September 17, 2025

NOT LIBERAL, NOT PROGRESSIVE: Meet the Illiberal Left.

I asked my AI assistant to argue that celebrating Charlie Kirk’s assassination was somehow liberal or progressive. And it told me it couldn’t. Not really.

Oh, it could parrot slogans: “speech is violence,” “silencing hate is progress,” “free speech isn’t free from consequences.” But it couldn’t make a coherent case within the older framework of liberalism, usually referred to today as classical liberalism — the one that prized free speech, debate, and persuasion. Because there is no argument in that framework that justifies shooting a man for talking.

That realization hit me like a hammer.

It’s not just that the left leans differently on facts or values. It’s that we no longer share the same definitions of words. “Liberal,” “progressive,” “justice,” “violence,” “safety,” “democracy” — these words have been redefined until left and right mean opposite things when using them.

  • Violence used to mean fists, knives, bullets. Now, on the left, it means words.
  • Safety used to mean freedom from physical harm. Now it means freedom from disagreement.
  • Justice used to mean fairness. Now it means equity — enforced sameness of outcomes.
  • Liberal used to mean defending speech, even speech you despised. Now it means silencing “dangerous” speech.
  • Progressive used to mean reform. Now it means control in the name of inclusion.We literally are no longer speaking the same language.

    This is why Charlie Kirk’s words were intolerable. He didn’t threaten anyone’s life. He threatened the redefined reality that today’s leftists live in. By speaking clearly and persuasively, by listening and debating, he proved that disagreement was still possible. And that was enough to make him a villain in the new vocabulary of “progress.”

    That’s why his death was mocked, his vigils defaced, and grief for him romanticized away by the media. Because in their framework, silencing him was liberalism. Celebrating him would have shattered their narrative. And seeing us mourn him and lionize him as a martyr is intolerable to the intolerant.

As Melissa Chen tweets, “By refusing to debate, it helped to enthrone their ideological superiority.”

UPDATE:

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll