Is the First Amendment Overrated?

Charlie Kirk showed us that Americans don't deserve our most basic amendment

America doesn’t get to have a First Amendment for free. It demands maturity and accountability.

Image by Alice Popkorn via Flickr

When some Democrats started polishing Charlie Kirk’s racism, misogyny, and deep hatred for the trans community as part of an honorarium upon his death, I threw up in my mouth just enough to make me question one of the United States’ most basic and cherished principles.

As I wrote when he was assassinated, turning Kirk into a martyr was awful, and so is the fact that his family has to deal with it.

But it doesn’t justify wiping his slate clean, like Gavin Newsom did while taking a break from his AI-meme-apalooza. Gavin, in one of his less lucid moments (I hope), wrote:¹

“I knew Charlie, and I admired his passion and commitment to debate. His senseless murder is a reminder of how important it is for all of us, across the political spectrum, to foster genuine discourse on issues that deeply affect us all without resorting to political violence.

“The best way to honor Charlie’s memory is to continue his work: engage with each other, across ideology, through spirited discourse. In a democracy, ideas are tested through words and good-faith debate — never through violence. Honest disagreement makes us stronger; violence only drives us further apart and corrodes the values at the heart of this nation.”

Not to be outdone in the Democratic leadership’s battle to sanewash Kirk, Governor Josh Shapiro ordered U.S. and Pennsylvania flags to fly at half-mast for two days in Kirk’s honor.²

The best way to honor Charlie Kirk’s memory is to forget about him, and maybe even be thankful for the possibility of my latest conspiracy theory, that a time traveler from the future visited us to prevent Kirk from becoming president, which seems to be the road that the adoring press, which seems to love flamboyant assholes, was putting him on.

Maybe, instead, Democrats should return to the project at hand: Getting to the bottom of Trump’s bottomless Epstein scandal.

Let’s immediately rewind to some of the stuff Kirk said before he was disappeared by a sniper.

The Charlie Kirk experience

All of these quotes are fully documented in the footnotes, many via video clips.

Speaking before the ultra-Christo-nationalist right-wing group that he founded, TurningPoint USA, he said this about guns:³

“You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won't have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It's drivel… I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”

On SiriusXM, he broadcast a plea for a ‘patriot’ to post bail for the man who took a claw hammer to the head of Nanci Pelosi’s husband, Paul, in the Pelosi residence.⁴

Describing prominent, successful, and brilliant African American women, he wrote that they needed affirmative action to succeed because they did not…

“…have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously, so they had to steal a white person’s slot.”⁵

‌Reacting to Taylor Swift’s engagement to Travis Kelce, he said that Taylor Swift should submit to her betrothed:⁶

“This is something that I hope will make Taylor Swift more conservative. Engage in reality more… Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You're not in charge.”

His views on abortion were primitive even by far-right standards: abortion is murder, he said, and should be illegal, including in cases of rape, even if that rape involved his daughter, and even if she was as young as ten.⁷

Kirk said that being gay is an “error,” compared it to alcoholism and drug addiction, and said that stoning people was “God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”⁸

When the mad clown blamed diversity hiring for a collision between an American Airlines plane and a Black Hawk Army helicopter, Kirk celebrated by saying, "If I see a Black pilot, I'm going to be like, 'Boy, I hope he's qualified.'"⁹

Kirk said George Floyd didn’t die from police brutality, but instead, as if he had been invited to be a medical examiner for a day, Floyd died from an overdose. Then, he conflated Floyd with a murderer and repeat offender, and, with some careful phrasing, implied that George was that murderer:¹⁰

Screencap of Kirk tweet

He went on to say that Floyd was a “scumbag,” even though he had never met the man.¹¹

He said that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a mistake and an “anti-white weapon.”¹²

Speaking at a Turning Point USA political festival in front of impressionable students, Kirk said, “MLK [Martin Luther King Jr.] was awful. He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.”¹³

Of Jews, he said, “Some of the largest financiers of left-wing anti-white causes have been Jewish Americans.”¹⁴

Conservative Jewish donors ignored the slurs, and helped propel him further into the limelight by promoting him as a speaker at the 2024 Republican National Convention.

