The Dangerous Lie From The Left- Why Speech Is Not Violence

Someone assassinated Charlie Kirk. Read the posts on BlueSky and you will see that many people wanted him dead. A few people made it easier to murder people they didn’t like by claiming that “speech” is “violence”. That is absurdly dangerous for all of us.

Violence means using physical force to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. Violence may be justified or not justified. Speech is expressing thoughts and feelings by articulate sounds. These thoughts may conform to reality or they may be distortions. The feelings may be genuine or they may be lies. Violence and speech are not the same thing and someone who says they are is lying for a reason. They don’t want you to ask questions and to call out their lies.

Claiming that speech is violence sets a very dangerous precedent. You don’t defend yourself against ideas you agree with. but those you don’t. You use violence against someone who first initiates violence against you. Saying that speech is violence lets you use violence against someone who says something you don’t like. It is a way to silence those who disagree with you.

Look at it this way. If their speech is violence, is your speech violence too. Saying that speech is violence is the death knell of discussion. If speech is violence then the only safe position is silence.. but that fails too. Silence in the face of evil is not safe. Silence in the face of lies is not safe even if the lies are unintentional. Saying that speech is violence demands that some opinions are unquestionable. We call that totalitarianism.

I am used to hard questions. I spent most of my working life doing hard things that had not been done before. That meant there wasn’t a recipe for success. More precisely, there were many recipes but it wasn’t clear if we could follow all of them at the same time. It wasn’t clear if we would succeed even if we followed every rule we could find. The reason is that there are uncountable ways to fail and only a few ways to do something that will survive the tests of nature and of man.

I tell you that because I begged for criticism. I asked the people who liked me to find my mistakes. I asked people who disliked me to find the flaws in my ideas. Even then, I didn’t do that enough to uncover all the ways to fail. I had to stumble my way toward success through repeated failure. Progress is painful.

That sounds dramatic. It isn’t. My failures were often loud. The worse ones were expensive and slow. I think we all feel that same way about our lives. We are trying to work out the best path forward. Let me offer you this advice: deviate from the tested road at your peril because there are a lot of ways to fail.

It is a huge act of arrogance to think that the world is out to get you and that is why your shiny new idea failed. I was never that special. The world showed me my failures because I didn’t stop it. The world probably isn’t that concerned with you either. You can fail on your own and the world probably doesn’t care one way or another. You can blame the world for your own failures, but that means you don’t learn very much. Life is tough enough already and refusing to learn life’s lessons makes your life harder than it has to be. Freewill means you can be stupid.

We need free speech so we can learn from others. They tell us about their own experience. We can learn from their hard-won wisdom. Someone who tells you that you’re going to get hurt might be offering you valuable advice. It takes courage to listen.

Some people are cowards. Some people want to live in a world of dreams that are never tested. They don’t want to be informed that their “new idea” failed before. They will demand your silence so they can live in a comfortable fantasy.

Those people are dangerous. Shout at them. Anyone who says that speech is violence plans to hurt you if you dare to disagree with them. Disagree with them now.

Call out their lies. Shout first. Shout loud. You can’t “talk” with someone who gets to use violence against you whenever they want.

It is easier to be brave.