I was as angry as anyone to see the wave of online comments celebrating and mocking Charlie Kirk’s death. So when a lot of these people, including many teachers and other public servants were fired after online mobs called their employers repeatedly, I didn’t have a lot of pity for them. I continue to think that if you celebrate someone’s death publicly, it’s a serious character or ethics concern that an employer can take into account on whether to continue employing you.

But like with any mob, it was not satisfied to just shine a light on the absolute worst examples and leave it at that. Then the mob moved on to some borderline cases, where the person just said they found Kirk’s views offensive or disgusting, but they didn’t celebrate his death. Some even offered sympathy and warned against violence.

The comments of this kind were mostly denouncing past statements of Charlie Kirk’s and saying, just because he was killed in a terrible way doesn’t mean we need to honor him. Often, the quotes they used to make this case were taken out of context. But that doesn’t mean they should lose their jobs for objecting to the quotes as they understood them, as that would chill the culture of free speech we should want to encourage in our country.

The controversy has mostly surrounded two quotes by Kirk. In the first quote, Kirk discussed a few prominent black women (US Rep. Shirley Jackson Lee, D-Texas; MSNBC host Joy Reid; Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson; and former First Lady Michelle Obama) who all said they were helped in their careers by affirmative action. He said, “Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.” A version of the quote inserted [black women] in the place of “you,” which was even used by certain media outlets and spread widely online.

The other quote was from Kirk speaking about gun deaths and the Second Amendment, where he said, “I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”

Many progressives focused on these two comments, making the case that they thought his views on race and guns were disgusting. Some posts would then celebrate his death, while others would denounce his views but make clear violence should be condemned and that they have sympathy for his family. Conservatives should make a huge distinction between these two groups.

One example of someone from the latter group who is being targeted is Durham’s police chief, Patrice Andrews, who cited the two Kirk quotes above on why she doesn’t think people should honor him even if they show him empathy.

“I won’t stop being outraged at the way this man is being honored by people that I thought I knew. This man, who disguised himself as a Christian, shamed Black women like me, believed that gun violence was necessary to preserve the Second Amendment and created a culture of divisiveness through hate speech. So, at the time of his death, I chose to give him the empathy that he didn’t believe in and certainly didn’t believe that people like me deserved. But, to know many of you STILL support him despite his horrible rhetoric.. I cannot.”

Kirk certainly could have made both points much more carefully and clearly. But he spoke for hours every day in public. There were bound to be times he expressed the messages of equal opportunity and the right to bear arms better than others. He also frequently spoke in a provocative way purposefully in order to invite people to reexamine their views.

All that to say, are we really that surprised that a progressive black woman in a high-profile position, dealing with gun violence daily in Durham, would object to these two particular quotes, especially in the often-misleading ways media presented them?

These are the kind of discussions Charlie Kirk wanted to have. I don’t think he would want the Durham police chief fired over her comments. He would likely want us to engage with her on the topics in a productive way.

But even if you truly find her comments abhorrent, free speech has to include, first and foremost, speech we hate, or else the principle is useless. It’s a similar principle to when Christ says to love your enemies, because “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.” If we only allow speech to those we agree with, what credit is that to us?

Then the federal government steps in

Sadly, it didn’t stop with online mobs going after the jobs of those who celebrated Kirk’s death, or those who didn’t celebrate his death but also didn’t want to honor his legacy. All of that arguably remains in the realm of the culture and private decisions on who to employ. But it gets much more serious when it enters the realm of government saying what kind of speech is allowed.

Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, told a podcaster that her office “will absolutely target” hate speech in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing. “There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech. And there is no place — especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie — [for that] in our society.”

After many years of conservatives, rightly, complaining about cancel culture and stifling views by labeling them hate speech, what exactly are we doing here?

When ABC News pressed Trump about Bondi’s comments, Trump said, “We will probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly; it’s hate.” Later, after backlash, including from conservatives, Bondi walked back her statement some.

And then, there was a further escalation, with Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show being suddenly and “indefinitely” canceled for comments he made about Kirk’s assassination: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

No, I did not leave out the part where he celebrated Kirk’s death or called for violence against other conservatives. Kimmel basically did what every partisan does after a high-profile killing — try to find a way to pin it on the other side and accuse the other side of trying to gain political points by doing the same. It became clear very soon after, though, and arguably before, that the killer was of the left. But regardless, this kind of partisan hackery is what left-wing late-night TV (from Jon Stewart to Bill Maher to Steven Colbert to John Oliver) have been doing for decades. I don’t like it (or its right-leaning equivalents)… so I don’t watch.

If Kimmel’s employers independently (or after hearing from viewers) decided that these comments crossed the line and that this was the final straw, fine. But the federal government leaned heavily on Disney, the owners of ABC, to cancel Kimmel’s show. What else can we call this but government censorship?

Following the apparent new protocol of making important statements on podcasts, FCC Director Brendan Carr said, “This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Soon after, two major local station owners, Nexstar and Sinclair, announced they would stop running Kimmel’s show, prompting ABC to cancel it nationwide. Nexstar and Sinclair also have major merger deals in process at the moment that will need FCC sign off, which may or may not have played into their decisions. Regardless, it looks very bad, like the Trump administration didn’t like an opening monologue, so they used their bully pulpit, backed by administrative power, to silence a comedian.

The correct response to Kimmel should be left in the sphere of speech — whether you want to complain to his employer, argue with him, or even mock him (since that’s his field of battle as a comedian). The same goes for those who make particularly egregious statements on social media. But when we start using the US attorney general’s office or the FCC to silence even the most obnoxious left-wing speech, you can count me, and hopefully many other conservatives, out.

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