Matt—maybe the forties are a bad reference point for Kirk to use with black Americans because it is pre-civil rights. But pick 1965, say, and compare socioeconomic data on black Americans (marriage rates, intact families, church membership employment statistics, union membership, etc.) and compare it to 2025. After seeing those numbers maybe that will point to what Kirk meant. To pull that statement of his without context is of the same kind (though certainly not degree) as some of the other out of context criticisms being used by the bad-faith actors like Stephen King.
This is also an argument advanced by Shelby Steele and later Glenn Loury. Their core empirical claim is that prior to the Great Society, there was a large and growing black middle class. Kirk picked up that argument and advanced it in a simplistic way that is easy to misinterpret...or misrepresent by a bad faith actor.
Moynihan argued that the structure of many Black families — particularly high rates of single motherhood and absent fathers — was both a product of historic discrimination and a continuing barrier to economic progress.
He emphasized the “tangle of pathology” language, claiming that welfare policies and systemic racism had undermined the traditional nuclear family structure among African Americans.
His conclusion was that jobs and economic opportunity were crucial, but he framed the “matriarchal” family structure as a central problem that needed to be addressed for real progress.
Moynihan was a neoliberal piece of shit who advocated for outsourcing US manufacturing to third world and Asian countries as well as backing Islamist militias and RW death squads in the ME and LA, respectively. He was also a deep state goon of the type that ostensible Trump and MAGA supporters don't like.
Barbra Jordan congress rep for Houston Tx was a smart woman who happened to be black. She was replaced by a moronic race hustler whoi also happened to be black.
The democrat party didn't want to give up the race hustle when it looked to be resolved.
Sly and the Family Stone conveyed the feeling of the late 60's best: Every Day People
People should watch Amos 'n' Andy reruns on YouTube. They're a delight. They do not insult black life of the era. They're funny because the characters are funny, not because white Americans of the time thought blacks were invariably shysters and fools. The characters are "types" and their original sin is not their blackness but their humanity.
And, they were no more insulting or disrespectful to black culture than Petticoat Junction, Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres were to rural white culture.
Want a moment to reconnect to race free America watch (on Youtube) the NIGHT MUSIC episode with Sonny Rollins and Leonard Cohen. It's what American night clubs were like in those days.
Oh, yes! And there's other great stuff on YouTube, such as Ralph Gleason's "Jazz Casual." All sorts of legendary people turn up, such as Jimmy Rushing and Vince Guaraldi with Bola Sete.
On YouTube you can find film/video of Monk, Mingus with Eric Dolphy a couple of weeks before Dolphy's death, Wes Montgomery, all sorts of folks. As distasteful as Hugh Hefner was, the man had an ear for great talent. There are several episodes of Playboy Penthouse, with guests such as Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, and the tragic Beverley Kenney, the least ambiguous suicide in history.
I don't remember the program and I can't remember whether the female singer is Peggy Lee or Jo Stafford, but the male singers are Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. It's probably from around 1960, and if you look for it, you should be able to find it.
What the three of them do is indescribable. An ordinary TV evening sixty five years ago.
Rick Beato has a video from several years ago entitled something like "The Greatest Solo in History." It's Oscar Peterson with Barney Kessel and I am not sure which bassist. Flabbergasting.
Also on YouTube, live on most Wednesday evenings starting at 8:30 PM EST, is Guitar Night Live at Birdland, hosted by Frank Vignola. A few months ago, one of the programs was a tribute to Django Rheinhardt. Great stuff.
"shysters" is officially an "antisemitic" term and should get you BANNED from Racket News, the only true source of Zionist hasbara truths on the Internet. Well, along with Bari "Cancel Queen" Weiss's "The Free Press" (and soon to be CBS News).
Drug use limited to jazz musicians, far lower rates of out of wedlock births than those of contemporary whites, most significantly, aspiration. Studying wasn't scorned. I know there are histories of the thriving black middle class which existed pre 1964.
And many have pointed out that an elderly black couple could walk down the street in a black neighborhood in the 1950s without the fear of being robbed and assaulted--unlike today.
Yes, the "bad old days" of the 50s may have been far better than the conventional wisdom often suggests --and that it was better for everyone, whatever their race or gender.
Truth is, an elderly black couple would have been safer in the average white neighborhood of the time than they are in today's urban hellscapes. Racism was real, but it was not nearly as malignant nor as pervasive as we have been told.
Fun fact: the NAACP homepage (a reliable source for this info) claims, based on FBI data, that between 1883-1968, about 4500 documented lynchings occurred nationally, about 3500 of them of black people. That's less than one per week, nationally. Compare that to 2021, when nearly 10,000 blacks were murdered, the overwhelming majority by other blacks... So you tell me when "the good old days" were. Certainly not now.
Don't know what university you went to that poisoned your mind and intellect, but maybe you should ask for your money back.
I grew up in an area north of Philadelphia and any race people could walk down my mostly white neighborhood street, and almost nobody would bat an eye.
There were however 2 neighborhoods in 10 minute drive that Police still today, don't go in solo, Ambulances don't go in without the Police, and I as a white male would have been dead in 20 minutes.
This isn't hyperbole. I worked in a restaurant when I was in my late teens (late 80's), and one of my coworkers lived in one of these 2 neighborhoods, and I would often drive him home. He never let me take him all the way to his home and I always had to drop him off outside the neighborhood almost like a bus dropping off at the bus stop. The first time I did this I said to him, "You're with me, why is this a problem?" His answer to me was, "I'm with you on the way in, I am not with you on the way out!"
I can't speak for the south, and I understand things were different and in radical ways. We live in a world that doesn't try to understand things from others points of view. What angers most people I know is that there are people like me, that truthfully don't give a shit what you look like or what you do as long as you aren't a full on asshole to me... but if I say something off color, or stereotypical, I suddenly am called a racist, or a fascist or a bigot. I am a moron that grew up in a trailer park with MANY types of friends and acquaintances. I was raised to believe that you just don't know what it's like to be in someone else's shoes, so you try to live in the do unto others mold... Today.. that makes me a Nazi it seems.
I read that most Heroin used in the US was buy whores in New Orleans. i always liked the name heroin a Bayer trademark short for ' Hero within'. The patent name became so popular it turned into a generic name like Kleenex.
Thomas Sowell was actually offering mostly his opinion in his various writings. A lot of it was not based upon his academic field.
Whereas mine is based upon both my opinion and my academic training.
