We are in the cancel culture part of the tragedy cycle
thefire.org
thefire.org
This article very rightly points out that Kirk has never been a liberal in the sense of really advocating for free speech but rather he’s mobilized the idea of liberalism to wrongly differentiate himself from campus illiberals who have notably given up on liberalism, the categorical imperative and such. Like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horowitz
would very much like to punish everyone who disagrees with him but things have gone so far with certain groups, particularly transgender activists, that it is easy to mobilize the idea of liberalism in service of an illiberal cause (notably: I see both Kirk and canceling transgenderists as more similar than different, Kirk can fool a lot of folks like Ezra Klein into thinking he’s better by mobilizing the idea of liberalism)
I dom’t appreciate “cancel culture” though in the title because it is a coded word.
But I've also never quite bought in to the idea that Charlie Kirk was a titan of free speech - it always struck me as a calculated, if sincere, way of capturing the illiberal nature of "liberal" campus politics. Of course, once the trap has been so obviously set for you, it's your own damn fault if you fall into the hole. You don't get to be violent because someone made you look foolish.
This editorial (like most things out of FIRE) was so intellectually on point that I found the conclusions challenging, even though I agree with them on essentially all first principles.
Lack of a united front on effective identity hacking is a yuge part what makes liberalism (& nominally liberal institutions) akratic, but that's another day's topic..