Wrong Ways to Disagree Politically
The rhetorical battle over political violence in the United States shows no signs of abating, or even leveling off. The latest high-profile shooting (at an ICE facility in Dallas) saw the Vice President -- of course it was J.D. Vance! -- immediately labeling the shooter a "violent left-wing extremist" and claiming to have non-public information showing that "this person was politically motivated." It is important to remember, however, the the now-VP admitted (bragged, actually) to an interviewer a year ago that he will make things up to support his political aims: "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do."
And create stories he does. I will get back to Vance in due course, but my purpose here is to talk not about this latest tragedy but to revisit the one that dominated the news for the last two weeks, that is, the murder of Charlie Kirk. Thirteen days ago, I wrote here on Dorf on Law that because no one had any idea at that point whether the killer was even motivated by anything remotely political (much less what his political views might be), it was a mistake for people like Stephen Colbert, Barack Obama, and others of good faith to jump to condemning "political violence." Until we had some reasonably clear evidence, I argued, calling something that might have been completely apolitical a politically-motivated murder was itself dangerously provocative.
Similarly, calling it an "assassination" was at best premature. Although the definition of that word is surprisingly open-ended (dictionary.com: "the premeditated act of killing someone suddenly or secretively, especially a prominent person"), the connotation of that word is more specific, almost always attributing political motives to the killer. Again, because we did not in the first days after the murder know any such thing, it was distressing to see so many people immediately play into that narrative.
Where do things stand now? I will state up front that I am more than a bit skeptical of the sources of the information that has subsequently been released about the murderer. Even so, people I trust who have looked at the evidence now available tell me that they are reasonably sure that the killer did choose his victim based on his views about trans issues. Because I did not argue in my earlier column that this was impossible, only that we should not jump to conclusions without evidence, I have no problem saying now that this does appear to have been an assassination motivated by disagreement over a political issue.
That does not, of course, validate any of the insanity from those who are calling for what amounts to collective punishment (which is a war crime, by the way) of "the left." Even short of that, the truly weird idea that "they" killed Kirk becomes even weirder when the supposed reasons are laid out. Even former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson felt entitled to chime in with this:
The murder of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy, and a sign of the utter desperation and cowardice of those who could not defeat him in argument. Charlie Kirk has been killed not for espousing extremist views - because he didn't. He has been killed for saying things that used to be simple common sense. He has been killed because he had the courage to stand up publicly for reasonable opinions held by millions and millions of ordinary people both in the US and Britain.
Note that Johnson posted this mere hours after the murder had occurred, so he was going on exactly zero evidence. More to the point, even with the information now available, Johnson's knee-jerk reaction has not in fact been validated. We do not have any reason to say that "those who could not defeat him in argument" killed him, for example. I have some friends in the UK who have argued over the years that Johnson is not a right-wing ideologue but rather a rank opportunist. This is both.
So we do now have information that we lacked two weeks ago, said information supporting the idea that a twisted individual murdered another person because of at least some part of his political views. Any murder is a tragedy, and this additional information is worrisome in what it might mean for the immediate future in the US. But it would have remained a tragedy no matter what information came out.
As part of all this, the Jimmy Kimmel controversy played out over the last ten days. For those who might have forgotten some of the facts, Professor Dorf's column last Friday helpfully summarized the situation. In particular, he pointed out that Kimmel's supposedly unforgivable words were at worst uninformed:
At no point in the monologue does Kimmel in any way approve of Kirk's murder or even express disagreement with any of the views Kirk espoused. Before ridiculing Trump, Kimmel gets one thing wrong. At a point when Tyler Robinson's motivations were still unclear to the general public, Kimmel criticized "the MAGA gang" for jumping to the conclusion that Robinson's rage at Kirk came from the left, when there was some evidence to suggest that Robinson was a "Groyper" who disdained Kirk for not being sufficiently far right.
However, that evidence was thin, and information subsequently released by Utah authorities indicates that Robinson had drifted left in the last year. It thus appears that the MAGA crowd was correct. Kimmel was right that many on the right jumped to conclusions about Robinson's motives prematurely, but so did he, and they turned about to be correct, while he was wrong.
At another time, I might revisit that issue and take a closer look at what was known when Kimmel spoke, but he did at least seem to say that the killer was "one of them" (that is, part of "the MAGA crowd"), which did turn out to be wrong. Kimmel's return monologue on Tuesday was in my opinion gracious and even moving, but it is hardly surprising that reactions were mixed.