The difficulty for many people is that they want a familiar "voice of authority" who has what they see as media clout. This is almost a "cult of personality" issue, where readers/listeners want something which they believe indicates authority....even if it just the fact that someone has appeared speaking to Oprah Winfrey. Or released a self-made podcast. You would be surprised at what the modern world will accept as supposed authority.
Same with the black pilot reference, which critiqued the insidious effect of racial preferences on perceptions. https://youtu.be/wl3UwsNZ544?t=32. Matt probably best to link to the guy's videos directly rather than npr etc if referencing his statements, given the state of things.
Back in the late 1980s or early 1990s, Jesse Jackson said that once he heard the voices of several young men behind him as he walked down a sidewalk at night. He was afraid to turn around and look at them, but when they passed him and he saw they were white, he was relieved.
Jesse Jackson said that 30 or more years ago. But, in the age of rampant racial and other preferences used for the explicit purpose of lowering qualification standards, Kirk is the bad guy for saying something about a pilot that most sane people of any race, even NYT reporters, would be concerned about.
I don't remember what if anything he said about the CIA, tho I imagine you could Google it. In the 1980s/90s, the CIA was not the popular issue it became, later, and he may not have said much.
At that time (late 1980s), it was Black legislators and activists who wanted very stringent penalties for crack cocaine, which they feared would swamp their communities, being markedly cheaper than powder. I assume Jackson was on that train. It was only about 10-15 years later, after crack had taken over the cocaine trade in Black areas despite the penalties, that the Left and its Black faction decided that those higher penalties for crack were racist and should be reduced, as they memory-holed their origin story.
Hell, Jackson was against abortion, as were many Blacks, who saw it as aimed primarily at their people (which it was when Sanger started Planned Parenthood in the 1920s era), and reducing their future political power. Jackson did a head-spinning 180 when he ran for President in 1984, as it was already a litmus test issue in the larger Democratic Party.
Just like how open immigration used to be a Republican issue, representing businesses that wanted cheap labor, and was opposed by Democrats who saw it as competition for union labor that was such a big part of their base. Cesar Chavez, for one progressive hero, was adamantly opposed to allowing in large numbers of seasonal agriculture workers, while the Republican growers in California backed it to the hilt. Or, that in the early 1990s, NAFTA was primarily a Republican thing, though Clinton backed it. NAFTA got more votes from Republicans than from Democrats, despite Democrats having majorities in Congress and their own President pushing it.
People who think each party has always taken the positions it takes today, on all sorts of issues, are ignorant. A lot changed after the GFC, and especially when Trump executed his hostile takeover of the GOP. But, really, things are always moving around, and always have.
Heck, I am pretty damn MAGA, having voted for Trump 5 times (I missed the 2020 GOP primary because of COVID), but if the Democratic Party was still the Party of JFK, just based on the issues I would be torn. As so many have said, starting with Reagan, they didn't leave the Democrats, the Democrats left them
Lol, if one can get over the fear of flying on an airplane manufactured by Boeing, the pilot is just a detail. BTW, has anyone looked at the data, to see what is the percentage of crashes of black pilot over the total flights they make and compared? Otherwise the argument is totally bogus and needs not be brought up
KOLVET: We've all been in the back of a plane when the turbulence hits or when you're flying through a storm and you're like, "I'm so glad I saw the guy with the right stuff and the square jaw get into the cockpit before we took off. And I feel better now, thinking about that."
KIRK: You wanna go thought crime? I'm sorry. If I see a Black pilot, I'm gonna be like, "Boy, I hope he's qualified."
KOLVET: But you wouldn't have done that before!
KIRK: That's not an immediate … that's not who I am. That's not what I believe.
This still won't be good enough for many... even though the racist argument doesn't hold up with context, they will quickly make it a sexist argument for Kirk assuming the pilot is male by stating "I hope he's qualified".
Wrestling champion turned folk philosopher Tyrus said much the same thing on Gutfeld!, the other day. When he’s on a plane, he wants to see a white guy with gray hair in the pilot’s seat.
Yeah right, except that no proof has ever been provided that pilot training - which has nothing to do with universities or affirmative action - might lead to less qualified candidates becoming licensed or experienced pilots.
The very fact that Kirk, at the time a stupid dumbfuck 28 year old nobody with no real education or skills, even thought to say something like that is only slightly less repulsive than an ostensible adult such as yourself attempting to paper over it with bullshit.
"Proof"? It's common sense. If you prioritize something other than the ability to do the job when hiring, you will get hires who are less qualified to do the job than you otherwise would.
If United had said "We're committed to hiring 40% Mormons," I'd be concerned to find out my pilot is a Mormon. It's not about having prejudice against any group. Do you people really misunderstand this simple and obvious point, or is it a rhetorical strategy? I've never been sure.
" Do you people really misunderstand this simple and obvious point, or is it a rhetorical strategy?"
IMO it's deflection. Tom is clearly a troll interested more in ad hominems than presenting an argument. To wit:
"The very fact that Kirk, at the time a stupid dumbfuck 28 year old nobody with no real education or skills, even thought to say something like that is only slightly less repulsive than an ostensible adult such as yourself attempting to paper over it with bullshit.
I can't take this person seriously. Moreover, I suspect Charlie had a more valuable and useful "education" than Tom. Clearly, Charlie carried himself with far more class and respectfulness than Tom.
Yes, because if they give a certain number of jobs to candidates based on race, rather than on qualifications, they're going to wind up with a very diverse -- but less qualified work force.
Please look in the mirror. Understand why the rest of us view you and your ilk as repulsive and juvenile (in the best interpretation) right now.
The man who said it is dead, can no longer defend himself. It falls to the rest of us, even his detractors, to first ensure his words and arguments are presented honestly, whatever our feelings about their merit. An adult with decency and class would understand this duty. You and your ilk shirk it, and the magnitude of this failure the nation over is rapidly corroding what remains of our shared humanity.
DEI aka social justice fundamentalism, has resulted in many unqualified people in many positions. Personally I have seen it in local government and courts here in Pittsburgh. This is specifically the criticism of and the problem with DEI. It is not ultimately helpful to anyone and it’s extremely harmful, especially to those it purports to help.
Like you would never think that a Black Supreme Court Justice would be comically incompetent because of DEI principles ruling the roost during the Biden administration. That would be a major racism!
And the fact that you retarded dumbfucks even got into the "gender" or "sex" part of your usual bullshit is papered over as though it's either totally or completely irrelevant to the conversation.
actually Matt's comment stands. In that video CK claims on the basis of "DEI studies" that affirmative action means admitting underqualified candidates (very slick that, "underqualified" heh). But Harvard has way more qualified ones than they can possibly accept, so increasing the number of those who achieved what they did without the advantages others had just adds character to the mix: determination, discipline, perseverance. The least merit-based admissions are the legacy students--mostly rich and white--whose parents went there.
The fallacy in this argument is that merit is binary, and that everyone who is a “1” is equal and can therefore be sorted on the basis of race to satisfy quotas. But merit is a continuous scale. Would you rather have a C-grade pilot or an A-grade pilot? Both are “passing” in the binary scale. But who wouldn’t choose the A-grade pilot if they could?
True, merit is not binary but to continue with the mathematical language what you are neglecting to consider is that there comes a point where the variance is in fact not statistically significant. The comparison is unlikely to be analogous to the difference between a C- and an A- pilot. The relevant analogy is likely closer to comparing two A- students (C- students aren’t admitted to Harvard even if they are legacy lol), one having a GPA of 92 and the other of 93.
Thanks for providing this video clip and recommending Matt links to videos (not clips taken out of context) and not articles from NPR, etc., especially not that article from NPR, that intentionally takes Charlie Kirk’s statements out of context.
Eh. Take Whites from 1965 to 2025 and it's the same downward spiral. Hispanics? Same downward spiral. The last 60 years haven't been good for any large demographic group (maybe Asians?), why? I'd lean towards the crushing of the unionized middle class, others might lean to the breakdown of marriage. Or religion.
One thing for sure, sending all the kids to college starting in the 1960's wasn't the cure-all that our parents thought it would be...
Check out The Truly Disadvantaged by William Julius Wilson. Inner city black communities were devastated socially and economically between the 1950s and 1980s. People can disagree over why (Wilson says industrial change, which Matt could probably sympathize with as someone who has critiqued outsourcing…while conservatives blame the Great Society). But Kirk is right - the data are the data, regardless of the explanation we attribute to them.
I hope Matt reads Wilson’s book. It’s really right up his alley with its main argument, and delivers all the facts Kirk is alluding to without hitting any conservative talking points that might cause a socially liberal reader like Matt to close the book.
At the risk of putting too fine a point on it: in the humanities and social sciences (my degrees are in math), it seems that there is a sort of "campus radical" fashion which favors (faux? pseudo?) leftist thought.
For instance, there are loads of campus communists who of course have never run a business, or a farm, or lead any effort involving natural resources (e.g., mining, lumber, etc.). Yet they'll tell you how society should be organized.
And such parties do seem to dominate the culture in a lot of departments.
So, "left" in that sense.
And, again risking too much attempted precision, black (African American, whatever is the correct term) intellectuals are assumed to toe the line.
Wilson is an analytical thinker who does not fit this mold. Ergo, he's invisible.
Meh. I would need to have a much longer conversation with you in private chat if we're really going to address this, especially the part about farmers - perhaps other than miners (both professions near and dear to my family's place in this country) - and/or the fact that "Mexicans" and Blacks have ALWAYS been here, for that matter.
DM me man. We are not going to accomplish anything in Matt's toxic comments.
As other posters have commented, the facts Kirk is alluding to have been very public and very well known for 40 years. It’s not rocket science. Why those facts are the way they are is up for more debate. You claim elsewhere you could destroy Kirk in a debate but have little to show in the comments other than sarcasm and petty insults.
I admit I never followed Kirk very closely. However, what I heard and read was thoughtful. And brave. Not afraid to express his opinion and challenge positions he thought were in error.
"Not afraid to express his opinion and challenge positions he thought were in error."
As a 30+ year old man going against stupid 19 year olds. But sure. I would have loved to have debated him. I could have destroyed him. Still does NOT justify his killing and I am abhorred by it.
Actually, I'd (respectfully) add that a 30+ year old man taking the time and showing the interest and concern in the opinions of 18/19/whatever year olds is a net positive.
Most of these kids have never been challenged or possibly even heard a debate.
I'll use myself as an example!
I started college at 17. Total little wannabe-hippie radical. Felt like I was *supposed* to be a radical.
The circumstances of the debate are a tad murky. I had to be in my first year of college and the encounter occurred in the coffeeshop in the basement of Cobb Hall (University of Chicago).
I don't know how I got into the debate and I have no memory of the face of my opponent.
I just remember staring at the ground and the sense that he just demolished everything I lobbed (probably half-@$$3d macroeconomic content).
I have a memory of his shoes and my shoes and of getting my @$$ handed to me. It was an extraordinarily positive experience.
As such, I'd say that willingness to engage college students, even being a little provocative by simply showing up on a campus and offering to debate, is probably good. From what I can tell (and my direct experience is admittedly limited), Kirk never conducted himself maliciously or as a bully. Seemed like he was just trying to get kids to open their minds (college!), ask questions and consider alternative points of view.
So, your point is taken and I may have jumped to conclusions myself!
The last 60 years haven't been good for the usual reason. Decadence, the long slow end stage of every prosperous society. To paraphrase Hemingway, how did you fall? Two ways, gradually, and then suddenly
I’d lean to the breakdown of the money. Only since 1971 has humanity been on a worldwide fiat-money system. Prior to 71 there was a commodity tied to the monetary unit.
"It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class as political constitutions and bills of rights.”
If it’s your first exposure to the idea - I apologize for being an imperfect messenger - but use 71 as your anchor for reviewing the explosion in wealth inequality, growth in home prices, cost of secondary education…
Those who shit on sound money are walking, talking testaments to the folly of man…
“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
I watched Charlie pose this argument a couple of times with interlocutors - remember David Mamet - "ABC - Always Be Closing." I didn't like some of the things Charlie said, but there was never any confusion in his message - "All glory to God" - and that's what Charlie wanted for all - his wife repeated his message best - "make Heaven crowded" which taken out of context could be construed as "Charlie Kirk wants everyone to DIE!!!"
Stephen King had no reason, imho, to apologize for his ridiculous tweet - what I'd be apologizing for is demonstrating so openly my willingness, even eagerness, to believe the worst about others. King's a writer, for fuck's sake, he's going to retweet a post claiming a guy he's never met wants to stone gay folks to death without checking?
Who does that? And more important, why?
During my youth, relatively, I maligned Republicans I'd never met or attempted to understand. Twasn't till I and others were accused of racism myself for questioning Obama that I began to recognize my own unthinking bigotry as hate speech, and understand how my laziness was polluting the public square.
