Transcription
All right. So, um, I didn't realize this was going to be kind of a theme show because we write our editorial before the week starts, and so it was all about freedom of speech. Then the assassination occurred. So, this is turning into a theme show.
But it is kind of interesting that this guy was shot and he's been on our show, on my podcast. I talked to him. I liked him. I get, I like, I like everybody. I talk to everybody. I think I'm, I'm glad I took that approach. But he was shot under a banner that said, "Prove me wrong" because he was a debater. And too many people think the way to do that, to prove you wrong, is to just eliminate you from talking altogether. So the people who mocked his death or justified it, I think you're gross. I have no use for you. The people who are saying now, "We're at war," I have no use for you.
So my first question, true or false? I think the real war is not between left or right. It's for the people from the, it's between the people on both sides who want a war and the people who don't. I mean, I think that's accurate.
Uh, I knew Charlie for 13 years and when he was a kid, he was like an 18-year-old kid when I first met Charlie in the Breakers in Palm Beach and he was fundraising, running around, and I watched him, you know, grow into a man and watch him, you know, get married and have a couple of very young kids and, you know, whatever you thought of Charlie's views is irrelevant. The fact is that what he made his living doing and what he actually did quite well, made himself really good at this, was just going and talking to people on the other side. And that's, you know, what he was killed doing. He was literally in the middle of answering a question and picked up the microphone and was shot in the throat.
And we do have a serious problem in this country with people who believe that violence is the proper response to speech. And that that does skew young. I mean, what the polls tend to show is that of Gen Z, only 58% of Gen Z believes that there is no excuse for violence in response to speech. Meaning that 42% believe that there are sometimes that the violence ought to be a response to speech, which is, which is deeply terrifying.
I mean, on a personal level, obviously, I have 24/7 security. I've had 24/7 security for a decade. Uh, I've spoken at a lot of college campuses. I never, honest to God, thought that we were going to get to this point. Even the assassination of political figures is not the same thing as just being shot in the throat for the crime of debating issues in the public square. Um, and I thought wrong. You know, I thought that that's not what America is or what it should be about. And we've come to some place incredibly dark in our nation's history. And you know, I, I, I weep for the country. I weep for Charlie.
It's, it's terrific. Yeah, thoughts. Yeah, you know, to Ben's point, uh, a lot of the polling we've seen in recent years is all pointing in the wrong direction on this question about how acceptable political violence is. And, and, uh, you know, I did not know Charlie. We were sort of sparring partners from afar at times, disagreed on a lot of things. I've got to say, one of the things that I really, really admired about the guy, especially over these last couple of years. I kept seeing these clips of him on campuses, on your podcast, talking with Gavin Newsom on his podcast. Yeah, he wanted the debate. He wanted the dialogue. He, he was not trying to cancel or or censor or shut people down. He, he wanted to have those conversations with you. And it's just, it's, it's tragic and it's terrible on so many levels. This is a young guy. He's a husband. He's a father. Child of God. And he was killed representing the very American ideal that we settle our fights with words, not with weapons, which sounds cliche, but it's, it's how we're here. It's how this experiment in self-government works. And when that starts to fall apart, we've seen a lot of political violence in recent years. I mean, we, you know, I was with Steve Scalise in the hospital after he was nearly assassinated. Gabby Giffords, January 6th, the attempt in Butler on President Trump's life. Um, and sadly, the response to this has not been shock and horror and a reversal of the trend line in these polls. If anything, it seems as though, particularly to Ben's point, among younger voters, that this is becoming mainstreamed and becoming acceptable in some way.
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