He endorsed the bizarre White Replacement Theory that claims that white Americans are being replaced by people with darker skin tones than they. He brought up Jews again when he talked about it, saying they were behind the evil plot.¹⁵

The White Replacement Theory, and Kirk’s insistence that Jewish Americans were behind it, was the catalyst for the killing of 11 Jewish worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.

Instead of taking any responsibility for the carnage caused by his rhetoric, Kirk doubled down in 2023 by claiming that Jewish philanthropists were funding Black Lives Matter (not that that would be a bad thing), saying on The Charlie Kirk Show, “The philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.”¹⁶

In another show, he said Jews controlled “not just the colleges — it’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it.”¹⁷

But, of course, he defended Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza:

Image capture by Focus on Western Islamism

After his death, Kirk was called a “lion-hearted” friend of Israel by Netanyahu, whereas the reaction in the Muslim world ranged from silence to repugnance over his support for the genocide in Gaza. Some in the Islamic world pondered whether or not he was killed by Mossad to help prop up Trump.¹⁸

Of New York City’s progressive mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, Kirk said, “America’s largest city was attacked by radical Islam 24 years ago, and now a similar form of that pernicious force is poised to capture city hall.”¹⁹

He called Climate Change “complete gibberish, nonsense, and balderdash” when he began to infest the UK with Turning Point UK, part of an effort to take his pogrom against humanity overseas before he died.²⁰

He even complained once (at least) about sign language interpreters:²¹

I'm gonna say this just off the cuff before I introduce our guest. Can we please just go away with half the screen during these emergency briefings to the sign language interpreters? I have nothing against, obviously, people that cannot hear, but there's closed captioning. I mean, this is just over the top. We can't do this. We gotta get back to how it used to be. It's just, oh, it's just too much. It's a distraction is what it is. The reason is they do these emergency briefings for fires or terrorist attacks, and you're looking at this and you're not listening. I don't like it.

Not much of this stuff qualifies for things that I think should fall outside of First Amendment protection, but his followers were constantly saying things that were. In one recent video, Kirk had to tame an animal.

It’s surprising that he didn’t have to shove the bottom of a chair in his adoring fan’s face when his supporter asked him, "When do we get to use the guns? To kill these people?" Kirk’s taming session was caught on film and posted to BlueSky:

There’s no introspection in Kirk’s reaction. Sure, he tries to tame the beast, but he doesn’t discuss his contribution to the beast being out of the cage in the first place.

I’m alighting on Kirk, not to prance on the graves of the dead, but to point out that our society, including people who should know better, like Gavin Newsom and Josh Shapiro, continues to polish the raw hate that emanates from charmers like Kirk.

Kirk helped Trump capture 45 percent of the national youth vote during the 2024 election, mostly on the strength of his outreach on college campuses and other youth demographic strongholds.²²

This wouldn’t have happened if his cohorts were getting either no coverage or, instead, received the type of coverage they deserve.

When I was growing up, even though I was a young boy, I knew that George Wallace was a racist because the press covered him as one. He’d be a media star today, with a gushing corporate press hungry for his next quote.

The First Amendment protects lies. This is fine, as long as liars are called out to the carpet and held accountable. They are not. Instead, racism breeds from the First Amendment because we let it.

Let’s go back into the Trump time machine for a bit to see what I mean.

Time Traveling to Mad Clown 1.0

For this, we travel to the mad clown’s first term and Miami Dade County, where we encounter a man named René García, now the chairman of the Miami-Dade Republican Party Committee, who once said this about the antics of the Proud Boys in the local Republican Party:²³

“Yes, we have different points of view in our party. That’s how we are. And my job as Republican chairman is to protect everyone’s First Amendment right, however wrong they may be.”

Image of Chilean dictator Pinochet admirers by Anthony Crider, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Chew on that a minute.

However wrong you may be, you have a right to say it.

But it’s not true. You actually don’t have that right.

Not even within the current parameters of the First Amendment, if we had a normal Supreme Court that honored its own precedent.

Racist bloviating should not be a First Amendment right any more than shouting “FIRE!” in a crowded theater.