Wonderful. And I wish Matt would come in here to explain why he disagrees with Kirk’s statements that he felt were so abhorrent to be worth mentioning two days after the man was assassinated for his statements.
Take my comment. Does Matt agree that marriage, family, stable employment, community ties etc. are important? (I hope so). Are all of those things measurably worse for black Americans (and disproportionately so) in 2025 than they were in 1965? (Yes). Then Kirk is right. Unless one believes it is not normatively desirable for black Americans to have all those things despite wanting them for oneself (which would make one a racist bigot), you can’t disagree with the factual point Kirk is making.
A similar three step, simple argument could be made in Kirk’s defense on the pilot comment. (1) Is there evidence airlines have set explicit hiring quotas for racial groups? (Yes) (2) By definition, does using race as a criterion in hiring mean excellence is no longer the only criterion used to hire? (Yes) (3) Therefore, is it not purely rational to wonder when one sees a person from a group targeted by quota hiring if that person was not hired solely for their excellence? (Yes).
Cheers! Excellent points - culture matters and that starts in the home. I expect Matt hasn't settled on these issues as firmly as others have - yet! Matt's on fire this weekend and clearly enjoys the fight.
The civil rights movement brought with it a whole lot of unintended consequences. An argument could be made that black culture itself was a lot healthier than the hollowed-out hybrid mess we've all ended up with.
It's a pretty sure bet that Kirk was working from Thomas Sowell's data. Charlie was most likely focused exclusively on the number of intact black nuclear families as well. The number of black homes without a father in 1950 was something like 9%. Black marriage rates from 1890 to 1950 exceeded white marriage rates. Kirk, like Sowell, probably doesn't explore the role of urbanization in the process, but they're not wrong.
I'd imagine Matt could have fully understood his point and still not be thrilled with the statement. Op-ed pieces don't need to provide an accompanying essay of clarifying apologetics for each factoid shared. That falls to an educated readership to supply themselves.
Sure - though the point of the op-ed is to criticize people for making poorly informed if not misinformed critiques of Charlie Kirk days after he was gruesomely murdered. So for Matt to critique Kirk by linking out of context videos to his statements is a bit ironic, yes? And if Matt thinks Kirk’s statements are self-evidently abhorrent and don’t need explanation, then he should say so.
The black pilot quote is even worse for being taken out of context.
And yes, if Matt just wanted to say the comments reflect poorly regardless of context he has a duty to say so. Especially in an article criticizing exactly that error of misusing quotes.
I was going to write a similar comment, but you covered it, flyoverdriver. I spent the first ten years of my life, 1954-1964, in a largely black, working class neighborhood in southeast Washington, D.C. Families were intact, dads went to work, moms stayed home with the kids, and we all -- black and white -- celebrated Christmas (there was no such thing as Kwanzaa). We were out of the country on a naval base until 1967, and a lot changed, even in that short a time. Fewer intact families, fewer dads, more moms working outside the home, more latchkey kids... Kwanzaa. Better than now or worse? Or just different.
Sure, but Matt taking a gratuitous cheap shot at Kirk’s views on race by linking to out of context videos when he purports to be criticizing that very practice by others deserves to be rebuked.
I agree. I often say, knowing full well that most black Americans were poor as dirt, they were families then, and no matter what life brought you, that family was there to support you and make sure you always had a home. The urban life destroyed the rural values and today, as for decades now, little black kids roam around the cities in the dead of night while mom is busy elsewhere and Pops not to be found. Clarence Thomas is an example of the good people that were turned out by a combination of needing to escape the poverty and a love of learning. There are still plenty of black stars in all fields, but the moral foundation has been replaced all too often by the schlock that the Dems sell as values.
Those of us who were around in the 60's know the diabolical "Aid to Dependent Children" was a dirty trick played on Black families by a mean-spirited "good-old-boy" southern Democrat. He singlehandedly destroyed the fabric of the Black family and created a bunch of illegitimate babies that grew up without father figures in their lives.
There is more context regarding the “black pilot” quote. I listened to him explaining his viewpoint regarding this. He said he was concerned that DEI would result in the lowering of basic standards for pilot applicants leading him to say “I don’t want to wonder if my black pilot is among the most qualified to fly this plane” no one wants to wonder. That is what he was getting at and he’s not wrong. It’s not fair to the passengers and it’s not fair to those perfectly qualified black pilots who have made the grade. Context is everything. I’ve listened to a lot of Charlie Kirk.
He was absolutely right on this - and he was likely responding to articles written about the hiring process for our national pilots + air traffic controllers.
There have been scandals around that where they were prioritizing people on very strange things (presumably to increase 'diversity') instead of just recruiting people on merit.
Pretty sure this was brought up in congress not long ago as well.
It's been a while since I dug into the specfics, but IIRC something like 90% of people failed the test (if you take it you'll see why), but then a very specific group of people were given the "correct" answers so they'd pass. (How there's a "correct" answer to "The high school subject in which I received my lowest grade" is another problem. It's science, btw.)
Ultimately, they blew up multiple classes of people who went to air traffic school because those people "failed" the biographical screening test. It didn't matter that their actual scores in actual air traffic control school were immaculate. (Think we could use more trained ATCs today or nah?)
Edit to add a link to a screenshot I made during my research. This is from an FAA manual published in 2000:
Exactly. I'm surprised Matt T doesn't know this. Yo Matt, love ya, but ya can't say stuff like that about Charlie K. Sorry, but it shows either you forget or didn't know the whole story!
Charlie was pointing to a truth many even Obiden's AG was worried about, passenger safety.
Many qualified applicants were turned away from federal jobs in agencies - including the FAA. It was because of Obama's DEI Executive Order in 2011. There was a big class action lawsuit over it in 2019, Brigida vs FAA. In 2024 the AG also connected it to affecting passenger safety. Obama was clear - his "new approach" was to remove skilled-base hiring to hiring based on race and sex.
Ya don't have to dig too deep. But here's another for you. The substack, at the top (click on the pic) on this reddit, and some of the comments below it, will help you connect the dots. It's actually very scary learning what they did to push this on us all!
I assume that by switching to discuss specific cases of DEI, you gave up the task to demonstrate that the stated intent of the law was to destroy competence-based hiring, which was the subject we were discussing. On the general subject, I can’t help pointing out that there is a large measure of obstinate blindness in pointing at DEI as the root of incompetence when cronyism, political affiliation elevated over competence and the revolving door create the disasters under everyone’s eyes. Are you claiming that the disasters at Boeing are a result of DEI? Or the county in Texas that decided not to pay for flood advisor systems? One can make thousands of example and will still hear the very personification of incompetence, our inept “secretary of war” still blame DEI
Thanks. That’s a long boring document in legalese. I went through it quickly and could not find any mention of the goal of eliminating skilled-based hiring. Maybe you can point the specific passage.
