This is an editorial about free speech and how it’s a core American value to protect words used in public debate — even if we abhor those very words. In fact, we need to fight harder to protect words we detest if we say we truly are for free speech. Censoring words — even words we hate — leads us away from freedom and towards fascism.
So imagine what people think when they hear that a South Carolina college professor was fired this week for saying that tragically slain political activist Charlie Kirk was “awful” and “not a good person.”
You wouldn’t be surprised, right? Because those hard words about a dead man piss you off, right? Except get this: A professor didn’t say those words. Kirk did, when speaking about another tragically slain activist — the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Here’s Kirk’s full quote — including a gratuitous claim that King was lying when he talked about judging people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
“MLK was awful,” Kirk said at a December 2023 America Fest conference. “He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.”
So think about Kirk’s words. They’re wrong — just as wrong as political violence and some of the words we’ve read about Kirk’s tragic death.
Yet some S.C. Republicans want to trample the constitutional protection of free speech to get state employees fired for insulting Kirk’s memory for talking like Charlie Kirk. Really?
People, let’s slow down. It’s time to respect and honor the dead, including the Democratic state senator slain earlier this year in political violence in Minnesota. It’s time to ratchet down intemperance for words and come together, not continue to split.
This latest Palmetto State witch hunt over words started shortly after Kirk’s horrific Sept. 10 murder on the campus of Utah Valley University. Some responded with rage, others with horror. And sadly, a relative few hit “send” on messages that showed bad judgment and a startling lack of empathy.
No surprise there. Social media enables people to say the first thing that pops into their head.
But that’s why we generally extend a measure of grace even in pretty extreme rhetorical circumstances. Just this week, for instance, a Fox News host was allowed to apologize and keep his job after saying that mentally ill homeless people should be killed.
But some S.C. Republicans, acting in concert with the Trump administration’s larger crackdown on speech since Kirk’s murder, decided apologies weren’t going to be good enough in this case. And before you could say “double standard,” they were threatening to defund state universities and school systems that didn’t purge social media transgressors. In turn, at least three colleges fired some professors and employees.
Republican officials leading the charge to fire educators insist they’re fighting for civility, not censorship. They’re not wrong to condemn comments that cheered Kirk’s murder.
But some of those career-ending statements were closer to what Kirk said of King. So let’s all remember something else Charlie Kirk wrote in May of last year: “There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”
S.C. Republicans need to take these words of Charlie Kirk to heart and stop their too-convenient, politicized witch hunt. Let’s not erode free speech. Let’s keep America — and South Carolina — free.
Help keep the City Paper free.
No paywalls.
No subscription cost.
Free delivery at 800 locations.
Help support independent journalism by donating today.