But under the two Trump regimes, we have seen groups like the Proud Boys, while the rest of us are doomscrolling, injecting themselves into local politics across the country with impunity and a worshipful mainstream press eager to tell us all about them.

The Proud Boys, for those of you who have been lucky enough to avoid their nationalist squeals, is a racist²⁴ group that is most famous for its role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

But they are much more than a hub for insurrectionists. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center:²⁵

Brian Brathovd, aka Caerulus Rex, told his co-hosts on “The Daily Shoah,” an antisemitic podcast popular with the alt-right. If the Proud Boys “were pressed on the issue, I guarantee you that like 90% of them would tell you something along the lines of ‘Hitler was right. Gas the Jews.’”

The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project has been tracking them. They say that the Proud Boys is one of the most active groups in America’s burgeoning ultra-nationalist terror network, with actions in 28 states, including numerous acts of violence.²⁶

In other words, they’re the KKK without the hoods.

Their views are no longer marginalized. They are now part of the regime that governs the country.

In Dade County, one Republican operative, a woman, of course, had to file a restraining order against another Republican operative.

Guess what? That operative was a KKK, err, sorry, Proud Boy.

According to the New York Times article cited above, he was among…

“…at least a half dozen current and former Proud Boys who have secured seats on the Miami-Dade Republican Executive Committee, seeking to influence local politics from the inside.”

This includes people who were convicted for their role in the January 6 insurrection.

Guys like Gilbert Fonticoba,²⁷ who has been such a virulent Proud Boy that he once called the founder of a Miami Proud Boys chapter a rat and allegedly threatened him through social media apps like Telegram.²⁸

Fonticoba, along with his pal Gabriel Garcia,²⁹ were members of the Vice City chapter of the Proud Boys.

Both were proud members of the Miami-Dade Republican Executive Committee. Both are also proud members of the Department of Justice’s former prosecution docket and were eventually convicted.

Both were proudly pardoned by Trump.³⁰

And it isn’t just Dade County and Florida that the Proud Boys are infiltrating.

Thanks to people like Charlie Kirk and his group Turning Point USA, they’re spreading their disease across the country. They’re getting into local city councils and school boards from Beloit, Wisconsin, to New Hanover County, N.C.³¹

They may be in one where you live.

The mainstream press normalizes all this as it abandons its role as a First Amendment guidepost.

Charlie Kirk wasn’t a Proud Boy in name, but he was in spirit. Abusers of the First Amendment not only protected him, they egged him on, rewarding him for his daily geysers of hate. And now, in his passing, they are feting him like a great purveyor of discourse.

His followers use apps like Telegram to incite one another to do unpleasant things. Worse, their various social media app channels reach unstable people, who do things like slaughter innocent shoppers and churchgoers.

Shutting them down is easy from a legal standpoint. The Biden Administration didn’t have the guts to do it. And now, there’s nobody around who will even consider doing it.

But after we regain our broken government, we can. And we should.

If we listen to the precedent set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in one of its rare unanimous decisions, Schenck v. United States, it is fair to conclude that groups like the Proud Boys present a clear and present danger and should be punished by, at least, shutting them down.

I really don’t think we should waste prison food on them, but we have a perfectly legal way to at least get their voices out of circulation.

You see, Schenck v. United States declared some limitations to the First Amendment. Specifically, according to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who wrote the decision in 1919:³²

“In many places and in ordinary times, the defendants, in saying all that was said in the circular, would have been within their constitutional rights. But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done…

“…The words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.”

A subsequent case before the Supreme Court, Brandenburg v. Ohio, amended this in 1969 by declaring that government restrictions on free speech must be limited to:³³

…inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.

That’s fine. I can live with that.

So maybe it isn’t the First Amendment we need to adjust. Maybe it’s our understanding of it.

Because you know what? No. You don’t get to be a racist or misogynist. You don’t get to encourage people to break into the homes of former U.S. Speakers of the House and smash their husbands’ skulls open.

Racism and misogyny incite and produce imminent lawless action and are likely to incite or produce such action.