In general, it’s a basic concept in mathematics that the larger the set in which one searches for a solution, the higher the chance to find a better one. But I can see how many despise the policy, as expression of a nanny state forced to remind its citizen of basic logic. And we know how it’s in human nature to prefer being wrong than told what to do
Yes, and this is a concern. I wouldn't want white pilots to fill internal quotas either if it comes at the expense of hiring a better qualified Asian pilot.
Of course, I'm skeptical we ever lived in as much of a meritocracy as we think we do.
In many cases, it seems to be much more important to know someone...
We may not live up to meritocratic ideals as we’d like to believe but certainly less than we used to. That is a necessary and inextricable byproduct of race quotas like DEI and AA.
Not really. Excluding by default certain subsets of applicants is not guaranteed to lead to a better solution than being forced to pick some elements of that subset
Yes -- given how his administration was undermined from within in the first term, Trump clearly prioritized loyalty to his mission highly when staffing.
By near necessity, that involves prioritizing people he knew.
That said, in my lifetime, I haven't considered any president's cabinet appointments to be terribly meritocratic. The political nature makes these worse than the private sector as the profit motive has been removed, and loyalty to the executive is almost always a very important factor.
Every time someone has brought up the “mean thing” Charlie Kirk said, there’s a perfectly rational not mean argument to be made for why he said it. And then they look like fools. I was able to do that twice yesterday with a young colleague who thinks Kirk said “hateful and mean things” all the time. Take the emotion out of the argument and it all boils down to a strong conviction he has and it’s never a personal attack. The young ones believe that a different opinion or belief = personal attack and that is not what Charlie Kirk was doing.
Pointing-out factual inaccuracy isn't doing me much good. When I show a criticism of Kirk to be untrue or out of context, I get: "He spread hate and disinformation. He was a white supremacist. And he was a far-right Christian. I don't have to do research; I know what those people believe." Then for the finish, some unintentional Biblical irony: "He loved guns. Live by the sword, die by the sword. End of." Followed by whooping and high-fives. The dearth of nuance or logic is pitiable. And these kids have way more formal education than I do. One, who doesn't seem to know the definition of the term, even told me I lack, "Critical intelligence." Comedy gold.
Fortunately I was dealing with one who was not so far gone, also though I’m not sure I convinced her that Kirk didn’t say awful things. I did manage to get her to admit that he wasn’t personally attacking someone in his arguments as much as she doesn’t like his arguments/opinions. Small win, but I’ll take it if it helps her to not be so quick to judge and to have a bit more care when throwing out slurs against others.
In the same vein, look at this data for medical school acceptance rates by race. It's from 2017, so a little old, but it can't have gotten better post George Floyd. Now, they just don't make the data available. Bring it up, get in trouble.
I remember that. I went down the rabbit hole to see wtf was going on with DEI regarding pilots and air traffic controllers. I believe there are extra hurdles faced by minority groups trying to get ahead, but you can’t fix it at the endpoint (the point of licensure)
See Washington states recent proposal to get rid of the bar exam.
Ultimately, the government was terrified of being sued for hiring discrimination based on race, and so their big idea was to make the FAA workforce mirror the workforce at large.
This meant incorporating hiring discrimination based on race.
Definitely a high probability. Right now in my area it is difficult to get to see an M.D. level physician in a timely manner for ordinary clinical problems. The last time I went to an E.R. I wasn't even seen by a resident, I got a Physicians' Assistant. P.A.'s deliver a lot of the care in outpatient urgent care centers, and yes, they do already assist in surgeries. P.A.'s do not attend medical school and have something like a master's degree.
Sorry to delve off airline safety …but it seems Charlie wasn’t that interested in, or couldn’t recognize, the quality of the endpoint…Charlie was just as quick to misinterpret and twist the words of others to fit his agenda. What….are women supposed to think we could have voted without the law allowing it? That blacks could enter all white schools of the 50s and 60s, own property, run for congress, or even vote, with laws that specifically mandated the white ruling class make it so? The reason they couldn’t eat in white restaurants still exists. Did DEI go too far? Did some get jobs who weren’t qualified? Of course. But the nation was served well overall. Charlie, Trump, P2025 would turn us back to the 50s or worse. How stupid to use Obama, Jackson Brown, Reid as examples
Funny you should bring that up!! My fav doc is a now retired or near retirement. She went thru the wringer getting into med school and given her age, was very likely was DEI bean for the count. Half of the docs my husband and I now see, including specialists, are women. We are fortunate to live in an area where we have a decent choice of docs. We usually go by recommendations. Not gender. Our docs were accepted into med school, a couple into very prestigious schools. If not DEI candidates per se, I know damned well that that number of women were not in medicine decades ago. My selection of docs in the 60s and 70s was confined to almost all men. White men at that. My first simple gyn exam was a young male doctor who insisted “it couldn’t and therefore doesn’t hurt” as he jabbed my insides so hard I cried and it bled. Since the nineties I’ve had a great selection of women ObGyns…for me and my babies. BIG sigh of relief. You’re dreaming if you think DEI has t helped improve this country for the better in so many ways.
Multiple airlines (especially United Airlines), touted programs to get more black pilots and first officers piloting their airplanes that fly all of us around. In order to make this happen, they HAVE, in fact, lowered the standards to become a pilot. Fewer hours of in-cockpit training, fewer fours in simulators, lower standards all around. Was this a move to improve airline safety? No. It was to virtue signal to America and corporate shareholders that they want to appear “antiracist”. Charlie Kirk didn’t make this up, nor were his concerns about this unfounded. Nobody wants to have these kinds thoughts when they see a black pilot (and very, very few did, including me, prior to this insane initiatives and announcements) but anybody paying attention has to be having these thoughts. My god, how could you not have these thoughts? He was correct, very unfortunately, for everyone - including our black neighbors and friends and family. This is verifiable fact - it has happened. And it was not Charlie Kirk’s idea. Don’t kill the messenger.
