People Who Would Cheer Your Murder Won't Protect Your Speech

It's important we protect the left's freedom of speech so people know how awful they are

When I heard Jimmy Kimmel’s statement about Charlie Kirk’s assassain, I just shook my head and said, “What a dumb liberal living in a bubble and trying like so many others how violent and hateful his side is… how hateful he is.” It never occurred to me to make a stink about it and get him off the air. I mean, I was never going to watch his show. And who cared — Jimmy Kimmel has zero influence with his stale politics, talking to an old and aging audience that still watches network TV. I mean, all late-night shows are just waiting to die as they’re from an era long past.

But then the Trump administration and Trump himself inserted themselves into the situation and then Jimmy Kimmel’s show got taken off the air for a few days. It seems rather petty to even worry about these shows because, again, they are dying shows watched by few people and influence no one. They aren’t like Charlie Kirk, changing the minds of young people. It’s a medium on its last legs, so trying to take Jimmy Kimmel out early feels like attempting to murder a hospice patient — why couldn’t you just wait and let the grim reaper do the dirty work?

But then it became a free speech issue, and the left got to pretend to be free speech champions praising a guy on a dying medium spreading misinformation. And they were especially enthusiastic to focus on Jimmy Kimmel because the other alternative was to talk about Charlie Kirk, and that makes them really uncomfortable. A scarily large segment of the left cheered on the murder. And as the same people who think a holocaust of the Jews is a good thing are the people who deny the holocaust, the people who cheer on the murder of Charlie Kirk keep trying to deny that it was one of them who did it. They desperately want to get far from this issue, which is why the FCC head making a statement at all was so infuriating: We need to laser focus on the issue of left-wing hate and violence, and they helped engineer a distraction.

But now the left are suddenly talking all about “free speech” — the thing they abandoned as a far-right buzzword only a few years ago. But it’s also become clear that these people will never protect our free speech. People who think it’s good you are murdered are never going to fight for your right to speak — in fact, they’re going to actively fight against it. If they want you dead, the least they can do is shut you up.