Something that makes us as humans very different from animals is our ability to have intelligent dialogue, exposing ourselves to experiences or perspectives we would not have originally discovered ourselves.
Note that intelligent dialogue can range from discussing what is the best kind of pizza, all the way to how we govern ourselves as people.
As someone who is very passionate about supreme pizza, I still will discuss with others about their favorites. Maybe one of us will change our opinion! The fact pizza is being talked about at all brings light to the different doughs, sauces and toppings which could represent opinions an individual could take out of complicated dialog, such as dialogue Charlie Kirk engaged in. Whether you agreed with him or not, his influence created more voices from every viewpoint.
It is OK to respectfully not agree. It’s what makes the First Amendment so influential. But once we snuff out every voice we slightly don’t agree with, who keeps us in check when we’re wrong?
Of course, some voices can be a bit loud, obnoxious and against your beliefs, but one must use their media literacy skills to tune them out. Their credibility will eventually be ruined the more errors they make.
Ironically the murder of Kirk last week on the Utah Valley University campus not only brought right-leaning people closer, this event divided some on the left, only hurting what I’d assume was the murderer’s political agenda. According to The New York Times, an MSNBC reporter named Matthew Dowd lost his job after saying insensitive comments prior to Kirk’s death: “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.”
This executive action to terminate Dowd was very important not only for MSNBC’s credibility but to make their stance on the subject very clear.
This is very important for young college students to ingest, making sure violence and assassinations are not the precedent we want to be setting. Reporting the full story is not only responsible but respectful for the left leaning news outlets to cover, using this as an opportunity to reiterate the intellectual importance of our First Amendment.
Categories: Contributed, Opinion