I am a pilot (white)… I agree! Merit based assignments are without doubt preferable to DEI! Piloting an aircraft is demanding; appropriate training and application of that training is essential! Color of skin doesn’t matter; when it becomes an issue, the airspace becomes very dangerous! If a pilot earns his seat because of his skin, he is suspect! And the airspace becomes more vulnerable! Meritocracy takes precedence when people’s lives are at risk! Whether the pilot is white or black .. or Indian!!!
I happen to know an 85 year old retired commercial “pilot’s pilot”. Literally tens of thousands of flight hours. He has no racial prejudice that I’m aware of. He tells a story of a new black co-pilot that must have been one of the first DEI hires, before it was called that. By his account, the guy was terrible, but nobody would say anything. Finally, the copilot was reassigned to retraining and not seen again at his airline. The next guy, according to my friend, was great. Called himself “Dark Gable” and was known far and wide.
Although I cleared up a misunderstanding about Charlie and the black pilots quote, while talking to a friend to the left of me he suggested I look at some of Charlie’s views on the civil rights act. I found a video clip and I don’t like what I heard:
In the video Charlie said he thought the passing of the civil rights act was giant mistake. I was really disappointed. He was talking to 2 other white men and he was arrogant and subtly sneering. He acknowledged as an aside that the act prevented discrimination but lamented affirmative action. I support affirmative action and I think it is different than DEI. I feel that I saw the real Charlie in that clip. We need to keep talking to each other civilly so that we can exchange information and maybe humbly change our views.
Good for you and your integrity Andrea. As someone who had only vaguely heard of Charlie Kirk and find myself resisting going through his archive because I know I'll be doing it for a ghoulish reason, cheering for the hope he turns out to be perfect martyr material, this is appreciated
It's basic logic which everyone has somewhere in their mind anyway. "We need more Type XYZ pilots! We are prioritizing hiring and promoting more Type XYZ pilots." Then you see your pilot is a Type XYZ. Of course you're going to think "Hmmm..."
Alan Dershowitz makes the same point. When we see a person of color in a position of responsibility, SOME people worry that the person did not meet the rigorous standards expected for a person to be in that position.
Seeing a person of color in a position of responsibility does not bother me. Seeing a person with an Ivy League education in a position of responsibility DOES worry me. I remember interviewing for a senior staff attorney position in a major US corporation. While I was going through the interview process, I saw that there was a distinct difference between the staff attorneys who did the bulk of the work with local and federal regulatory agencies, and the executive level attorneys in the C suite area. The attorneys doing the bulk of the work came from local law schools. The attorneys at the executive level were generally younger and came from Ivy League schools. Many of the executive level attorneys had held similar jobs at other major corporations.
The caste system was fascinating. It made me wonder whether these people at the top level really understood the work that was going on. A few years later, I was doing a document review assignment where I was reading the emails and memos between the executive level attorneys and the other C suite people. It was not good. The lack of wisdom and knowledge resulted in this company committing ethical violations that became a major political scandal in my home state. Sad thing is that everything the company did COULD have been done legally, but the "brilliantly" educated Ivy League attorneys advising them f'ed up.
I look at all the well funded NGOs corrupting the legislative and political scene today and I marvel at how this major company screwed up so badly. They could have just emulated what other interests were doing.
"The line that struck me said Kirk believed “Jews are trying to replace white Americans with nonwhite immigrants,”"
Yeah, I would be genuinely shocked if Charlie Kirk said that. Don't believe it for a second.
Charlie actually took a ton of heat from people on the right for either avoiding the question of Israel or for being too deferential towards them.
For gods sake, the Times of Israel article on his death is headlined "Conservative influencer and Israel advocate Charlie Kirk shot dead at Utah event".
As for his Christianity as well - his type of Christianity (in my opinion) was 1000000 miles better/softer than the type of Christianity that we all remember was absolutely mainstream in politics back in the 90s. It's not even close.
He was accurate with scripture, but he wasn't some dogmatic fire and brimstone hateful kind of person. His was much more tame, gracious and charitable. And he actually was that kind of person, which I think is borne out by all the testimonies of the people who knew him.
Charlie Kirk was, by all accounts, a very good and decent human being.
So yeah. Shame on the people who are smearing him posthumously. It's gross.
Thank you for providing the link. Charlie was probably right in claiming that Jewish donors, who fund a lot of liberal organizations, end up supporting groups that seek to undermine traditional Western culture by opening the borders to people that hate the West, hate America, and -- it turns out, as Charlie said--that hate Jews and Israel, too. His remarks were not antisemitic -- they were more in the nature of a warning to secular Jews.
As a lifelong Democrat and New York Times subscriber, I became disillusioned with these institutions during Covid. I disengaged from the Democrats and, astonishing to me, cancelled my NYT subscription. Lately I have become even more appalled by the outright manipulation and seeming indifference to truth. Not to mention the disgusting celebrations of Kirk’s death. I want nothing to do with these people. They seem nasty, or crazy, or ethically compromised or all of the above.
It is not indifference to the truth. The defining characteristic of the contemporary Left is zealous commitment to demonstrable untruths, and vicious hatred towards all who present the evidence and arguments debunking their dogma. That’s why Charlie was killed and why a good chunk of the Left is dancing on his grave.
This is really nothing new in human history. The modern Left is just the latest version of a long line of deranged religious zealots looking for heretics to punish.
I try to avoid bring it up but when someone starts going off (ahem) on guns going off I’ll mention this. Though, not sure why. They don’t seem to get that pulling a trigger requires both a physical act and intent.
I knew Charlie, argued with him periodically about language and argued the need for precision. Despite all that, I had enormous admiration for his courage to discuss, to argue, to debate and really get into difficult topics. He was unfailingly courageous. The parsing by papers like the Times and others who can’t simply acknowledge his murder as a profound assault on THAT - the courage to speak your mind and debate - ought to scare the living sh*t out of journalists and editors but instead they seem incapable of altering their dug-in behavior.
This was a rare individual who gave it his all and probably induced more young people to engage in our political discourse than anyone (either party) in the last CENTURY. And the idea that THAT isn’t celebrated makes me want to pull my hair out.
The idiots at The NY Times and Wash Post (not even to mention MSNBC) ought to report this: Charlie’s murder has likely spurred a multi-digit alteration in the political landscape of America.
Young people know a hero and they gravitate to them. Charlie was that guy in life and I guarantee he will be even larger in death. TPUSA will see a surge in its members and activism in ways these small minded journalists can’t even fathom.
They didn’t see the power of these young people before….but just wait and watch what happens now.
"This was a rare individual who gave it his all and probably induced more young people to engage in our political discourse than anyone (either party) in the last CENTURY. And the idea that THAT isn’t celebrated makes me want to pull my hair out."
