{"id":17,"date":"2025-09-13T23:51:42","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T23:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=17"},"modified":"2025-09-23T16:37:03","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T16:37:03","slug":"wsj-the-charlie-kirk-example","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=17","title":{"rendered":"WSJ: &#8220;The Charlie Kirk Example&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Politicians of both parties who&#39;ve said &quot;this is not who we are&quot; &#8230; well they are wrong, unfortunately it is who we are. See the 2nd paragraph below.&#0160;<\/p>\n<p>A good column by Kimberly Strassel, the Wall Street Journal columnist.&#0160;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/opinion\/the-charlie-kirk-example-9c311c4f?mod=author_content_page_1_pos_1\">The sickest aspect of Wednesday\u2019s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk is that it was everything he always warned about, the very thing that motivated his many debates and catapulted him to fame. He talked so as to end political violence.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In a clip posted in April 2024, Kirk was asked by a (somewhat scornful) college student: \u201cWhy are you here?\u201d Kirk responded: \u201cOK, I\u2019ve been asked that question a lot. First of all, the question should not even have to be asked. But when people stop talking, really bad stuff starts. When marriages stop talking, divorce happens. When civilizations stop talking, civil war ensues. When you stop having a human connection with someone you disagree with, it becomes a lot easier to want to commit violence against that group. . . . What we as a culture have to get back to is being able to have a reasonable disagreement, where violence is not an option.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>***********************<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1akm6h5-Paragraph e1e4oisd0\" data-type=\"paragraph\">Those politicians are saying all the usual things now\u2014decrying political violence, sending out prayers. Just as they did after the first assassination attempt against <a class=\"ekxajjj0 css-i0lbhy-OverridedLink\" data-type=\"person\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/topics\/person\/donald-trump\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Donald Trump<\/a>. And the second one. And the shooting of Steve Scalise. And of Gabby Giffords. And the attack on <a class=\"ekxajjj0 css-i0lbhy-OverridedLink\" data-type=\"person\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/topics\/person\/nancy-pelosi\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Nancy Pelosi<\/a>\u2019s husband. And the attempt on Justice Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s life. And the slaying of a Minnesota state legislator and her husband. And the murder of two staffers of the Israel Embassy. And the arson attacks against the Pennsylvania governor\u2019s mansion and the New Mexico Republican Party headquarters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1akm6h5-Paragraph e1e4oisd0\" data-type=\"paragraph\">The good behavior lasts a day or a week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Politicians of both parties who&#39;ve said &quot;this is not who we are&quot; &#8230; well they are wrong, unfortunately it is who we are. See the 2nd paragraph below.&#0160; A good column by Kimberly Strassel, the Wall Street Journal columnist.&#0160; The sickest aspect of Wednesday\u2019s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk is that it was everything [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4905,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions\/4905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}