Scott Jennings is a star. This is an excellent point. Charlie Kirk was a mainstream conservative; his views were far from extreme. Millions of Americans shared his opposition to affirmative action and DEI. One need not be conservative to believe that hiring and promotion should be based on merit rather than race.
The Constitution itself—the most liberal document of its time—is colorblind. It enshrines the principle that every individual is equal under the law. Slavery was a legacy institution inconsistent with that principle, and it had to be abolished so the promise of equality could be realized. But that does not mean race was written into the Constitution. In fact, white people also labored in conditions of involuntary servitude at the time. Nothing in the Constitution distinguishes between races in that regard. It was only after the Civil War, through the Thirteenth Amendment, that involuntary servitude was explicitly prohibited—except as punishment for a crime. Even then, this was not racial in nature: white and black prisoners alike were required to work.
This is the liberal position: the government cannot favor one race over another. By definition, liberalism rejects racial discrimination. To embrace discrimination is to abandon liberalism. That is why modern progressivism, which endorses racial preferences, is not liberal but illiberal. Ironically, on issues such as race, free speech, and freedom of thought, conservatism now occupies the liberal ground.
Kirk was also a Bible-believing Christian. You may disagree with his interpretation, but millions of Americans share it. The First Amendment guarantees that the government has no authority to impose one religious interpretation over another. Matters of conscience belong to the individual.
When people claim Kirk “deserved to die” for his beliefs, they are in effect declaring that millions of Americans deserve the same fate for holding similar views. This is not only morally abhorrent but profoundly dangerous. A recent YouGov poll, conducted after Kirk’s assassination, found that roughly a quarter of self-identified “very liberal” respondents believed political violence is justified to achieve political goals. That is alarming. For liberals, political violence is never taken lightly; it can only be justified in the context of overthrowing genuine tyranny. No such tyranny exists today. Indeed, the political violence we see now is not resisting oppression—it is advancing it. The way to stop this is not through violence, but through the Constitution.
To clarify, in polling, “very liberal” is often shorthand for “progressive.” This linguistic sleight of hand allows elites to blur distinctions and sow confusion. I call myself liberal, precisely because I oppose racial discrimination and defend freedom of conscience. If you believe Kirk deserved what happened to him, you’re not a liberal. It’s that simple. Liberalism, since John Locke, has insisted on religious tolerance precisely because intolerance produces disorder and violates the unalienable rights of conscience. Any ideology that sanctions violence against dissenters is fundamentally illiberal.
What other worldview endorses violence against people for their political or religious beliefs? Islam. This is why the Islamization of the West is such a terrible thing—it creates an environment of religious intolerance and violence. Islam is incapable of tolerating other religions. Even when Muslims become a significant minority of the population, they begin to interfere with the religious and secular liberties of others, while appealing to the principle of religious tolerance.
Governments in the West are allowing millions of Muslims into the West and permitting them to intrude on the religious and secular liberties of all those around them. This is the progressive and social democratic turn in Western institutions. We have to stop and reverse this tendency.
Islam is a colonizing force. It seeks a world in which there’s only one religion, its own. In Muslim-majority countries, Jews and Christians are marginalized and either expelled or compelled to leave because of religious oppression. Islam is a totalitarian ideology.
Like Islam, which uses religious violence to achieve its aims, progressives use violence to achieve the ends they seek. And the ends both seek are the same: the destruction of the Enlightenment and the institutions that operate according to liberal principles.
The affinity between progressivism and Islam thus reflects a deeper totalitarian impulse in the West: a shared hatred of liberalism, secularism, Christianity, and Judaism. This is why we see the affinity between Islam and progressivism. Both seek to establish a culture that is incompatible with the core values of religious tolerance and freedom of speech and thought.
While we tolerate the speech and thought of others, even those who hold totalitarian notions, we do not tolerate violence except in self-defense—and not the absurd postmodernist construction of self-defense that endorses violence as a means for dealing with disagreeable opinions. Self-defense is justified when the actions of others oppress us.
Liberalism does not mean tolerating violence. We may tolerate speech we dislike—even speech that rejects tolerance itself—but violence crosses the line. Speech is not violence. Silence is not violence. As Jefferson reminded the Danbury Baptists, government has power only over action, not opinion. And when individuals commit violence or incite it, the government has the duty to respond.
This is why I am deeply concerned about the spread of totalitarian impulses—whether in the form of militant progressivism or authoritarian religious movements. Both share a disdain for liberal principles. Both seek to silence dissent, enforce conformity, and dismantle the institutions of free thought and free expression. This is the New Fascism.
freedom and reason 