Charlie Kirk’s Death Has Created New Debates Around The First Amendment
(ANALYSIS) Days after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi poured gasoline on raging national debates about social media chatter celebrating the 31-year-old activist's death.
“Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It's a crime,” Bondi said. Responding to critics, she added, via social media: “For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations and cheer on political violence. That era is over.”
Prominent conservatives immediately rejected her words, noting that “hate speech” is a term, historically, used by the hard left.
Some of the statements opposing Bondi included this relevant point of view: “You should be allowed to say outrageous things. … There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. And all of it is protected by the First Amendment.”
That quote was from Charlie Kirk.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas noted that, while some employees may face “consequences for celebrating murder” in the workplace, any talk of government actions is out of line. “The First Amendment absolutely protects speech,” he said, at a Politico tech summit. “It absolutely protects hate speech. It protects vile speech. It protects horrible speech. What does that mean? It means you cannot be prosecuted for speech, even if it is evil and bigoted and wrong.”
Weeks later, red and blue America is still debating the cause of Kirk’s murder. Did this conservative activist, to some degree, reap what he sowed in years of blunt, candid speech on gender, immigration, Great Society programs, DEI and other topics?
Or was he a First Amendment martyr killed – according to the accused shooter's family and emerging Internet evidence – by a dark-Web Antifa disciple with personal ties to a transgender network?
You can read the rest of Terry Mattingly’s piece at the Overby Center for Southern Journalism & Politics.
Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.