24 Comments
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Jon Hampton's avatar

Kirk's most important lesson was that what is false cannot stand up to what is true in an honest discussion or open debate. So he took his message directly to young people. When he engaged honestly and respectfully with the woke, they exposed themselves to the world as the irrational and spiritually empty people they are.

Jean-Bernard Lasserre's avatar

Aayan Hirsi Ali is a great lady too.

Jean-Bernard Lasserre's avatar

An interesting review of Kirk's book.

Thomas Rush's avatar

Some of us conservatives are atheists. Morality doesn’t need religion for justification. Humans have evolved to know right from wrong. That’s why I don’t have much interest in what Charlie Kirk had to say. Much more interested in what Douglas Murray has to say.

Jean-Bernard Lasserre's avatar

Yes, I agree with you that you do not have to be a Christian or a religious person to be a conservative. Yes, I do share your interest in Douglas Murray's thought.

Thomas Rush's avatar

Good to know I’m not alone!

Jean-Bernard Lasserre's avatar

I also like Barri Weiss and find Jordan Peterson, Barri Weiss and Gad Saad very interesting thinkers. You probably like Matthew Goodwin too.

Thomas Rush's avatar

I find Gad Saad a bit too self aggrandizing and when I called him on that, relatively gently, he immediately blocked me. I do agree with a lot of what he says.

I got tired of Jorden Peterson and found him also too much in love with himself and was particularly disturbed by his rant about letting boys be boys and condemning all use of medications presumably for ADHD. Of course he apparently was taking a lot of meds himself and now claims he to be suffering the cognitive. Something doesn’t smell right.

Bari Weiss is great.

Middle's avatar

My earliest exposure to Jordan Peterson was a discussion between he and Gad Saad on YouTube. The two of them spent the entire time tryng to one-up each other in a tiresome cockfight. While I broadly share an outlook on the world with both, the egos on display turned my attention elsewhere.

Michelle Dostie's avatar

Jordan had a return of an illness along with reaction to the medication. His daughter explained how this has affected him on her substack. I notice he is working again.

Middle's avatar

While I have great respect for Charlie Kirk, his conflation of the patriarchal monotheistic framework of Christian cosmology with morality is a problem. Many of the rites and rituals of Christianity - I grew up in a Christian family - serve to strengthen community and to provide support to individuals and families in times of need. However, the "faith" in an all-seeing, all powerful father figure/CEO who determines every aspect of our experience in this lifetime is irrational and outdated. We need an updated framework within which we might gather to practice humility, surrender, generosity, and to access our own deeply considered path to right action.

I also hope that Kirk included a historic comprehension of the valid leftist civil rights movements the predated wokeness and the urgency of those movements at the time. The rights of people of colour, women and same-sex attracted people were not respected and, often within the framework of Christianity, the rights of these particular groups were ignored and overridden, allowing for abuse and exploitation.

We need a full picture to move forward, having gained wisdom from the mistakes of the past so as not to repeat them.

David Phillips's avatar

“all powerful father figure/CEO who determines every aspect of our experience in this lifetime” Calvinist Christianity is both illogical and non-biblical. The God of the Bible gives us freedom, but our rebellion damages us and others. At the same time, in Singapore the government uses the broad agreement between Buddhist, Muslim and Christian morality to base their legal system.

David Gottfried's avatar

Although on many issues I am decidedly left wing, I am highly critical of feminism.

I have developed a new argument, that undermines feminism, that you may appreciate as it tends to undermine the wokist onslaught of inanity.

https://davidgottfried.substack.com/p/how-womens-art-invalidates-feminist

Hissing Sid's avatar

I appreciate you Ayaan, please continue

Sam Atman's avatar

If you keep posting AI slop I’m unsubscribing. You think we’re can’t notice? Write your own articles!

Hissing Sid's avatar

Specify and refute please. Or am I challenging a bot? See? We can both do lazy criticism.

Michelle Dostie's avatar

Prosecution is necessary for criminal activity due to necessity of accountability. Without proper jurisprudence of lawbreaking, we ruin our nation.

Michelle Dostie's avatar

You don’t want to know.

Steven of the Club's avatar

I legitimately do. Americans seem absolutely obsessed with this term, but I've never heard a coherent definition for it. It seems to me to be a "suitcase word". Used to pack in whatever left-coded thing a given person dislikes, then treat the label as if it explains something.

I’ve heard it used for corporate HR language, trans rights, racial justice, feminism, university culture, environmentalism, DEI, basic politeness, and sometimes just “someone younger than me used a word I don’t like.”

That seems to make the word less a definition and more a junk drawer.

Michelle Dostie's avatar

Steven - Not my post/comment, but I did read it.

Steven of the Club's avatar

You're not you? ...kay.

And this right here is why I don’t know what “woke” is. Everybody uses it like it means something obvious, but when I ask what it means, they run off instead of answering.

Michelle Dostie's avatar

I don’t use the term. I speak English. It’s a slang term for whatever the speaker wants it to mean.