If you’re a Black dude and I walk up to you and hurl a racist invective at you, the only thing holding you back from popping me in the teeth is, well, I don’t know. Hopefully, nothing, although the history of Black America suggests that our Black brothers and sisters have been handling 500+ years of oppression with a level of grace that makes a mockery of the kind of God that whites in America’s racist Bible Belt say they worship.

But if you do hit me in the teeth, even if I deserved it, you broke the law. However, I caused imminent lawless action. My verbal attack incited you. Case, as the judge says, closed. I’m in the wrong. Not you. At least, that’s how it should be.

But racism doesn’t just incite those it is directed against. Look what it did in Buffalo. In that case, an 18-year-old boy used a weapon of war to massacre ten people in a supermarket. He targeted Black people after getting fired up reading and participating in online racist forums.

Similarly, the nation has endured abortion clinic bombings for decades.

Racism and misogyny are pretty much designed to incite violence. They are mounds of hate fuel. They have been for a long time. The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre³⁴ didn’t happen in a vacuum. It was the result of good old white boys patting themselves on the back while hurling racist insults every chance they could.

Racist discourse was a direct cause of what happened in Tulsa and Buffalo.

You don’t get to be a racist. The First Amendment does not give you that right. I just explained why. The Supreme Court has actually said so. Twice.

But maybe Americans are simply not emotionally and politically mature enough to deserve the blessings of that very first amendment that its founders considered the bedrock of the American experience.

Or, maybe, we could start showing, on the approach of the nation’s 250th anniversary, that we have the emotional maturity to hold its abusers accountable.

Thanks for reading!

UPDATE

They caught Kirk’s killer, who is another example of our lack of First Amendment maturity, and, of course, much worse than that.

Footnotes

1. “Governor Newsom Statement on the Murder of Charlie Kirk | Governor of California.” 2025. Governor of California. September 10, 2025. https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/09/10/governor-newsom-statement-on-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk/.

2. “Gov Shapiro Orders U.S., Commonwealth Flags to Half-Staff Honor Charlie Kirk.” 2025. Pa.gov. 2025. https://www.pa.gov/governor/newsroom/2025-press-releases/gov-shapiro-orders-u-s---commonwealth-flags-to-half-staff-honor-.

3. https://x.com/Ronxyz00/status/1965872119604289791 embedded in this story:

Liles, Jordan. 2025. “Charlie Kirk Once Said Some Gun Deaths ‘Worth It’ in Order to Have Second Amendment.” Snopes. Snopes.com. September 10, 2025. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-gun-deaths-quote/.

4. Baker, Alex. 2025. “Charlie Kirk Once Called for ‘Patriot’ to Bail out Paul Pelosi Assailant David DePape.” KRON4. September 11, 2025. https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/charlie-kirk-once-called-for-patriot-to-bail-out-paul-pelosi-assailant-david-depape/.

5. https://x.com/JaValle/status/1965924690293379384

6. Bedigan, Mike. 2025. “Charlie Kirk Claims Taylor Swift’s Engagement to Travis Kelce Is a Sign She’ll Become ‘Conservative’: ‘Submit to Your Husband.’” The Independent. August 27, 2025. https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/charlie-kirk-taylor-swift-travis-kelce-engagement-b2814724.html.

7. YouTube link:

8. https://x.com/patriottakes/status/1800678317030564306

Wolf, J.D. 2024. “Trump Campaign Partner Charlie Kirk Called Being Gay an ‘Error,’ Praised Stoning to Death.” MeidasTouch News. June 12, 2024. https://meidasnews.com/news/trump-campaign-partner-charlie-kirk-called-being-gay-an-error-praised-stoning-to-death.

9. Video on Instagram:

blklivesmatter

A post shared by @blklivesmatter

10. https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1964925309813440833

11. BEAUMONT, THOMAS. 2021. “Charlie Kirk Exploits Racial Divide to Reach Gen Z.” Mypanhandle.com. November 17, 2021. https://www.mypanhandle.com/news/local-news/politics-news/how-a-right-wing-provocateur-is-using-race-to-reach-gen-z/.

12. Ahn, Ashley, and Maxine Joselow. 2025. “Where Charlie Kirk Stood on Key Political Issues.” Nytimes.com. The New York Times. September 11, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/us/charlie-kirk-views-guns-gender-climate.html.

