To believe the right and left have more in common than we think

[TheKhakiQuail]

I am saddened by Charlie Kirk's murder, not because I share his political or religious views, but because he was a young father who had ideas and was willing to talk and debate with anyone. It makes me even more sad to see how many people online are celebrating, laughing and mocking his death because they think he is a 'hateful' person. Most of us share the same basic values - we want our loved ones safe, healthy and happy, we value freedom and autonomy, we have compassion. People just do the math differently. One person who values bodily autonomy and human life will support abortion and oppose mandatory vaccination, another will come to the opposite conclusion. CK was willing to be intellectually honest about the fact that all such decisions come with trade-offs - he supported the 2nd amendment because he saw gun ownership as a tool to maintain the other freedoms in the constitution, and acknowledged that the cost of that is some gun deaths every year. I am incredibly grateful to live in a country with tight gun control, I think he was wrong, but he didn't want gun deaths. I am sick of people acting like he supported gun deaths or would be happy if his daughter was raped and pregnant at 9 and forced to have the baby - he is just willing to accept that that is the potential cost of his strongly pro-life stance. Just as I am not happy about 'babies being murdered' but am willing to acknowledge that my stance on abortion accepts the ending of human lives (at a very early stage) to give women bodily autonomy. I am of the left, but the thing that is driving me nuts about 'my side' at the moment is the unwillingness to hear what the right actually believe, and recognise that it is underpinned by many of the same values and humanity, even if they do the math differently on political solutions.

So you don't hear or understand him, but you know he had no compassion and you didn't share his values.

Smart.

Also, you say he had no compassion yet you are the one appearing to show no compassion for a young man who was assassinated for his political views and success in speaking to those with different views from him, and who leaves behind two young Fatherless children and a widow.

You seriously need to look if the problem is located in you, not in someone else.

@Petrolitis

Is a perfect example of the extremist lying rhetoric that leads to people getting shot.

Charlie Kirk was happy for other people's kids to get shot and other people's daughters to get raped

What an utter, utter lie.

And I haven't seen anyone celebrating his death

Then you really have not been paying attention. There was jeering and heckling in congress from demorcrats during a minutes silence for CK. SM is awash with people celebrating. MSM awash with articles and opinionists slamming CK so hard, including lies like you have lied, they may have well just saved space and simply typed ' He had it coming.' Some have been pretty blatant in their message that he brought his murder on himself.

A man is assassinated by a sniper and people like you have still not learnt the lesson to stop telling vicious lies about people and racheting up the hate and rhetoric.

That is what depresses me. There will never be a wake up moment for people like @Petrolitis - so how will we ever get out of this cycle?

Its because he was assassinated for having conservative views and mainsteam views including the right to single sex spaces for women and to not transition children.

Those of us who shared some of his views (I'm GC) also get called Nazis and fascists and get death threats and violent threats.

His assassination and those celebrating it, or blaming him for his own murder, has shown everyone who shares some of his views, that those calling us nazis and fascists and evil were not being hyperbolic - they really mean it and they really want us dead.

That is why is is news here too.

ANyway, to answer OP's question. I once watched a conversation between Candace Owens ( black conservative) and a black professor from the left. They were debating the issues in the black community. From watching it, what they both had in common was that they both cared deeply about the black community in America. They had a different analysis of the cause of the problems and different solutions, but their starting point was the same.

After the assassination of CK I think things will get much more divided. If he had been assassinated and left and right united in condemnation, it may have brought the country together. But instead the dreadful responses from the left, attempts to blame CK for his own murder, open celebration, democrats in congress heckling a one minute silence. I don't think there is any hope of reconciliation. People on the right are open that they have seen now how much the left really hates them and genuinely wants them dead. They now know they could be murdered and their children left Fatherless or Motherless. And that there are their fellow citizens who would celebrate that.

High profile commentators on the the right in America have long needed huge security - it should not be like this, and now they know they were not being over cautious.

All extremes have an immense amount in common, @TheKhakiQuail

Read some Aristotle. Temperance, rationality and virtue lies in the middle, between the extremes.

We’ve known this for 2500 years now yet still a significant proportion of people listen to the braindead people at either extreme because it’s far easier than engaging their brain (if it exists) and working for solutions to complex problems rather than trying to find some group to “other” and blame for their own inadequacies.

