On the Morality of Murder

 

Chatting with a relativist the other day, he asked, “Do you think the killer of Charlie Kirk believed he was doing something wrong?” 

His intended point, of course, was that the killer no doubt thought he was doing a good thing. 

I have heard this argument from relativists before. A religion professor back in grad school actually wrote a piece for the student newspaper arguing that morality was nonsense. After all, if we thought something was wrong, we would not do it in the first place, would we? The fact that anyone did anything proves it was not wrong. They were simply following their own moral lights.

Another relativist friend, himself ethnically Jewish, held that Hitler no doubt thought he was doing the right thing.

Of course the Kirk killer knew he was doing something wrong. Of course Hitler did. Everyone has a conscience, an internal moral compass, and although we can rationalize, we know the moral truth. Those who do wrong will be plagued by their conscience, by the Erinyes, by their instinct for justice.

This is why, for example, serial killers always lay clues, growing more and more reckless until they are caught; and show relief when they are caught. Law enforcement sources say they usually sleep like a baby that first night in detention. Their conscience is no longer plaguing them—at least at the same level. Dostoyevsky understood this well, and had Raskolnikov’s own conscience lead him to Siberia. Edgar Allen Poe understood this in “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

This is why villainous people, like Stalin, like Hitler, or like those on Death Row, descend into paranoia. While they may have objective reason to fear retribution, it is also their conscience being projected on the world. This is why bad people commonly hate those they have harmed.

To suppose we always do what we believe is right is to suppose there are no impulses tempting us to do wrong. That there is no such thing as self-interest, cupidity, intemperance, or ego. Or rather, I suspect, in most such cases, that there is no force nor consideration the theorist will answer to but cupidity, self-interest, intemperance, and ego.

On Right-Wing "Cancel Culture"

"Dead Rabbits" riot in NYC.

The right in America is currently undergoing some soul-searching, under accusations of hypocrisy from the left. People are getting fired for their online reactions to Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Some are being doxxed to their employers. Isn’t this the very cancel culture the right has been complaining about?

This is a conundrum always faced by a liberal democracy. It was pressing during the 1920s to 1950s. Can you allow a Nazi Party or a Communist Party to openly organize and compete in elections? After all, they are rejecting the electoral system itself. How do you handle a political movement that advocates political violence? That commits it?

If political violence is allowed, the electoral system itself disintegrates. The decision devolves to mobs in the streets.

Celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk is endorsing political violence; and advocating political violence, implicitly or explicitly.

Inciting violence in any context is criminal. Inciting or advocating political violence steps that up to something like treason.

The right in America is currently undergoing some soul-searching, under accusations of hypocrisy from the left. People are getting fired for their online reactions to Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Some are being doxxed to their employers. Isn’t this the very cancel culture the right has been complaining about?

This is a conundrum always faced by a liberal democracy. It was pressing during the 1920s to 1950s. Can you allow a Nazi Party or a Communist Party to openly organize and compete in elections? After all, they are rejecting the electoral system itself. How do you handle a political movement that advocates political violence? That commits it?

If political violence is allowed, the electoral system itself disintegrates. The decision devolves to mobs in the streets.

Celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk is endorsing political violence; and advocating political violence, implicitly or explicitly.

Inciting violence in any context is criminal. Inciting or advocating political violence steps that up to something like treason.

The right in America is currently undergoing some soul-searching, under accusations of hypocrisy from the left. People are getting fired for their online reactions to Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Some are being doxxed to their employers. Isn’t this the very cancel culture the right has been complaining about? 

This is a conundrum always faced by a liberal democracy. It was pressing during the 1920s to 1950s. Can you allow a Nazi Party or a Communist Party to openly organize and compete in elections? After all, they are rejecting the electoral system itself. How do you handle a political movement that advocates political violence? That commits it? 

If political violence is allowed, the electoral system itself disintegrates. The decision devolves to mobs in the streets.

Celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk is endorsing political violence; and advocating political violence, implicitly or explicitly.

Inciting violence in any context is criminal. Inciting or advocating political violence steps that up to something like treason.

The Motive Behind the Assassination of Charlie Kirk

I had been puzzled over the motive behind Charlie Kirk’s assassination. There was no sign of mental illness. There was no prior criminal record. The assassin was not some desperate loser like Lee Harvey Oswald or Sirhan Sirhan whose only hope of fame was to kill someone famous. This guy had been an A student. Why did he kill Charlie Kirk?

