Left-wing wokeness, with its intimidation and deplatforming of those whose views were deemed politically incorrect, was intellectually deplorable. (And yet, it flourished on American college campuses!) The same can be said of the right-wing wokeness that seems to be emerging in the aftermath of the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk. In this post, I will attempt to put this last phenomenon into proper perspective by reminding readers of what free speech is and why it is important. I will end by describing the irony of using the assassination of Kirk—who was at the time engaged in free speech—to justify curtailing such speech.
There are free-speech absolutists who think that any speech is protected. Absolutism with respect to an issue is usually a sign that the person advocating it hasn’t devoted careful thought to the matter. Along these lines, consider Elon Musk. He claimed to be a free-speech absolutist but subsequently modified that position when a college student started providin…