Unfortunately, it’s also exactly what got him assassinated. Engaging young people in reasoned political discourse is not allowed by people whose current position and power is threatened by rational, conversant young people.
>Charlie’s murder has likely spurred a multi-digit alteration in the political landscape of America.
You're way more optimistic than I am. I think his murder will harden existing tribal allegiances and lower the bar for future acts of political violence. We're in a tailspin and I don't see how to pull out of it.
People compare this to the political violence of the early 1970s, but in that case there was a singular animating principle, the Vietnam War, and the domestic violence petered out after it ended. The modern culture war is just about hating the other guys, plain and simple.
Matt, these psychopaths believe words are violence. They've been told that by a particular part of the political slider, but we can't say which. Because, you know, both sides need to cool it.
Because, you know, both sides and all.
It is weird how both sides don't burn down police stations, federal buildings or loot. That's just one side. It's so weird.
If you have a chance to watch Boghossian's street epistemology, you see this play out. The degree of mental illness amongst certain parts of academia is alarming, and I'm not even talking about their problems with academic cheating, AI or political extremism.... I'm just talking about the head cases running the social sciences.
I actually really like this idea but don't want to cash in on somebody else's quote if I DID read it somewhere. I'll do some more digging when I have free time tomorrow and let you know :)
Pretty sure they only mean other peoples’ words. Like the vicious attacks on religion that are just refuting their tenets or denying a prophet is the sole conduit for virtue and are responded to with physical violence.
That was exactly my thought in anger and despair yesterday. Has there ever been an act of violence in the decades of my adulthood anywhere near equivalent to a person of the left killing a person on the right!
The problem that (some on) the left is having right now is that they're basically saying "He deserved to die because of his political views" and half the country realizing they also hold those views.
For example, I spent days researching the FAA discrimination scandal and know the agency has been hiring based on race for 25 years. I know the air traffic controller test was changed to be almost random -- in the name of 'equity' -- and that some people were given the answers to the test. And while that lawsuit didn't concern pilots in particular, I think it would be logical to at least wonder if the reduction of standards also bled over into pilots.
Yes - yours is the companion post to mine about the historical sociological data being much more favorable to black Americans than the present data. Matt falls for the same trick as those he criticizes here by letting some out of context statement by Kirk trigger the inner hardwired social-liberal alarm bells about racism, when there is actually a deeply rational, non-racist, and policy-serious statement being made by the speaker.
I'd be equally against the FAA declaring the height of their workforce must match the height of the workforce at large, then discriminating based on height. Ditto religion or literally any other metric other than capability.
I think many liberals (including me up to a few years ago) still maintain that anything conservatives say related to race is just another Reagan at the Neshoba County Fair repackaging or dressing up the same old Jim Crow bigotry in new language. But we are two generations removed from that with a vastly different electorate. Kirk is speaking to college students for whom Reagan is only a textbook reality. Seems Matt gave away here in this post that he is still having that knee-jerk assumption about conservatives when they talk about race.
I wish the whole idea of race could be discarded. Back in the heyday of Carl Linnaeus (18th century), science was a new thing, and categorizing everything was a “thing.” So Cuvier and Buffon came up with “race” (root, ironically, means root), based on mostly superficial characteristics, like skin melanin content and epithelial eye folds. What a disservice! We need to retire this concept, forever.
At a fundamental level, I wonder how these things are even determined. We'll use the FAA example since we're already talking about it. The categories to be "balanced" with the civilian workforce were:
Black
Hispanic
Asian Pacific Islander
American Indian/Alaskan Native
White Non-Hispanic
The black, white and Hispanic categories make sense, but who decided that Asian Pacific Islander should get its own category, and further decided what that even entails?
(Ironically, at this specific snapshot in time, the American Indian/Alaskan Native category was pretty heavily over-represented....meaning these "diversity goals" may have actually hurt this group!)
And then you have black hispanic! Might not be on FAA’s list, but I’ve seen that one, too. Originally, intersectionality came about from a suit with GM, where the contention was that the plaintiffs were discriminated against on two counts, for being black AND being female. Probably was legitimate at the time, but that idea has been blown out of all proportion. It’s all absurd
The concept of race has become preposterous and increasingly meaningless in our mixed race country. I was talking with my teenage granddaughters (who are racially mixed--1 grandfather is African-American), and the oldest was recounting how mortified she was when she was recognized as having scored well on the PSAT for an African-American---she had just checked the racial boxes and didn't realize how the categories would be used. Her younger sister said, "you were the whitest person up there! I would never check those boxes! Plus I could never pass as black!" Ironically, the same thing happened to their mother 25 years ago.
This stuff is so aggravating. Instead of identifying as black, or white, or “mixed race” (whatever that is), why can’t we just identify as humans and let it go?
I'm not yet willing to discard ethnic gene pools as one of the factors in assessing intelligence, but I place a lot more importance on the culture in which people are raised. Everybody knows by now that a number of Asian cultures (and gene pools?) produce people with the highest IQ's in the U.S., and they also push scholarship, achievement and excellence. If I had to choose a surgeon from a group with diverse skin colors and I know nothing else about them, I would go for the East Asians and Indians.
I appreciate the Matt/Walter belief that truth/fact based American journalism can create a national conversation capable of replacing the (my view) "everything means everything so nothing means anything" amoral surveillance hysterics the MSM, and the people who pay them, are using to strip Americans of their connection to the moral lines of demarcation our Republics founding fathers worked hard to enshrine in our Constitution. The ideological extremes of both Marxism and Capitalism are totalitarian. I do believe that the malignant narcissism of the purely mercenary leadership exploiting the ideological utopians of both camps care for nothing but themselves. Whatever the word populist means, both the "left" and "right" see it as an enemy to be destroyed. This assassination and the violence now poisoning the American psyche across our Republic is the result of allowing the American national conversation to be captured and reduced to the vacuous amorality and psychopathy of the lie now covering for the grifting mal actors and perps feeding on the lives and labor of hard working Americans. Slice it any way one wishes but the greatest economy in the world was looted and left in civilizational and cultural ruin.
There is the Republic, the Constitution and the free citizen. Everything else is psyop. Depart the psyop and live.
Demand, participate in the creation of and support the solutions oriented truth/fact based national conversation that will create the truth/fact based reality the citizens of the American Republic must have to survive.
