Why It Is Not "Both Sides" Preventing Open Discussion.

One can certainly find particular individuals on both sides of the political divide who believe that anyone who disagrees with them ideologically is a sinister element within society that should be silenced, and eliminated from public life. But it is only on the political Left that such beliefs are developed into formal doctrines that are taught and promulgated amongst its members in books, in institutions of education, and in media. For example, it is only on the political Left that authors and thinkers literally conflate speech with violence. Now to equate speech with violence is to morally justify the violent suppression of that same speech on the basis of the principle of self defense. And it does not matter whether an espouser of this idea acknowledges that this is the case or not, it is the natural logical consequence of the claim.

You cannot teach young impressionable human beings such things and then become surprised when they actually believe what you say. In a related vein, modern voices on the political Left now commonly denounce something that they refer to as free speech absolutism. They think that the traditional American notion of free speech is too excessive and must be scaled back. They believe that it is more than just the traditional exceptions of incitement and slander that should limit free speech.

Now what has always distinguished slander and incitement is that they inflict objective harm upon the individual. They impact the well being of the individual in a manner that is not dependent upon or related to his particular emotional disposition. They necessarily effect everyone in the same way. No one can simply choose to ignore slander; if your social reputation is destroyed it adversely and objectively effects your life. One also cannot simply choose to ignore a riot which someone has incited (important note: the traditional legal bar for incitement is high, and it is high for a reason). Any type of speech however that another person could in principle simply choose to ignore should be classified as protected speech.

But for the modern Left, there are all sorts of new categories of speech that must now become exceptions to free speech on the basis of the emotional harm they allegedly inflict. This takes all sorts of controversial questions off the table, and it again means that one is conceptualizing this speech as the kind of thing that is so dangerous to human welfare that it must be forcefully put down (in this case by the law). How should we expect someone raised to believe this to react when they are left alone to face, without protection, what they are told the law needs to protect them from? Such teachings would inflame any social environment. Finally, to the Left-wing Critical Theorists teaching at American universities, the entire free speech concept in Western Liberal societies is itself nothing more than a mask for power; an instrument to oppress the disenfranchised.

As long as the political Left explicitly embraces intellectual doctrines that directly challenge the ideal of free and open dialogue, and that blur the distinction between speech and violence, we cannot simply say that both sides are equally the problem in achieving open dialogue. Charles Kirk was not a politician, or someone who imposed laws and policies on the public from on high. He was simply a conversationalist, and for that he was assassinated. And we had, following his murder, a significant response on the political Left which felt that this act was understandable in some way because he defended ideas that they disagreed with. Those feelings are the predictable consequence of a set of doctrines on the Left that are not amenable to free speech or to open and honest political discussion.