Freedom of speech isn't tolerated by some

I don't know what the racism references are about, but on guns wasn't his point that if you allow guns in society you will inevitably get shootings because there are bad people and those bad people might get access to a gun, but that the right to bear guns is important enough in a US cultural and historical context for that to be the price (rather than thinking it being a good/welcome thing that people use guns for shooting people)?

He had a different strategy for avoiding those deaths, by trying to have debate replace violence and to try and create a strong community and society, built on Christian values.

I don't have to agree with him (and I think it is batshit crazy to oppose all gun control) to see he is applying a moral framework, even if I don't hold the same opinions.

In this country we allow people to keep guns for shooting clay pigeons and game. Sometimes people (men) use those guns to kill their families. Do we think we should stop personal gun ownership completely in order to try and make sure that doesn't happen? Maybe we should, but I don't think that those wanting to shoot for sport are immoral for not being willing to give it up because sometimes bad/ill people might use the guns for awful purposes.

Why don't people see the difference between ' free speech' and 'hate speech ' ?

Charlie Kirk was a racist bigot who thought there was a God given right to have guns, and a few mass shootings was an OK price to pay.

He was an extremely dangerous individual, not someone who simply had a 'different opinion'.

Yes, I have to agree, Charlie Kirk’s morality was a mass of apparent contradictions (though if he were still here I’m sure he’d try and argue it isn’t) but then, if we’re being honest, all of us a mass of contradictions!

Anyone who thinks they have a set of logically bullet-proof and entirely mutually consistent viewpoints is deluding themselves!

The fact remains, Charlie Kirk had a strict set of morals that he seemed to try and stick to, morals that he strongly believed in. He may have been wrong, deluded even, but he didn’t seem to be an immoral
man to me.

How does explaining Kirk's pro-life position also explain that Nazi ideology of racial purity ok? Genuinely interested to understand the reasoning.

He did take his beliefs on human life to the logical conclusion, but so too I have seen pro-choice advocates taking their views about a women's right to control their own bodies to the logical conclusion, whereby women should be free to have an abortion until birth. A position that is not uncommon in feminist circles (and an opinion I, for a while, held), but is certainly considered extreme by many (most?) people.

The idea of letting a 10 year old suffer pregnancy is abhorrent, but while I think it is a no-brainer when we are talking about a collection of cells, I am not sure I would think it is a no-brainer if the pregnancy was discovered in the months approaching birth.

Kirk considered the same issues of personal liberty, right to life and the need to avoid suffering that everyone else considers in reaching their views on these issues.

Please post a link to the thread you created when Melissa Hortman was shot @WhatNextBanana

Or Jo Cox if you're a British user?

You must have made one mustn't you? After those shocking politically motivated assassinations?

Because this post just seems like more right wing propaganda trying to stir up American style populism.

Oh and just so you know Britain is culturally a pretty liberal place on the whole and traditionally we aren't a nation of flag obsessed knuckle draggers. If mumsnet users want to point out that cunts are trying to use our flag to promote rascism, hate and division and comment that they don't like it happening it doesn't mean they are nasty. Quite the opposite.

Honestly it sounds like you've got you're talking points direct from Trump.

If you want to worry about out freedom of speech disappearing, about the death of democracy and the disintegration of a nation worry about Merika.

How can you argue that CK valued the sanctity of life over everything, when he valued the second amendment over children’s lives?

he publicly stated that firearm deaths were an acceptable price to pay.

all those children, all the families of children who went to school and didn’t come home. Those deaths are preferable to losing their right to bear arms?

Charlie Kirk’s death, in his own words, is an acceptable consequence of gun ownership.

if you saw the horrific video of what a gunshot does, now think of what it does to childrens bodies, and what their parents have to see.

Sanctity of life is pretty absolute!

Just because you have issues with it, as do I, doesn’t mean CK didn’t have a strict moral code that emphasised that value of life over everything else.

Your morality prioritises the wellbeing of a 10-year old. His morality prioritised the right to life of another person (and he - rightly or wrongly - believed that a foetus was a person). You might believe he was monstrous to let a 10-year old suffer. He might have believed you were monstrous for killing a person.

You are both being “moral”, but from different standpoints. That’s very different from being “immoral” - where you behave in a way you know isn’t moral, but do it anyway, or “amoral” - where you don’t have a concept of right or wrong.

You could even argue that CK was very moral in this regard, as there would be many people, especially Christians, who would accept the three principles I outlined in my previous post… but would nonetheless act against their morals to protect their child, even though their morality would hold that preventing their child’s suffering was a less important principle than not taking life.

But what if he was provoked as you were? Surely you wouldn't expect special treatment just for yourself to ignore rules and laws...

Look, you starter with a goady 'the cry of the left' post. You should not be surprised if you are called on it with, you know, actual data.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_shootings_of_Minnesota_legislators

You don't remember? What a surprise.

What?

"Agree with me or I'll pretend to be a police officer so I can repeatedly shoot you and your husband in your house"
The cry of the right.

Ah phew!! Ah that’s ok then. In that case, it’s a good thing that he was shot!

(sarcasm, in case that’s lost on you)

Well done for completing misunderstanding what I said.

For all the ranting and raving about the left, let's not forget that political violence and murders are usually associated with the extreme right.

This thread started out reasonably now folks have crossed the road from the other bunfight it's disintegrated. Shame but to be expected I suppose.

It's quite tame compared to comments made on Instagram and some USA media. A nest of vipers over there.

Except there's literally no evidence that the shooter was from 'the left'.

Nobody asked him to be kind either; but don't let that stop you making up things to get mad about.

Nope. That's not morality. Some things are absolute. Just because a belief is internally consistent that doesn't make it exempt from being monstrous or immoral dye to its content. By your logic, the Nazi ideology of racial purity was also OK.

Freedom of speech isn't tolerated by some
WhatNextBanana ·

People are getting angry when people have Political views they don't agree with. Freedom of speech must be allowed not shutdown.

This is what op started, the title of the thread and the opening post.

Below is the post they were responding to:

Wait— doesn’t that writer have freedom of speech? Why should he be fired.

Op is happy for posts they don't like to be deleted. Not a true champion of free speech then.

“Be kind or I will shoot you in the neck”
The cry of the left.

If you believe that:

a) life is sacrosanct and should not be taken
b) life starts at conception
c) an individual’s wellbeing doesn’t trump another individual’s right to life;

then CK’s position is very consistent and moral…

Personally, I think this morality is simplistic and flawed, and I certainly wouldn’t want my 10-year old to continue with a pregnancy but, nonetheless, his was a very “moral” position based on fundamental principles about the value of human life, even if I might personally have serious issues with some of the presuppositions that underpin that morality.

So, whereas I might disagree strongly with CK on this, i don’t believe he was an immoral monster for holding those views.