And how many were actually part of either campus, and how many were simply keyboard warriors making a couple clicks to register their censoriousness ...
👏👏👏 God bless you, Ian Rowe not only for all the great work you do in education but for this invaluable article that couldn’t have come at a more crucial time! Free speech, open inquiry and the free exchange of ideas are under attack on college campuses across the nation both from the left and the right. FIRE’s data makes this abundantly clear! We need to fix the broken education system that produced students like this in the first place and we need to reaffirm the above values and instill them in our children. They must understand that all views no matter how disgusting and distasteful must be heard and that every single human being regardless of color, race, creed, gender, sexuality, gender identity, level of ability, political views, ethnicity, or national origin has inherent worth and dignity!
Charlie Kirk’s death is a sad commentary both on the state of free speech in America and on America in general. It doesn’t matter who it is. If it’s the Ku Klux Klan, the local Republicans club, the American Communist Party, the NAACP, the Church of Satan, Flat Earthers, 9/11 Truthers, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Teamsters Union, the Freemasons, Islamists, or the Jewish Defense League, they ALL have the right to speak without being killed for their speech, shouted down or blocked from entering the area! It doesn’t matter if it’s Ta-Nieshi Coates, Sean Hannity or Dave Smith. You do NOT have the right to stop them from giving a talk, holding a rally or speaking on campus! The public school system needs to instill this in Generation Alpha and the generations that follow them.
We need to both reform and revamp the public school system while offering those parents who’d be interested, school choice! We should have many different models of education in this country. Let’s rededicate ourselves to Charlie’s most noble mission! I wish Turning Point USA all the best in their mission to start civil debate on campus and foster robust discussion. Free speech is a sacred right for all Americans no matter whether it’s liberals, conservatives, moderates, libertarians, Communists, socialists, Nazis, white supremacists, black separatists, Anarchists, conservative Muslims, ultra-orthodox Jews, gender-critical feminists, Zionists, etc. Ian, this is a great piece that every college student needs to read and it should go viral on social media! I think White Fragility, Between the World and Me and How to Be an Antiracist are highly dangerous books with disgusting content. Doesn’t mean I’d call for them to be banned and pulled from the shelves. I am not a fan of the swastika, the hammer and sickle or the progress pride flag. Doesn’t mean that I want people to be banned from flying those flags.
I don’t care for the films Get Out, Crazy Rich Asians or Ghostbusters 2019 which I think are horrible films full of content highly toxic to American society, doesn’t mean I’d demand they be pulled from circulation. I don’t like the phrases “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” or “globalize the Intifada” doesn’t mean they should be banned and anyone who says them or chants them should be arrested. In the spirit of this remarkable piece that ought to be in the New York Times or Washington Post, here is a reading list of controversial books for everyone to challenge themselves and their core values and that offend your sensibilities:
• The Case Against Free Speech: The First Amendment, Fascism, and the Future of Dissent by PE Moskowitz
• In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action by Vicky Osterweil
• Black Marxism, Revised and Updated by Cedric J. Robinson
• God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades by Rodney Stark
• Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream by Lerone Bennett, Jr.
• Debunking FDR: The Man and the Myths by Mary Grabar
• A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell
• Churchill, Hitler, and The Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World by Pat Buchanan
• The Case for Colonialism by Bruce Gilley
• Not Stolen: The Truth About European Colonialism in the New World by Jeff Fynn-Paul
• The South Was Right!: A New Edition for the 21st Century! by James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy
• Hitler’s War by David Irving
• The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi
I would encourage the author to also bring back debate classes at his school - the old-fashioned kind, where you're assigned a position by a teacher and have to defend it to the best of your ability EVEN IF YOU DON'T AGREE WITH IT
That charter school sounds amazing - just what we need to train our young people and offer their parents a choice beyond what is offered in the standard public school. Thank you for your work and commitment to young people!