Now it makes sense.

It turns out he had been living with a trans lover. Now it makes sense. He was necessarily part of the “LGBTQ community; although he was probably not sure himself which letter properly referred to himself. His “trans” “partner” initiated him into the trans ideology, and he had to embrace it to be in that relationship. And the trans ideology is in effect extreme narcissism: the idea that one’s personal will must override biology, mut override physical reality itself. This is in effect an assumption of godlike powers, the right to control reality. 

God naturally also has the right to kill; God kills all of us, after all, sooner or later. As God, the assassin could kill or destroy anyone who stood in his way.

Charlie Kirk denied he had the right or ability to control the world. So Charlie Kirk had to die.

Transgenderism is endemic in the culture now because he conviction that you are God is endemic in the culture now. A recent Facebook post--from a close acquaintance and in a sense a friend!-- expressed the common New Age sentiment. I encounter it at least monthly, it not daily, in Canada. I quote:

“We are divinity itself…we are here to take FULL responsibility for Ourselves, we are the ones we've been waiting for, we are here to save Ourselves…We are the manifestations of Source expressing and experiencing itself in the form of Infinite Many-ness. We are already ‘That.’ … There is no God outside of you. It is nonsense to worship that with you are a literal living, breathing expression of... It's a mind control program propagated to keep the masses feeling less then, keeping them disempowered and continuously beLIEving that ‘God’ or ‘the power’ is ‘out there’ - It's all nonsense, tools of control.”

Here is a whiff here of Advaita Vedanta Hinduism: “tat tvam asi,” “Brahman-atman.” But Vedantic Hinduism has been mostly superseded in India itself by devotional Hinduism: it has over the centuries lost the competition of ideas even there. It is of course incompatible with Christianity, Judaism, or Islam; and with Buddhism. 

And with Western paganism.

This is the sin the ancient Greeks called “hubris”: thinking you are a god. Bad news: it leads inevitably to madness and disaster on a social scale. It was also a crime in Athenian law; it was understood to lead automatically to the abuse of others. 

It is moreover the original sin with which Satan tempts Eve: “when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” And it is Lucifer’s own original sin. From this sin all other sin emerges.

It is also an untenable claim. As Descartes pointed out in his Meditations, it is immediately obvious to us that it is false.

“If I were independent of every other existence, and were myself the author of my being, I should doubt of nothing, I should desire nothing, and, in fine, no perfection would be wanting to me; for I should have bestowed upon myself every perfection of which I possess the idea, and I should thus be God.”

And this, however much the narcissist might wish it, is transparently not so. We know we do not know everything; we know we make mistakes. We know we cannot fly. We know things happen to us that are unexpected, even against our will. 

Hence the inevitable retreat into bitterness, anger, depression, and hostility towards the universe. And to violence towards others.

There is another emotional issue with the belief that we are God: it leaves us alone in the universe. I recall Ramakrishna’s emotional objection to monism: “I want to taste sugar. I don’t want to BE sugar.” There is no possibility of Martin Buber’s “I-Thou” relationship, which is the entire point of existence. God is love, and now there is no one to love, and so no love, and no God.

We must pull out of this tailspin. 

The Murder of Charlie Kirk

In the face of the death of Charlie Kirk, I am consoled by the ancient saying, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church”; and by the more modern saying, “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." 

Some fear this will make public discourse impossible; and America will of necessity dissolve into general violence. 

I am hopeful that, instead, this might be the tipping point beyond which no decent person will admit to being on the woke left. The moral high ground counts for everything; and the left has now lost it decisively. 

I see signs of this. MSNBC fired their analyst Matthew Dowd within hours for commenting on air that Kirk deserved to die for his supposed “hate speech.” And they issued a public apology. U of T professor Ruth Marshall posted on social media “Shooting is honestly too good for so many of you fascist c–ts.” And has already been placed on leave.

Whether the left has developed a conscience or not, businesses know how their bread is buttered. They have belatedly gotten the message that the public mood has changed. They have learned the lesson of Bud Light, Disney, Target, and Cracker Barrel. Nobody wants to be next.

And the fact that some leftist has resorted to murder shows that Kirk won the argument. So they had to silence him. But did this work with Martin Luther King? Mahatam Gandhi? Socrates? Jesus Christ?

When they fight you, then you win.

I suspect that, two years from now, nobody will admit to ever having been “woke” or voting for Kamala Harris.