13. WILLIAMS, ARMSTRONG. 2024. “Charlie Kirk’s Dastardly Attack on Martin Luther King Jr.” The Journal. January 19, 2024. https://www.journal-news.net/journal-news/charlie-kirks-dastardly-attack-on-martin-luther-king-jr/article_481a7d67-85cb-5cfd-a264-49fa9a0717b9.html.

14. “Charlie Kirk Defends Elon Musk’s Antisemitism: ‘Some of the Largest Financiers of Left-Wing Anti-White Causes Have Been Jewish Americans.’” 2023. Media Matters for America. November 16, 2023. https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-defends-elon-musks-antisemitism-some-largest-financiers-left-wing-anti.

15. Media Matters for America, ibid

16. New York Times, ibid

17. New York Times, ibid

18. https://www.meforum.org/dexter-van-zile. 2025. “Islamists Respond to Charlie Kirk’s Assassination.” Middle East Forum. September 11, 2025. https://www.meforum.org/fwi/fwi-news/islamists-respond-to-charlie-kirks-assassination.

19. https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1937706638754087169

20. YouTube video (made by lunatic followers):

21. “Charlie Kirk Calls for Eliminating Sign Language Interpreters during Emergency Briefings: ‘It’s a Distraction.’” 2025. Media Matters for America. January 8, 2025. https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-calls-eliminating-sign-language-interpreters-during-emergency-briefings.

22. New York Times, ibid

23. Mazzei, Patricia, and Alan Feuer. 2022. “How the Proud Boys Gripped the Miami-Dade Republican Party.” Nytimes.com. The New York Times. June 2, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/02/us/miami-republicans-proud-boys.html.

24. As defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center; “Proud Boys.” 2025. Southern Poverty Law Center. March 24, 2025. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/proud-boys/.

25. Southern Poverty Law Center, ibid

26. “Actor Profile: Proud Boys.” 2025. ACLED. June 17, 2025. https://acleddata.com/report/actor-profile-proud-boys.

27. “Florida ‘Proud Boy’ Sentenced to Prison on Felony Charges Related to Jan. 6 Capitol Breach.” 2024. Justice.gov. January 11, 2024. https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/florida-proud-boy-sentenced-prison-felony-charges-related-jan-6-capitol-breach.

28. Ceballos, Joshua. 2021. “Proud Boy Enrique Tarrio Denied Release: Is He Safer in Jail?” Miami New Times. November 20, 2021. https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/proud-boys-threaten-rat-enrique-tarrio-if-he-returns-to-miami-13355782.

29. “Florida Man Sentenced to Prison for Felony Obstruction of Law Enforcement during Jan. 6 Capitol Breach.” 2024. Justice.gov. December 6, 2024. https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/florida-man-sentenced-prison-felony-obstruction-law-enforcement-during-jan-6-capitol.

30. Gorchow, Joe. 2025. “Trump’s Jan. 6th Riot Pardons Draw Criticism; Tarrio’s Lawyer Speaks Out.” Cbsnews.com. January 21, 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/criticism-mounts-after-trump-pardons-hundreds-linked-to-january-6th-capitol-riot/.

‌Inclán, Lorena. 2025. “Jan. 6 Defendant Cuts off Ankle Monitor in Celebration after Trump Pardon.” NBC 6 South Florida. January 21, 2025. https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/jan-6-defendant-cuts-off-ankle-monitor-in-celebration-after-trump-pardon/3521148/.

31. Frenkel, Sheera. 2021. “Proud Boys Regroup, Focusing on School Boards and Town Councils.” Nytimes.com. The New York Times. December 14, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/14/us/proud-boys-local-issues.html.

32. Contributors. 2003. “United States Supreme Court Case.” Wikipedia.org. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. January 14, 2003. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States.

33. to, Contributors. 2003. “1969 United States Supreme Court Case.” Wikipedia.org. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. April 30, 2003. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio.

34. “1921 Tulsa Race Massacre - Museum of Tulsa History.” 2025. Museum of Tulsa History. July 11, 2025. https://tulsahistory.org/exhibit/1921-tulsa-race-massacre/.