The liberal legacy of Charlie Kirk

Charlie Kirk in action

"If you’re afraid of ideas, you’re admitting your own ideas are weak. The cure for bad speech isn’t less speech—it’s more speech, better arguments, and a willingness to let truth win out." - Charlie Kirk

Charlie Kirk was the consummate liberal. The core principles he lived by and died for are not the special province of far-right Republicans or conservatives. No. The classically liberal worldview and free speech he espoused is the very fount from which the American experiment sprung. Indeed, the ideas and institutions he contended for lie at the root of both Democrat and Republican parties. Narrowly casting him as a MAGA apologist tragically misses the point of his life's work.

So if Charlie Kirk wasn't "master-debating" liberals (a South Park satirical jab that he personally loved) in the free market place of ideas, who was he arguing against? Simply put - illiberal progressives.

Necessary Reframing

I think this reframing of things is very important as we all grope for something that might unify us. The reality is that our cultural conflict is not simply about radical Left vs. radical Right with independently-minded centrists lost in the vast middle. This is about classically liberal Democrats and classically liberal Republicans and classically liberal centrists who find themselves fractured by radical progressives who have largely infiltrated the Democrat party and most public and higher education.

The mission of this blog is not to trace out the historical development of all of these dynamics or to catalog all of the various evidences for this reframing. What I want to do is descriptively chart out the liberal worldview matrix that Charlie Kirk was prophetically calling us back to. And I hope, in so doing, that classical liberals of all political stripes can unify, heal, and defeat the illiberal progressivism that has poisoned our social discourse, institutions, and sense of order.

War of the World(view)s

"Worldview matrix" sounds like some pretty fancy words. Let's simplify. You know how people will ask - are our conflicts about spirituality, economics, sex ethics, education, politics, or...? If you're good at multiple choice tests, you know that "all of the above" has a high probability of being correct. And it is no different here. It is truly an "all of the above" set of problems.

We call that bundle of issues a "worldview." And while there are many worldviews we could work through, we are going to contrast progressive illiberalism that is dividing us with the classical liberalism that has and can unite us. This project is inherently larger than any blog can tackle, but here is the rough sketch of a comparative matrix:

	Illiberal Progressivism	Classical Liberalism
Human Nature	Unconstrained Optimism: Altruistic inclinations with proper nurture and enlightenment	Constrained Realism: Individuals driven by social incentives and deterrences
Human Flourishing	Rooted in radical self-expression and determination	Realized by freely pursuing universal virtues
Human Rights	Extrinsic and contingent - determined by social consensus / granted by the collective-State	Intrinsic and inalienable - granted by God / defended by the State
Human Responsibility	Seen through collective/systemic lens	Seen through individual/social lens
Human Conflict	Rooted in unhealed personal and collective trauma(s)	Rooted in personal and interpersonal immorality
Human Potential	Near utopian conditions by social and scientific advancements	A progressively improving, but ever imperfect world of trade-offs
Morality	Maleable social conventions within specific cultures	Transcendent and absolute across human cultures
Truth Claims	Largely restricted to personal intuitions and collective judgments even in the domain of "science"	Possible to universally discern using laws of logic, natural law, and the Judeo-Christian tradition
Religion	Subjective and restricted to the private domain	Objective and inevitably expressed in the public domain
Private Property	Limited by and for the good of the collective	Unlimited by personal achievement and free markets
Government	Primary institution to support and provide for human flourishing	Primary institution to guard human rights and freedoms
Social Justice	The State's role is active and redistributive / remunerative	The State's role is largely protective and retributive
Speech	Can be inherently violent: Requires State regulation	Free speech is the bedrock of human freedom: Requires State protections
Economics	Scarcity: The collective/State is an active market participant that regulates, plans, distributes, and optimizes resources	Abundance: Free markets comprised of free individuals unleash human potential with the State as a limited regulator
Meritocracy	An oppressive illusion perpetrated by privileged classes in control of capital resources	An opportunity for free humans to achieve great things based on a system of incentives
Social Hierarchies	Negative systems of oppression	Positive systems of social order
Armed Citizenry	Dangerous precondition for violence and vigilantism	Defensive necessity against individual and/or State tyranny
Multiculturalism	Various cultures cannot be objectively compared unless they are oppressively colonial and assimilative, which is destructive to self-expression	Some cultures are better suited to human flourishing than others and over time assimiliate weaker cultures
National Assimilation	An oppressive means of constructing socio-economic class systems	Melting pot is a necessary feature of achieving E Pluribus Unum
Sexual Ethics	Unrestrained freedom within the bounds of mutual consensuality	Constrained freedom within the bounds of marriage
The Unborn	The civil rights of personhood granted solely at mother's discretion	The civil rights of personhood independent of mother's discretion
Transgenderism	Evolved and enlightened self-discovery. Necessary for human flourishing	Mental illness and self-harming. Corrosive to human flourishing
Marriage	A flexible social convention at the pleasure of individuals	A divine institution between one man and one woman

Caveats and Limitations

Now listen - this isn't exhaustive, and I'm sure there may some questions or quibbles about what I said and didn't say. For example, instead of using the word, "abortion," I used "The Unborn" because while abortion has been with humanity since time immemorial, that word, as such, has not been a part of our historic discourse. But there absolutely has been an on-going concern for the unborn and the notion that personhood is granted by the mother alone is entirely novel to progressivism. Even Roe v. Wade, as poorly reasoned as it was, attempted to assign human rights based on some objective period of development/gestation. In other words, to the classical liberals of the recent past, the civil rights of personhood were objectively rooted in something outside of the mother's subjective judgment.

Reflecting On Charlie Kirk

I believe that if you listen to the best of Charlie Kirk, you can generally go to this matrix and see what he was doing. He was not working from a MAGA playbook. Sure - it came with some MAGA packaging and conservative messaging. But in reality, he was working from the classically liberal worldview that gave birth to our nation. The articulation of our freedoms, the checks and balances on government power, the understanding of humans and human flourishing... none of this is far-right stuff.

Of course, within the classically liberal column on the matrix, there are variances and degrees of opinion on HOW these core worldview principles are expressed. And that, my friends, is where the BEST of our Democrat vs. Republican history lies. My argument is that if we come back to our common heritage - and dare I say, common sense - that we will find in this liberal worldview, the basis for a new unity.

I want to acknowledge and say in passing that I personally believe that classical liberalism is the fruit of the Judeo-Christian worldview. It doesn't spring from an an intellectual vacuum - and I think Charlie Kirk was growing in his understanding and application of that truth. But this blog is not written as an evangelical tract, so I am leaving that aside for now. That is a whole different subject for another time...

So give Charlie Kirk another listen. And tell me if what you hear is MAGA or a classical liberal. And then, let's get to work putting this country back on track. May his death be a Turning Point. God bless Charlie Kirk and his liberal legacy.