Politicians capitalise on the weakness of those susceptible to such obvious nonsense whose capacity for rational thought is minimal and make decisions based on emotion, soundbites and slogans rather than data and facts.

It does not bode well.

I applaud your efforts to bring people together OP but I think you can see from the responses that some people are so entrenched in their views they are not interested in finding common ground. In some people's minds anyone who has different ideas to them is irredeemably evil and that's all there is to it. I wouldn't mind quite so much but they are oblivious to the division they are causing; division which I think will lead to more violence.

We don"t actually know why he was assassinated.
Trump's shooter was a Republican.
I'd wait.

He didn’t believe in empathy, so that’s all good.

I completely agree with all of this. You sound like my kind of person.
I watched CKs Oxford address this morning - I had heard of him before and seen some of his clips but I wanted to watch an unedited long-form version of it.
When people decry others as racist or bigoted I like to find out for myself if that’s actually true. The more hysterical someone seems about a public figure, the more suspicious I am.

Ive already seen half of a quote he has made being dropped to prove people’s point. The one about empathy - the full quote basically said that sympathy is a better word as nobody can ever know what someone else feels like. That’s not a radical statement to make.

To your point, OP - I agree.

I posted this on another thread this morning:

Id probably class myself as centrist. Although even your place on the political spectrum is skewed by how far people are on either side. To a far left, I’d be right wing and to a far right, I’m too much on the left. So here is the thing, if (for example) a militant far left TRA was speaking at a University and spouting rubbish about TERFs or whatever and they got shot in the neck for it, I still would be just as shocked and disgusted by it. Because nobody deserves to die for words. Whether or not those words are classed as hate speech - investigate them and use the law if needs be but they don’t deserve to be fucking shot for just speaking.
I watched a video online of someone walking around the streets of an American uni town asking students their opinion on his death and they all said they were glad and he deserved it. Is that what we have become now?

The thing is, these tribal politics seem to mostly be rife in western democracy. When compared to global politics - especially in more oppressive countries - or if you use historical context, the left and right in the west are barely a few paces from each other. The political spectrum in the west is pretty narrow (on the most part, save for pockets of extremism that I wouldn’t class as main stream) so what the hell are both sides fighting over? We have more in common than not. You could have people debating trans rights, for example, with one side screaming TWAW and the other saying “we don’t want men in our spaces” but if both sides were shown footage of what happens to gay people in extremist countries where it is illegal to be gay, both sides would be totally against it.

Ok, so I’d not heard of him before he died. But I see his social media posts in the past few days included one saying, “Islam is the sword the left are using to slit the throat of America”, another saying there has been a relentless assault by black people on white people, and another lumping homosexuality in with trans issues as ‘garbage’.
So while we may not approve of murder, it’s fair to note that a significant part of his career was stirring up hate.

Op, in general - yes of course but in the case of this extreme right wing religious man, no. Almost zero cross over in my views and his.

And it was a career - those clicks in his videos made him a rich man.

👏 This is spot on.

and if you agree - then best get a chair because they will love nothing more than giving you a lecture on exactly everything that is wrong with the other side.

😂I’ve definitely experienced this!

Did he actually mock those things? Because I am seeing an awful lot being said about him that doesn’t appear to be fact. Or at least, it twists the facts.

If Andrew Tate was shot dead in the neck whilst spouting his views, I would feel the same. Nobody deserves to die for saying words.

The only time I would be glad for someone to be shot is if it actively stopped physical harm happening to others. I.e. crazed person is about to run in to a school and kill a load of kids, someone shot him before he entered the building.

Fuck me, well done you for "doing the maths" to discover Andrew Tate was a wrong'un.

Guess what, Charlie Kirk was a wrong'un too. Probably a bit less hands on than Tate, but still spouting obscene racist, misogynistic views.

It’s also interesting that those who spout such views seems to have no overview of history whatsoever, and both extremes both in the UK and in other countries take active steps to damage education and prevent a well-rounded education being available for all that covers the basics of economics, politics, history, rational thought and logic (i.e. philosophy) and a reasonable understanding of scientific method (not random facts) and statitistical analysis, to enable people to have the tools to be able to assess things adequately for themselves.

It’s difficult to conclude that this isn’t deliberate.

There was the longest period of peace and prosperity in Europe after WWII because the realities of extremes had become apparent to a significant enough proportion of the population through direct experience for them to conclude this wasn’t a good idea to repeat and therefore the Overton Window was narrowed significantly, to everyone’s benefit. The hope was that with adequate education available to all people wouldn’t have to learn these lessons the hard way again.

