https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Individual_Righ...
Fundamentally, government is violence. One common formulation is that the government has the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. When a person commits a crime, the government is authorized to use violence to punish it.
Practically every government considers a threat to be a crime. A threat is speech, and the government responds with violence.
An assassination by a citizen is not a legitimate use of violence, by that definition, but we've shown that there is such a thing as a legitimate use of violence in response to speech.
And conversely, any government action is ultimately backed by the threat of violence. Ideally, that's restricted just to acts generally considered abhorrent, but in a democracy it only takes a bare majority to legitimate government violence. Speech that influences government can be tantamount to a threat, authorizing violence for acts that you don't consider to merit it.
I'm not trying to justify the recent assassination. I'm trying to show that a simplistic "violence is never a response to speech" is not a sufficient argument. Speech and violence are not as distinct as we'd like to think. There are many ways that speech can lead very directly to violence.
Is this like how libertarians say that taxation is theft?
> One common formulation is that the government has the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
Sure. Your conclusion doesn't follow from this, however.
> but we've shown that there is such a thing as a legitimate use of violence in response to speech.
Even taking all the rest of your reasoning for granted, this doesn't seem relevant. TFA is explicitly about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Kirk did not make threats, certainly not per the definition of "threat" that your argument relies upon.
You don't beat up somebody for being stupid. You don't kill somebody for advocating planar planetary physics. You don't beat up somebody even for advocating racial discrimination. (You don't "quietly demur", either. You respond with forceful denunciation and moral condemnation.)
In this country, you don't beat up or kill someone for blasphemy. And in any country, you don't if you're a Christian. A Christian's orders are to love their enemies, do good to those who hate them, and pray for those that persecute them. I don't see "kill" anywhere in that.
It was more than a slap, it was a battlefront of the American psyche.
Here is Chris Rock on one side. I have to tell you my respect for him grew through the roof for his dude handling of the situation (every one else but him whimpered like injured children.) I have to say I never liked him or his style before, and have seen his smirks and honest to truth have thought “I wonder how far he will go until one day someone will smack that smile off his face.” I only let out this internal thought with the assertion that I do not believe provocation of pride is enough (though taunting to me is consensual violence.)
In the other side is
WILL SMITH
Legend, defeats aliens or vampire zombies who come to fcuk with us, is the personification of dude heroism and will walk up on, before a million burning watching eyes. And take condescension of his woman right out of a man.
Damn.
We’re a culture of hot heads and those who trigger others by our exhibitions.
That’s America. A part of that anyway.
Boo on you Mr. Will Smith that can’t be how we end it, though the split reaction speaks of the super consciousness among us feeding back into our super psyche of selves.