To pretend that Charlie Kirk was a free speech advocate and he was shot for exercising his free speech right is a false narrative which we need to give up. Free Speech can be evil speech! His Prove Me Wrong meme became a come-on to teach hatred and intolerance, which the Trump Administration was implementing. His cohort who was inside the Trump Administration was Stephen Miller. One might characterized them as a variation of Good Cop -- Bad Cop routine. Stephen Miller showed us the true core of Charlie Kirk when Miller spoke at the memorial service.
https://tinyurl.com/w9d9u6m8 September 21, 2025 Turning Point USA, Stephen Miller’s Hate Eulogy at Kirk Memorial
The thing which got Kirk shot dead was not Left Wing intolerance, which is an extreme civic evil, but the hatred which Trump, Kirk, and Miller were sponsoring daily and ruining the lives of tens of thousands of Gay and Transgenders and their families.
It is not condoning murder to point out that Trump's, Miller's, and Kirk's hate speech, which was being translated into action, that got Kirk shot dead. Without their vile, polarizing hate speech, Tyler Robinson would not have shot Kirk. Alt Rt hate is what radicalized Tyler.
https://tinyurl.com/3d7mcyf6 September 18, 2025, CityWatch, Who Radicalized Tyler Robinson?, by Richard Lee Abrams
At this time, Sept 25,2025, 1:30 PM Los Angeles Time, it appears that the Dallas Shooter, Joshua Jahn, was not radicalized by the Left Wing, but by the terrible pain and suffering which ICE was inflicting on innocent people across the nature. If one want to claim that ICE is following the law, then one needs to look at the 1930's anti-Jewish German Nuremberg Laws were the law which the German Gestapo was enforcing. If one believes in free speech, one should be able to show that the acquiescence and public indifference to the Nuremberg Laws gave the Nazis the green light to eventually move-on to the Final Solution.
The Woke Left, however, is not antidote to Right Wing extremism as it is Left Wing extremism. One could posit that both Tyler Robinson and Joshua Jahn took their murderous action because there was no segment of American society which was countering extremism. Thus, they felt a moral duty to take action. This is he same reason Dylan Roof killed the Black church members -- he felt that since no one was combating the Grand Replacement Theory, he had a moral duty to do so. In a non-polarized society, it is unlikely that Roof, Robinson, or Jahn would have turned to murder.
I would be interested to know how many of the people who signed the petition for him not to be allowed to speak showed up for his presentation.
And how many were actually part of either campus, and how many were simply keyboard warriors making a couple clicks to register their censoriousness ...
Thank you
👏👏👏 God bless you, Ian Rowe not only for all the great work you do in education but for this invaluable article that couldn’t have come at a more crucial time! Free speech, open inquiry and the free exchange of ideas are under attack on college campuses across the nation both from the left and the right. FIRE’s data makes this abundantly clear! We need to fix the broken education system that produced students like this in the first place and we need to reaffirm the above values and instill them in our children. They must understand that all views no matter how disgusting and distasteful must be heard and that every single human being regardless of color, race, creed, gender, sexuality, gender identity, level of ability, political views, ethnicity, or national origin has inherent worth and dignity!
Charlie Kirk’s death is a sad commentary both on the state of free speech in America and on America in general. It doesn’t matter who it is. If it’s the Ku Klux Klan, the local Republicans club, the American Communist Party, the NAACP, the Church of Satan, Flat Earthers, 9/11 Truthers, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Teamsters Union, the Freemasons, Islamists, or the Jewish Defense League, they ALL have the right to speak without being killed for their speech, shouted down or blocked from entering the area! It doesn’t matter if it’s Ta-Nieshi Coates, Sean Hannity or Dave Smith. You do NOT have the right to stop them from giving a talk, holding a rally or speaking on campus! The public school system needs to instill this in Generation Alpha and the generations that follow them.
We need to both reform and revamp the public school system while offering those parents who’d be interested, school choice! We should have many different models of education in this country. Let’s rededicate ourselves to Charlie’s most noble mission! I wish Turning Point USA all the best in their mission to start civil debate on campus and foster robust discussion. Free speech is a sacred right for all Americans no matter whether it’s liberals, conservatives, moderates, libertarians, Communists, socialists, Nazis, white supremacists, black separatists, Anarchists, conservative Muslims, ultra-orthodox Jews, gender-critical feminists, Zionists, etc. Ian, this is a great piece that every college student needs to read and it should go viral on social media! I think White Fragility, Between the World and Me and How to Be an Antiracist are highly dangerous books with disgusting content. Doesn’t mean I’d call for them to be banned and pulled from the shelves. I am not a fan of the swastika, the hammer and sickle or the progress pride flag. Doesn’t mean that I want people to be banned from flying those flags.