Nefarious actors are now pushing its boundaries to expand it again and this will have entirely predictable results. People refuse to learn these lessons of history or read books available in any public library and would rather pretend that the patterns staring them in the face don’t exist or are so wilfully ignorant that they are entirely oblivious and feel uncomfortable balancing conflicting viewpoints in a rational manner, preferring to subscribe to one of the (all equally incoherent and inconsistent) sets of extreme sets of views being touted to them, which due to the Overton Window being expanded become more extreme by the day with a feedback loop of validation available to them convincing them that such views are “normal” or rational.

I fear very much that the extremists at one sode or the other will have the critical mass to drag the rest of us down with them yet again having learned nothing from history at all. Just look at UK politics: there is no major party at all that a centrist wanting a rational, deliverable policy programme has available now to vote for. That is becoming the case in many western European countries and was unheard of a couple of decades ago. Then, when non-extremists feel forced to pick the least-worst option the extremists they are forced to vote for to avoid an even worse outcome declare that these people support what they are doing…

The cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias involved already when you try to have a rational discussion based on facts and data with these people entrenched in political views at either extreme i lamentable and demonstrates that they are not interested in what will work, what will be effective, only in “winning” and feeling they are “right”.

Andrew Tate is a different case because it appears that there’s very strong evidence that he’s done far more than “saying words”: human trafficking, physical abuse of women, sexual abuse etc.

What’s disturbing is that anybody would believe that the political opinions of someone engaging in such criminal activity are worthy of discussion at all.

Charlie Kirk as far as I know had not done any of these things. I disagree with his extremist views as I do with all extremists but that doesn’t mean he deserves to be murdered, as you note.

However, many attacks and threats to physical safety as well as intimidation have come from the so-called “left” in recent years, just as much as from the right.

In the UK both of our major parties are a disgrace and neither is capable of governing or acting in the national interest. God help us (we may have to start appealing to such imaginary beings in desperation) if Farage becomes our Prime Minister. Yes, things certainly can get even worse.

It appears that what used to be considered “left” and “right” in all civilised countries - within reasonable bounds of respect, freedom, fairness, rationality and realism - has been distorted beyond belief in recent years so that what were commonly and intuitively understood boundaries for these five qualities that are necessary for them to co-exist simultaneously as a basic guide to forming appropriate and sustainable public institutional structures have disintegrated with people arguing that their preferred one should be elevated above the others despite it being obvious that enabling an extreme prioritisation of one above the others will mean all of them vanish.

All extremists are a huge danger to our way of life and freedoms and are actively feeding this polarisation of views for their own purposes. None appear to be interested in consensus, temperance and balance, rationality and evidence-based policy that actually works.

I agree with a lot of what you are saying here. It’s rational and logical.

I made the point about Tate as he was mentioned almost in a ‘if you’re not happy CK was shot then that must mean you agree with everything he said’ type of comment (although I don’t want to put words in that poster’s mouth if that’s not what they were getting at)
I think Tate is a despicable man who has done despicable things and I hope he falls foul of the law for doing so. I was more making a point that if the reason he was shot was for his words, then I would also disagree with that (hope that makes sense)

I also think that allowing free speech doesn’t only apply to opinions that are ‘worth discussing’ because we all have different ideas on what is worth discussing and what isn’t. Basically, if someone is espousing extreme views (on either side) and I know I’m not going to respect nor agree with anything they say, I am free to either not listen - or tell them I think their opinions are bullshit. But the point is, they are still free to say them and should be without fear of violence as a consequence.

Inciting violence is different, of course, and I don’t include that in the above - however, those individuals should be dealt with through a court of law and not through the barrel of a gun.

I keep reading that CK was a proponent of free speech and debate, and that this makes him of value, regardless of his views. I think this fails to acknowledge that while he did indeed build his reputation on encouraging 'thinking' and 'discussion', all the while he was busily working away to create a society where some groups would be excluded from discussion.
In the case of POC with his attempts to disparage their achievements and question their competence, so anything they have to say will carry less weight. In the case of women, by actively supporting laws that would silence us on matters relating to our own person.
Its all well and good paying lip service to debate, but if you're actively campaigning to discredit some voices before they've even had a chance to speak, you're just a more disingenuous version of the no debate cohort.

