashioned asshattery and dumbfuckery. Bad form, if you like.
I’m not convinced Charlie, or his Family, or Turning Point would approve of or support the termination of divorced, reckless cat ladies with Ed degrees who moonlight as wine moms venting a misinformed partisan spleen over Mr. Kirk’s untimely demise. And while everything is a test, every test is also a learning opportunity, but some people don’t learn like they should, and termination may be necessary.
These could also be people who just might not learn a lesson. Many or most of those endlessly inflamed by what we perceive as fringe left calls for violence against their political opponents are probably too stewed to get the message. Likewise, the odds are good that many of the sacked individuals’ “tweets,” or Facebook rants, are just the latest embarrassment or outrage and as good a reason as any to expel someone who already needed to be let go. A last straw and a departure that would be applauded by the remaining staff, regardless of the reason.
If you were to record every decruitment walk of shame and curate their exits into a supercut, would it look a lot like the day the state department fired a bunch of dead weight whose former peers golf-clapped their exit? Some, most, but not all of them.
And you might, from a company culture standpoint, want to police the sorts of people who would openly celebrate public executions, because you fear retribution from the public. You’ll have to balance that yourselves, but we need to be careful that we don’t institutionalize intolerance for opinions we disagree with or just don’t like.
Incitement is, of course, a line you should not be permitted to cross. Anyone asking whose turn it is or naming the next victims may prove to be a problem. Nor is it difficult to find supercuts of so-called Democrat leaders encouraging violence. They deal in intimidating politics, so elevating that with phrases like “Take ’em out” isn’t a stretch. Actual threats are common in their discourse. Leftism is a violent precursor ideology to Marxism, which requires violence to impose and sustain. Human nature prohibits it from ever achieving its stated utopian end.
We’ve had more than a few tries, and they’ve all ended badly, but it is no accident that the party that espouses it is also rife with leaders who use threatening language full of incitement rhetoric. To get there from here, you have to take to the streets and take them out.
So here’s the question. Are most of the people aping this thought and language a threat to anyone or anything, from company culture to the very ideology they profess to support with their words? Probably not. What if they were a teacher or someone who advocated for the gender-bending psychology that turned a regular kid into a nutcase who then went out and committed violent acts? While they are not by extension responsible for what the kid grew up to do, their advocacy and celebration is about as bad a look as you can get.
Your politics radicalized a kid who was then encouraged to “take them out” and did. It is entirely possible that public ridicule isn’t enough. That loss of status and career is what is needed, with the understanding that people clinging to victim culture politics will never take responsibility for their own actions.
I’ll leave you with these thoughts, not having solved the problem or answered the question. No matter what happens, free speech must be protected from government intimidation or censorship. Members of your local communities are intentionally dropping their masks and showing us the sort of evil they carry deep down inside, and they are not Republicans or conservatives. Millions and millions of people who, even after the 2024 campaign, were still on the sidelines or who thought their job was done on November 5th, have been reactivated by both the assassination of Kirk (right after the senseless murder of Iryna Zarutska) and the response to both by people who are clearly registered Democrats.
The price they are likely to pay politically and culturally for this has the potential to be enormous and cannot be diverted with a simple apology. It will make them miserable, whether they get fired or not. Still, I won’t tell business owners, job creators, or their inhuman resources departments how to handle their discipline, hiring, and firing. That’s up to them, and their perception of how it might impact their business, or the sorts of people they want working in it.
But relieving someone of their employment for this behavior isn’t a bad idea, especially if the job is an elected official, and you can vote for someone else.
And no, no one is canceling them; they are still free to say what they want, and by all means, please do.