I don’t care for the films Get Out, Crazy Rich Asians or Ghostbusters 2019 which I think are horrible films full of content highly toxic to American society, doesn’t mean I’d demand they be pulled from circulation. I don’t like the phrases “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” or “globalize the Intifada” doesn’t mean they should be banned and anyone who says them or chants them should be arrested. In the spirit of this remarkable piece that ought to be in the New York Times or Washington Post, here is a reading list of controversial books for everyone to challenge themselves and their core values and that offend your sensibilities:
• The Case Against Free Speech: The First Amendment, Fascism, and the Future of Dissent by PE Moskowitz
• In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action by Vicky Osterweil
• Black Marxism, Revised and Updated by Cedric J. Robinson
• God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades by Rodney Stark
• Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream by Lerone Bennett, Jr.
• Debunking FDR: The Man and the Myths by Mary Grabar
• A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell
• Churchill, Hitler, and The Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World by Pat Buchanan
• The Case for Colonialism by Bruce Gilley
• Not Stolen: The Truth About European Colonialism in the New World by Jeff Fynn-Paul
• The South Was Right!: A New Edition for the 21st Century! by James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy
• Hitler’s War by David Irving
• The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi
• Time To Go Home by Rabbi Meir Kahane
See I wasn’t kidding! 😉
Wow. A list guaranteed to trigger everyone.
I would encourage the author to also bring back debate classes at his school - the old-fashioned kind, where you're assigned a position by a teacher and have to defend it to the best of your ability EVEN IF YOU DON'T AGREE WITH IT
That charter school sounds amazing - just what we need to train our young people and offer their parents a choice beyond what is offered in the standard public school. Thank you for your work and commitment to young people!
That charter school is exactly the kind of school I want my kids to go to. Maybe I should move to the Bronx. All High Schoolers should learn debate.
To pretend that Charlie Kirk was a free speech advocate and he was shot for exercising his free speech right is a false narrative which we need to give up. Free Speech can be evil speech! His Prove Me Wrong meme became a come-on to teach hatred and intolerance, which the Trump Administration was implementing. His cohort who was inside the Trump Administration was Stephen Miller. One might characterized them as a variation of Good Cop -- Bad Cop routine. Stephen Miller showed us the true core of Charlie Kirk when Miller spoke at the memorial service.
https://tinyurl.com/w9d9u6m8 September 21, 2025 Turning Point USA, Stephen Miller’s Hate Eulogy at Kirk Memorial
https://tinyurl.com/crhfe57j Kirk's “God perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.” @2:50
The thing which got Kirk shot dead was not Left Wing intolerance, which is an extreme civic evil, but the hatred which Trump, Kirk, and Miller were sponsoring daily and ruining the lives of tens of thousands of Gay and Transgenders and their families.
It is not condoning murder to point out that Trump's, Miller's, and Kirk's hate speech, which was being translated into action, that got Kirk shot dead. Without their vile, polarizing hate speech, Tyler Robinson would not have shot Kirk. Alt Rt hate is what radicalized Tyler.
https://tinyurl.com/3d7mcyf6 September 18, 2025, CityWatch, Who Radicalized Tyler Robinson?, by Richard Lee Abrams
At this time, Sept 25,2025, 1:30 PM Los Angeles Time, it appears that the Dallas Shooter, Joshua Jahn, was not radicalized by the Left Wing, but by the terrible pain and suffering which ICE was inflicting on innocent people across the nature. If one want to claim that ICE is following the law, then one needs to look at the 1930's anti-Jewish German Nuremberg Laws were the law which the German Gestapo was enforcing. If one believes in free speech, one should be able to show that the acquiescence and public indifference to the Nuremberg Laws gave the Nazis the green light to eventually move-on to the Final Solution.
The Woke Left, however, is not antidote to Right Wing extremism as it is Left Wing extremism. One could posit that both Tyler Robinson and Joshua Jahn took their murderous action because there was no segment of American society which was countering extremism. Thus, they felt a moral duty to take action. This is he same reason Dylan Roof killed the Black church members -- he felt that since no one was combating the Grand Replacement Theory, he had a moral duty to do so. In a non-polarized society, it is unlikely that Roof, Robinson, or Jahn would have turned to murder.