The funniest thing about Charlie Kirk was that his entire shtick as a teenager was “watch this college dropout DESTROY these undergrads.” And he then went through the entirety of his 20s and into his 30s … still debating undergrads.Except “debate” is the wrong word. Kirk could never acknowledge the legitimacy of any opinion that was not his own. In the words of the Monty Python sketch: “Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes." Kirk had no interest in an intellectual process. Which is why he picked on kindergartners.
It’s as if a competent would-be little leaguer no one had heard of showed up at Williamsport and struck out some kids — then just kept playing against succeeding generations of 12 year olds for another decade.
To put it another way: the youngest undergrads Kirk was “debating” at his final “prove me wrong” table at Utah Valley would have been in kindergarten when he stated TPUSA.
Tuesday, September 23, 2025
“I Get Older, And They Stay The Same Age”
Alright, alright, alright.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I always had my doubts about the conservative "debating champions" of our generation, the Kirks and Ben Shapiros and others today are pathetic. Either the idea of "debating" has decayed - which given the difference between the Lincoln Douglas debate transcripts and what passes as "presidential debates" today is very much in evidence - or young would-be intellectuals are a lot stupider than they were even in our generation, and I was never all that sold on most of them, either.
ReplyDeleteDebating at its best is generally an entertainment, what Kirk did was more like a radio call-in show, and radio has plummeted in quality since I was a kid.
Debates are pretty much people wielding words and imagining they are warriors. I don’t have much use for debate, even the vaunted “Oxford style.” I prefer reasoned discussion where you are trying to learn something, or understand your own thinking more clearly.
DeleteSadly, that’s about as rare as hen’s teeth.