I was disappointed to read Shri Thakur’s piece in last week’s The Observer calling for an end to free speech in favor of deplatforming Americans with far-left views. Commitment to free speech gives us a binary choice: Either we protect free speech for all, or we pick and choose what speech is acceptable and thereby abandon it, as Mr. Thakur suggests. In the wake of the tragic and senseless murder of Charlie Kirk in front of his young family and the world, choosing to now suppress free speech is a disgrace to his memory.
I was a student at Notre Dame during the peak of the speech-as-violence protests that plagued campuses like Cal-Berkeley and Northwestern during the late 2010s. The heckler’s veto never reached our campus, but there was no doubt that conservative perspectives were unwelcome at educational institutions across the country. Activists like Mr. Kirk challenged this hostility head-on by touring campuses and debating students. It was a bold, radical attempt at breaking the progressive hegemony.
Now in the wake of his death, some conservatives are betraying the example that Mr. Kirk set. One of Mr. Kirk’s core beliefs was that free speech is essential to the American experiment. Abandoning free speech in the wake of Mr. Kirk’s death implies that Mr. Kirk’s own belief was mistaken. This is an insult to his memory.
Mr. Thakur argues that by recommitting to free speech, the “inevitable conclusion” is to allow the far left to murder conservative voices. But killing someone is illegal. Threatening to kill someone is illegal. Mr. Kirk’s killer will meet justice, as will anyone who follows his example. The safety of conservative voices does not require the abandonment of civil liberties; it requires the enforcement of existing law.
The deplatforming that Mr. Thakur desires is pure political nihilism. Conservatives fought similar efforts for decades before Trump came to power for a second time this past January. When Obama’s IRS sought to strip Tea Party organizations of tax-exempt status, and Biden’s FCC pressured social media companies to tamp down on dissent, conservatives rightly called foul. These actions were wrong per se, not merely because they were levied against conservatives.
Mr. Thakur writes that “true free speech requires accountability.” This is doublespeak trying to justify the violation of a principle in the name of its preservation. If the actions of previous Democrat administrations against conservatives were bad then, they are bad now.
Mr. Thakur believes that Mr. Kirk’s assassination is an exceptional moment demanding a strong response. In Mr. Thakur’s framework, who decides when an ideology is sufficiently violent to justify suppression? The only “inevitable conclusion” of all this is that the definition of “radical” will expand to include all dissenters. And if a single violent act justifies such a crackdown, then Mr. Thakur should remember the recent assassinations of Melissa and Mark Hortman, the riots on Jan. 6 and the Charlottesville protests in 2017.
When we take action against a political opponent, we must ask: The next time this opponent is in power, how will I react if they try the same thing? It is a sort of Golden Rule for governments grounded in Enlightenment thought. A clear conscience demands that we adhere to political and procedural norms and maintain a fair playing field.
Republicans now have the political power to crush liberal voices around the country. But doing so would directly violate the principles of free speech they have spent decades protecting. Our principles only exist if we remain committed to them when it is least convenient.
So, what matters more? Adhering to the principle of free speech and honoring the late Mr. Kirk? Or using this as an opportunity to “get back” at the far left, take vengeance on our “enemies” and cross our fingers that they take a kinder approach the next time they win an election?
Mr. Thakur has chosen the latter. His distortion of Cold War paranoia forces us to recall a stain on American history. To be very clear: Cold War McCarthyism involved the routine violation of Americans’ civil liberties, the illegal wiretapping of civil rights leaders and communist witch trials before Congress all in the name of ideological purity. Suggesting a return to these excesses is unseemly and historically illiterate.
Finally, a note on “them.” Mr. Thakur talks a lot about “them.” Who are “they?”
They are our neighbors. I mean this in a Christian sense, but I also mean this in a literal sense. Mr. Thakur is talking about the people in your dorm, the people you sit next to in the dining hall. When we talk about shutting down speech and getting people fired, we are talking about our classmates.
There is no “they.” It’s just us, just “we.” We are all victims of Charlie Kirk’s murder. We are all responsible for it. We are all monetized and misled by social media. We are all capable of reaching out and building community in the section, the dorm, the campus, the country.
Christ’s love is radical and deeply challenging. It requires us to love our persecutors. It demands that we love the person who kills our leaders. It needs us to listen to each other, to embrace debate and to request that our rival prove us wrong. We do not abandon Christ’s love when a political opponent rejects it entirely.
America is on the brink. Mr. Thakur thinks the solution is a few inches closer to the edge. Reject the temptation, take a step back. Do no evil that good may come.
Thomas S. Murphy
Class of 2021
Virginia School of Law Class of 2027
Sept. 22