What interests me here, however, is another commentator's hot take in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, which is interesting in being completely confused. The morning after the murder, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein, a center-left pundit, published a column in which he said that Kirk's speaking events at college campuses were an example of "practicing politics the right way." Klein:
He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion. When the left thought its hold on the hearts and minds of college students was nearly absolute, Kirk showed up again and again to break it. Slowly, then all at once, he did. College-age voters shifted sharply right in the 2024 election.
That was not all Kirk’s doing, but he was central in laying the groundwork for it. I did not know Kirk, and I am not the right person to eulogize him. But I envied what he built. A taste for disagreement is a virtue in a democracy. Liberalism could use more of his moxie and fearlessness.
Klein has already been roasted for his column, both in published letters to The Times and elsewhere, including a column in The Guardian by their columnist Moira Donegan. Donegan makes the important point that "the admirable human impulse towards gentleness and reconciliation" can cause people to mischaracterize and mythologize a murder victim. In fact, my argument here is not with Kirk at all, but with Klein's utter misunderstanding of what it means to persuade in "the right way."
At a high enough level of generality, what Klein wrote is obviously true. That is, a guy shows up and engages with people who disagree with him, and everything is peaceful. But if Klein means to say that "practitioners of persuasion" are admirable and beyond criticism no matter how they try to persuade, then he is clearly wrong. After all, J.D. Vance did not punch anyone in the face when he fed the flames of the "eating cats and dogs" lie in Ohio, and he even claimed that he was doing what he was doing for some greater reason. That does not get Vance off the hook.
I wrote this at the beginning of a Verdict column after Vance made that admission:
As Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance have been reminding us again and again, unleashing torrents of words with great confidence does not constitute making an intelligible argument. To be sure, being arrogant and abusive is sometimes an effective form of sophistry, but it is not what anyone could recognize as reasoned argumentation.
So although Klein is -- to repeat myself -- obviously right that words are better than violence, that does not mean that everyone's words are offered in good faith or even add up to a coherent argument at all. It is possible to use words to mislead, to bully, to misstate facts, and so on. We should not only be able to say clearly when that is happening, but we should feel compelled to do so.
Having studied and practiced debating for almost my entire life, I do find it fascinating when people use the word "debate" as a synonym for "disagreeing." After Vance's non-debate with Tim Walz last October, I wrote a column here on Dorf on Law showing that much of what Vance does cannot even be reasonably called arguing or debating. He simply says things and changes the subject whenever it suits him, but he in no way engages honestly with the other side's actual positions. There would be no reason for Vance not to make good arguments if he had them, yet he makes either bad arguments or non-arguments all the time. That speaks volumes.
As it happens, I do not recall ever hearing Charlie Kirk speak before clips of his speaking appearances surfaced after the murder. I did know that he branded his on-campus experiences with the provocative challenge "Prove me wrong!" which is not a sound foundation for real argument. The first thing I learned on the first day of debate class in high school was: "He who asserts must prove." I can say all kinds of things and then say that it is someone else's job to disprove what I have said, but that is not how real arguments work. But perhaps that catchphrase was not indicative of his actual engagements with college students.
Given my lack of familiarity with Kirk's "taste for disagreement" (in Klein's words), I was struck by some examples in a news article in The Guardian last week. I was particularly interested when the article noted that Kirk in one appearance "falsely called the term foetus 'just a word for a human being'" -- with the reporter adding later in the column that "[f]oetus in Latin actually means 'a bringing forth; producing; fertile.'" And apparently Kirk would try to gain an advantage by surprising students with non sequitur questions like "What is a woman?" or "What is racism?" Again, that is not arguing.
It should go without saying, but I will state emphatically that none of that in any way justifies what happened to Charlie Kirk. Full stop. And also again, I am not familiar with Kirk's body of work, so my purpose here is simply to say that those examples are troubling, but I do not have the basis to say anything more about him.
I am familiar with Vance and others, and what I am saying is that there is more to persuasion and productive political engagement than simply showing up and "talking with anyone who would talk" (again, in Klein's inimitably flattening phrasing). I do hope that the furious response to recent events will not lead to further tragedies, although that does seem like wishful thinking right now. But beyond that, we would be well served to remember that being disagreeable while resorting to sophistry and rhetorical tricks -- as Vance does so often -- does not advance the public interest.
- Neil H. Buchanan