Taming the Savageness Within Us All
For FAIR’s Substack, FAIR Executive Director Monica Harris writes about Charlie Kirk’s assassination at Utah Valley University on Wednesday and the choice that lies ahead of us all.
The 1960s felt as turbulent and divided to those living through them as our current moment feels to us. We faced the same polarization, the same dehumanization of political opponents, the same sense that society was fracturing beyond repair. Yet that generation faced a choice: succumb to the savageness or work toward something better. They chose the latter, achieving imperfect but meaningful progress toward a more just society.
We now face the same choice.
Enough: On Charlie Kirk’s Murder and the Watershed Moment We Face
For FAIR’s Substack, Reid Newton writes about Charlie Kirk’s assassination and why this is our moment to choose compassion over hate and protect the freedom that cost him everything.
If our republic is to survive, we must protect not just ourselves but also those who oppose us. The right to speak freely is either for everyone, or it is for no one.
Charlie’s wife, his daughter, and his infant son deserve to live in an America that upholds its ideals—not one where violence dictates who gets to speak. And he deserves for us to not stop fighting for it in his absence.
Violence is a cancer. So are bad ideas. And the only way to defeat both is with light, not darkness.
College students increasingly believe violence is justifiable to stop speech
For The Argument, FAIR’s chairman of the board Angel Eduardo writes about a new survey from FIRE that shows one-third of college students are open to the use of violence to stop speech.
The stakes are high, and in circumstances like these, it’s no wonder that people become more tribal and closed off.
But deeper and more consequential implications are at play here as well. The preferences expressed by these students undermine principles that are not just foundational, but fundamental to higher education: open debate, free inquiry, and exposure to differing viewpoints. They are also the pillars of American civil society that are increasingly falling out of favor.
Nothing good can come from this — especially when violence is on the table.
Robert P. George | The Murder Of Charlie Kirk And The Reality Of This Cultural Moment
Andy Schmitt speaks with FAIR Advisor and Professor Robert P. George from Princeton University about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Robert George’s friendship with Kirk, and the implications of the current cultural moment that we exist in.
The Right Is Changing the Rules of the Culture War
For The Atlantic, Thomas Chatterton Williams writes about right wing cancel culture.
Right-wing outrage mobs are nothing new, of course. Colin Kaepernick was hounded out of the NFL after kneeling during the national anthem, and Anheuser-Busch suffered serious backlash for its ill-conceived ad campaign featuring the transgender TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney. But during this early period, conservatives, perhaps hypocritically, still denounced the cancel-culture phenomenon in the abstract. Today, Rufo is overtly embracing it—a reflection of the right’s ascendant cultural might under Trump and a warning that much more canceling could be on the way.
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