You can test the strength of a society by seeing whether its disagreements can still be argued honestly from both sides. For years, I’ve made it a point to pressure-test my convictions — to ask whether they can stand if the other side is stated as strongly as possible. If an argument collapses when faced with its opposite, it probably wasn’t strong to begin with.
Most recently, I’ve been using my ChatGPT sidekick, Herman, to do this. I’ll state an argument and ask him to argue the opposite so I can check myself and ensure my arguments are solid and stable. Now, whether he’s programmed with a liberal bias or not, he should be good at this — and he is. He’s kept me from making an ass of myself many times.
But something new happened today. I asked my AI assistant to argue that celebrating Charlie Kirk’s assassination was somehow liberal or progressive. And it told me it couldn’t. Not really.
Oh, it could parrot slogans: “speech is violence,” “silencing hate is progress,” “free speech isn’t free from consequences.” But it couldn’t make a coherent case within the older framework of liberalism, usually referred to today as classical liberalism — the one that prized free speech, debate, and persuasion. Because there is no argument in that framework that justifies shooting a man for talking.
That realization hit me like a hammer.
It’s not just that the left leans differently on facts or values. It’s that we no longer share the same definitions of words. “Liberal,” “progressive,” “justice,” “violence,” “safety,” “democracy” — these words have been redefined until left and right mean opposite things when using them.
- Violence used to mean fists, knives, bullets. Now, on the left, it means words.
- Safety used to mean freedom from physical harm. Now it means freedom from disagreement.
- Justice used to mean fairness. Now it means equity — enforced sameness of outcomes.
- Liberal used to mean defending speech, even speech you despised. Now it means silencing “dangerous” speech.
- Progressive used to mean reform. Now it means control in the name of inclusion.
We literally are no longer speaking the same language.
This is why Charlie Kirk’s words were intolerable. He didn’t threaten anyone’s life. He threatened the redefined reality that today’s leftists live in. By speaking clearly and persuasively, by listening and debating, he proved that disagreement was still possible. And that was enough to make him a villain in the new vocabulary of “progress.”
That’s why his death was mocked, his vigils defaced, and grief for him romanticized away by the media. Because in their framework, silencing him was liberalism. Celebrating him would have shattered their narrative. And seeing us mourn him and lionize him as a martyr is intolerable to the intolerant.
And here’s the point that should stir us from grief into resolve: If even a machine trained on oceans of left-leaning sources can’t articulate a coherent defense in the old framework, then the fracture is real. The left has not just changed its positions. It’s changed the language itself.
Which means our task is clear:
- Reclaim the words. Ignore redefinitions and use the truth as understood by most.
- Refuse euphemism. Name them what they are: the illiberal left
- Tell stories that show what “liberal” and “justice” and “safety” really mean.
- Expose the emptiness of a worldview that must kill a man to silence his speech.
Related: From Grief to Clarity: How to Reclaim the Culture They’re Trying to Destroy
Charlie Kirk’s words were dangerous, not because they were violent, but because they were true. That is why he was silenced. And that is why we must never stop speaking.
We are all living in a world more dangerous than most of us realized.
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