I cannot agree with this at all. In what ways was he trying to silence black people? He didn't believe in ' affirmative action' but that is not based on wanting to silence black people but a belief that the top scoring candidate gets chosen regardless of race or colour. Candace Owen ( who is black) has spoken about how in their early career he put on an event with a big name speaker to draw the crowds ( he and Candace were still in the very early stages of their career) and the big name speaker refused to appear on stage with Candace as an equal as he felt she was not well known enough. CK cancelled that speaker rather than cancel the unknown black woman even though this may have damaged his ability to build his own name, and put him on the wrong side of an influential person in conservative moment. That is a very odd choice to make for someone who wants to silence PoC and women, as you claim..

And saying being pro-life is about silencing women (which I think you are) is a bit of stretch. He has a different belief to you about when human life becomes of value. Most people don't agree with abortion up to birth, so by your argument, nearly everyone in the world at some stage wishes to silence women. I doubt any of those people would agree with you that this is their motivation.

People are also using the term ' extremist view' a lot, without defining what they mean by this. Or then saying how what CK says fits into this.

Views you extremely disagree with are not the same as extremist views.

He held mainstream views of conservative Christians which are held by huge numbers of people across the world. He believed in the importance of family and marriage and faith. He believed in people achieving through merit rather than affirmative action. He believed in hard work and a purpose filled life. Yes, he believed motherhood makes women happy, but he prefaces that statement by being explicit that he is not telling any woman how to live their life. If you look up his wife, she has her own career and busy life outside of being a mother - just like most of us do. He was pro life, based on his understanding of from when human life has value, and that is also a mainstream opinion that huge numbers of people share. He believed in a small state, which is also a mainstream view and he believes in patriotism - also a mainstream opinion.

You may very, very much disagree with these views but they are not extremist.

My personal view is that celebrating murder of people because of the views they hold is an extremist and explicitly fascist position.

Insidiously. On the one hand saying let's all sit down together and talk. On the other messaging that some voices are less worthy than others. And I mean voices, not opinions.
By telling us he'd question the competence of a black pilot, he is telling us that we need be more suspicious of the capability of a black person than a white person. How can a black person be seen as equal in a debate with a white person if the default is that they may be incompetent?
Did he not also tell Taylor Swift to submit to her husband? There is no reason to think Taylor Swift should submit to her husband, other than a belief that men are superior and more competent than women. How then can a woman be seen as equal in debate with a man if the default is she is his subordinate?

I agree with most of that too however, I think many proponents of free speech don’t really understand what it means. It has always been constrained and is not an absolute and nor should it be, because as I said my subsequent post if a person takes any one value/ cause to an extreme to the detriment of all others then they end up negating all of them, including the one for which they are supposedly advocating.

As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. stated to the Supreme Court in the US in 1919: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting ‘fire’ in a theatre.”

Limits to rights to reflect the responsibilities entailed by being granted and exercising those rights is a necessity. All extremists fail to grasp that no “value” has innate intrinsic worth and that any so-called value pursued and enacted to the detriment of all other considerations will become destructive and self-defeating.

That is not what he is saying at all about the black pilot. You have completely misunderstood. He is saying that if companies hire on affirmative action, not merit, then you can no longer trust in the competence of who they hire. If there were affirmative action to get men into teaching, he would say the same thing about men. If there were ever a world where there was affirmative action to get white people into jobs they were underrepresented in his point would also be the same. His point is quite clear, and what IS insiduous is how people are misunderstanding quite a clear point to portray it as racist. His point is so transparent that I can't help but think people are deliberately misinterpreting it, or else, more depressingly, that they are so ideologically prejudiced that their brains actually hear what he said and twist it to a racist narrative.

As for Taylor Swift, I have not heard of that so cannot comment further. Though I would point out that CK's wife has a career in of her own. However. there are conservative Christians who do hold a view that husbands are the head of the households, and there are Christian women who willingly enter into marriages on this basis. I have heard evangelical women who talk of each spouse submitting to the other. In a free society people are free to enter in marriages, and end them, on their own terms. People are also free to debate what the relationship between men and women should look like, and form their own view to live their life by. Its not extremist to do so - extremist would be trying to enforce laws mandating women to submit to their husbands - and its certainly not a reason not to be bothered about someone being murdered, let alone to think they should be murdered.