The Democracy of a Thousand Voices
by Don Hall
(republished from The Attention of Fools)
In 2020 the Left went on a wholesale cancellation tour, bullying conservatives and their inbred cousins, the MAGAs, into losing jobs, being investigated, and generally destroyed in only the way a middle school mean girl would—through shame, insult, and overwhelming numbers. Immediately following the assassination of GOP firebrand Charlie Kirk, the Right adopted these tactics and decided to cancel anyone not fully respectful of the man’s untimely demise.
As has been the case for decades, the scorched earth tactics of the Left are co-opted by the Right and refined into a blunt sledgehammer designed to foment nothing less than full retribution. The irony is that Kirk argued that freedom to speak should be absolute and, my guess is, he would have been pretty pissed to see politicians and journalists being punished for the words they chose after he croaked.
He believed in the messy power of democracy in ways those most offended by his flame-throwing rhetoric are simply incapable. His critics, at least those in my circle who consider Kirk a peddler in what they call ‘hate speech,’ more often than not haven’t bothered to go on YouTube and listen to him. I did because I tend to disbelieve most of what the most emotional have to say.
Here’s the deal, gang: hate speech is not illegal. It is not even a legal category in the U.S. Yes, we have laws against incitement, defamation, and libel, but nothing so broad and amorphous as “hate speech.” As Kirk himself once put it: “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”
So when one gleeful protester wrote “I would have killed him myself.” The assassin, he said, “did us a favor.” And another broadcast on Tik Tok “He was a disgusting person with disgusting beliefs. . . . I think things happen for a purpose. And if that’s how his life was ended, then that’s how it was ended.” And there is UCLA’s director of race and equity, Jonathan Perkins, who wrote on Bluesky that “It is OKAY to be happy” about Kirk’s death.
All of it hateful speech but protected fully by our constitution.
Democracy has never been a dinner party with linen napkins and polite forks scraping china. It’s a dive bar with a broken jukebox where the patrons shout over each other, sometimes sing off-key, sometimes throw punches, and occasionally spill beer on your shoes. That noise—that chaos—that’s freedom.
But freedom is always under threat. Three particular saboteurs stalk democracy’s dive bar: the censor who insists only approved songs can be sung, the assassin who flips the table when he can’t win a hand, and the loudmouth who thinks volume equals victory. These are not abstract dangers; they’re historical constants. The fight for absolute free speech, the rejection of assassination as politics by bullet, and the refusal to worship outrage aren’t luxuries. They are survival strategies for self-government.
The Founding Argument
The First Amendment was ratified in 1791 not as a nicety, but as armor. The founders had just fought a war against an empire that considered pamphlets like Common Senseto be sedition. Jefferson called free expression a “first freedom” because all the others depend on it. You can’t assemble, petition, or practice religion if you can’t first speak.
Yet even in its infancy, America tried to strangle its own speech. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 criminalized “false, scandalous, and malicious writing” against the government. Newspapers critical of John Adams were shut down, editors jailed. History judged it a failure and Jefferson rode the backlash into the White House. The lesson: censorship may work short-term, but it poisons democracy long-term.
Consider the alternative: when speech is choked, pressure builds until it explodes. In Tsarist Russia, dissent was crushed so thoroughly that reformers abandoned words for bombs, leading to the assassinations of Alexander II and countless officials. Compare that to America, where abolitionists, suffragists, civil rights activists, and queer liberationists were allowed (if not welcomed) to shout, march, and publish. It was loud, often ugly, but it transformed the nation without triggering regime collapse.
The Supreme Court’s Wobble
American courts have spent two centuries wobbling like a drunk at last call over what counts as protected speech. In 1919 the Court upheld jailing anti-war activists for leaflets, birthing Holmes’ infamous “shouting fire in a crowded theater” line. But by 1969, the pendulum swung back: speech could only be punished if it was intended and likely to incite “imminent lawless action.”
That absolutism saved American dissent during Vietnam and Civil Rights. Without it, Martin Luther King Jr.’s sermons could’ve been criminalized as “incitement.” Instead, his words helped reshape the Constitution more effectively than any gun.
Today’s censors claim the stakes are higher—misinformation spreads faster, hate speech radicalizes quicker. But history reminds us: every new medium sparks moral panic. The printing press birthed witch-hunts, radio amplified fascists, television scared parents into thinking Bugs Bunny would rot children’s brains.
The cure has never been censorship. It’s always been more speech. The Ku Klux Klan rallies; counter-protesters chant louder. A conspiracy theory trends; journalists fact-check it. A demagogue rants; comedians roast him. The cacophony is not a bug of democracy, it’s the operating system.
The Coward’s Checkmate
Political assassination is history’s fool’s errand. Booth thought he avenged the Confederacy by killing Lincoln in 1865; instead, he elevated Lincoln to secular sainthood. Gavrilo Princip fired the shot that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914; instead of liberating Serbia, he plunged Europe into World War I. Yigal Amir assassinated Yitzhak Rabin in 1995; instead of killing peace, he immortalized Rabin as a martyr for it.
Assassination does not silence, it amplifies. Every bullet echoes longer than the shooter imagines.
No era shows this clearer than America’s 1960’s. John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas shocked a generation into paranoia and conspiracy. Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy followed. Each shot left not silence, but a crater. King’s death sparked riots in over 100 U.S. cities, while Bobby’s murder left the Democratic Party rudderless.
Assassination failed because it never stopped the movements—civil rights continued, anti-war protests grew, reforms passed. What assassination did succeed at was trauma: it scarred a generation, bred cynicism, and convinced many Americans that hope was always one bullet away from extinction.
Democracy runs on persuasion. Assassination runs on annihilation. It skips the process of argument, debate, election, consent, and jumps straight to erasure. It’s the equivalent of flipping a Monopoly board because you’re losing. You may end the game, but you haven’t won—you’ve just proven you couldn’t play by the rules.
Consider Caesar’s death in 44 BCE. The conspirators believed Rome would return to republican virtue without him. Instead, they unleashed civil war and birthed the empire they feared. Violence creates vacuums, and vacuums invite worse tyrants than the ones killed.
Assassination is not revolution; it is cowardice disguised as courage.
The Theater of Outrage
In 1976’s Network, Howard Beale’s “I’m mad as hell” speech electrifies a TV audience. It’s cathartic, loud, primal. But outrage is not policy. Outrage burns bright and then fizzles.
History repeats this lesson. The Know-Nothing Party of the 1850’s built itself on outrage against immigrants and Catholics. For a moment, they surged—but outrage lacked substance. Within a decade, the party evaporated. Similarly, the Tea Party of 2009 roared into Congress fueled by fury, only to fizzle into incoherence once tasked with governing.
The Rage Economy
Outrage is profitable. William Randolph Hearst built a newspaper empire on yellow journalism, inflaming the Spanish-American War. In the 1990’s, Rush Limbaugh made millions turning conservative grievance into daily theater. Social media is just the digital sequel: outrage gets clicks, and clicks mean money.
But winning by outrage is losing by democracy. When every debate is decided by who screams louder, the thoughtful voices retreat. Consider the McCarthy hearings of the 1950’s: a senator rode outrage against supposed communists until Joseph Welch calmly asked, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” Outrage collapsed when met with dignity.
Outrage vs. Persuasion
Persuasion is slow, deliberate, full of footnotes and compromise. Outrage is fast, fiery, and viral. Outrage works like napalm—it clears ground quickly but leaves nothing fertile behind.
The abolitionists persuaded through decades of newspapers, speeches, and moral suasion, not by screaming alone. The suffragists chained themselves to fences, yes, but also wrote books, lobbied legislators, and won hearts. The civil rights movement’s genius was not just anger, but discipline: marches, speeches, lawsuits, songs. Anger lit the fire, but persuasion built the house.
When outrage is all you have, you’ve already lost the argument—because you’ve chosen volume over vision.
The Trifecta
Democracy’s three essentials—absolute speech, rejection of assassination, and restraint from outrage—are not separate lanes; they’re braided ropes holding the republic together.
Without absolute speech, dissent festers underground until it explodes.
With assassination, debate ends and fear rules.
With only outrage, democracy becomes a shouting match where the loudest demagogue wins.
History offers cautionary tales. Weimar Germany censored radical speech, saw politicians assassinated, and descended into outrage-driven populism. The result was Hitler. The United States in the 1960’s–70’s teetered on this cliff—censorship temptations, political assassinations, and a culture of outrage—but managed, barely, to stagger forward.
The dive bar of democracy survives not because it is tidy, but because it is resilient. Voices clash, insults fly, sometimes bottles break. But the mic stays open.
The Loud, Messy Symphony
Democracy is not order—it is orchestrated chaos. It works only if everyone gets to sing, no matter how bad their pitch. It fails when someone pulls a gun to end the song. And it collapses when the chorus drowns itself in endless screaming instead of harmonizing.
Free speech must be absolute, because democracy without it is just choreography—movement without meaning. Assassination must be rejected, because it is the coward’s checkmate, ending the game without winning it. Outrage must be resisted, because once you substitute fury for reason, you’ve already admitted defeat.
Charlie Kirk never harmed anyone. His words were inflammatory and that was the point. He was smug, arrogant, and dismissive of those who couldn’t make at least a sensible argument.
The song of democracy is not pretty. It’s cacophonous, off-key, half-drunk, feedback squealing. It’s often smug (just ask the French), arrogant (just ask the Chinese), and dismissive (just ask pretty much every country in the U.N.). But it is alive. And as long as the song is sung, however badly, freedom remains more than an idea—it remains a noise that cannot be silenced.