I'd imagine that the reference is to the financialization of everything and the inevitability of the merger between corporate and governmental power. When CEOs cocktail with senators, policy and legislation happens for the benefit of the corporate sector. Those who can participate in the financial markets may have some collective financial benefit, but working class interests are essentially reduced for the most part to an accounting line item, and messy things like individual rights/responsibilities are also thusly reduced in the name of cost-management. Think of the centralized power of managed health and see a totalitarian system in action. Those vertically organized corporate enterprises squeeze profit out of managing the relationship between doctor and patient with an iron fist.
But that's not capitalism. That's corporatism, also known once as mercantilism, later state socialism or pejoratively these days as fascism. Capitalism is the FREE exchange of goods and services, managed not by force but by ordered liberty.
I agree - we don't live under a pure capitalist system. But given that there is the ideal, and then the real, it's unlikely that any human system can survive centralized power without becoming totalitarian. I described the process by which the illusion of capitalism devolved to the corporatism we slave for. I might say that the only chance for a better version of capitalism to happen would be if we can get the American experiment in constitutional republicanism back on track. Seems a big ask in these days of so many clamoring for positive "rights" rather than the negative right to be left to solve one's problems in one's own community, in one's way. Stripping "personhood" from corporations mug be a start. But whose 401k would survive that (says the citizen whose retirement plan is to work till I'm dead) ?
You win. I'm for ordered liberty and free trade. Call the rigged game looting and stripping the free peoples of the world of their civil liberties anything you like. (You might enjoy the Mike Benz take on USAID/Ukraine/Soros/NGO/spook land.)
The left labels anyone they disagree with "controversial." I'm sick of it. The assassin aimed for a media-created cartoon character named Charlie Kirk and the bullet killed a human being named Charlie Kirk who was a good man, a husband, a father and a patriot.
Fuck the media, fuck the SPLC, fuck the hate speech laws and fuck all the billionaires and NGOs funding this bull shit.
There's a sense among Democrats that they're being railroaded into saying nice things about someone whose views they regard as harmful just because he got shot, and they resent that, which I do think is understandable.
I don't care if they have to preface it with "he was bad" as long as they clearly condemn political violence, as most of the party leadership has done.
If they say political violence is bad but he essentially had it coming because of all the bad things he said, the second part negates the first. Condemning assassination doesn’t mean you have to also heap praise on the victim, you can even say you disagreed with him (I did) and he still shouldn’t have been killed over his beliefs. And it always takes zero effort to stay silent- if you’re not a prominent politician, you don’t have to publicly comment on everything.
I know emotions are high right now, but we really do have to distinguish between people who say "he had it coming", or use extremist rhetoric, versus people who just want to make it clear they strongly disagreed with him.
If Zohran Mamdani got shot, I imagine my own reaction would be something like: political violence is always wrong, but socialism is extremely destructive and NYC will be much better off without him as mayor. That isn't justifying violence. It's making it clear that violence doesn't canonize its victims.
Party leadership is Pelosi, Schumer and Jeffries. They are all on record inciting violence against Trump and MAGA and the USSC.
The previous president of the U.S. gave a speech with a blood red background and two marines in the dark flanking him, calling Trump and MAGA the greatest threat to American democracy. They have encouraged this hate for nearly ten years against the people of the United States. No modern president until Obama that I am aware of had ever attacked the voters, not the politicians, the voters, of the other party.
I could give a damn about a “sense among Democrats that they’re being railroaded blah blah blah…”.
First, where were they when their leadership was repeatedly demonizing the opposition and their voters? Second, my complaint isn’t with people who couch their hate or dislike with qualifiers that political violence is not OK. It is with the people who literally are celebrating the murder, mocking his wife and children, and saying he deserved to die and/or hope he is the first of many more.
Finally, the haters and mockers have a first amendment right to make total assholes of themselves, but that right ends the moment they incite violence. If they want to be dickheads and cunts, fine, but they should expect to be treated like the dickheads and cunts that they are and shamed by civil society and even fired. Who wants to associate with such scum?
Indeed. They have actually become quite good at it over recent years. There was a time several decades ago (I cancelled my subscription to NYT years ago) when they were a must-subscribe -to newspaper. What a sad waste of a news icon.
—“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
I think this famous gem best describes our postmodern academy, the sewage pit that poisons our civic discourse, much more than inscrutable quotes from Foucault and Derrida, those emperors of bullshit.
First it was there's no such thing as truth (which encouraged infinite lies), then it was there's no such thing as right or wrong or good or bad (those are terms the oppressor uses to further his power), no book or artwork is better than any other (great art makes mediocrities anxious and angry), any possible interpretation of a text is as worthy as the view of its author (the author was killed off and replaced by "theorists"), along with one culture is no better than any other culture (leading to the contextual defense of clitorectomies and other indigenous "ways of knowing"), which then became things like America fought its Revolution to preserve and protect slavery and the mammalian sex binary is actually an oppressive imposition of the patriarchy.
Which leads us to where we are today, the official slogan of the postmodern Left: “Your speech is violence; our violence is speech.”
When you quote Kirk as saying “I’m sorry, if I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified,” to demonstrate one of his supposed “bad” statements, I think you are guilty of the same dishonest characterization you decry in the NY Times. He was talking about the pernicious effects of DEI which causes the credentials of all black people in positions of responsibility to be questioned. You make it sound like he simply viewed black people as inferior, which is not true. He had a long history of working with black groups. That’s an unfair quote out of context.
See my other comment in this reply thread. I thought Matt was just ignoring the commenters criticizing his potshots against Kirk (totally forgivable - Matt is busy and has better things to do than argue with us). But no, he comes way down here in the comments and has the gall to insinuate he thinks Kirk is racist when the man was just gruesomely murdered and can’t defend himself.
Matt - I hope you read this. It would be like, if you were shot, Zaid Jilani wrote a piece three days later insinuating horrible things about your character based on things you were alleged to have done in Russia in the 1990s. I have never once believed those accusations against you, and thoughts they were weaponized by your critics because they couldn’t contest your excellent investigative reporting. But try that empathy exercise with you in the place of Kirk, and maybe you will see how ugly what you are doing is.
Besides having the audacity to argue with an unfalsifiable (because he was just gruesomely murdered) inference about Kirk’s beliefs Matt, you’re pulling on the old, old script that any time a conservative talks anything remotely critical of the liberal consensus on race they must be Reagan in Neshoba County in 1980 speaking in code to a bunch of bigots. But this is 2025, and Charlie is speaking to kids in the Sun Belt born after 9/11. You may have been right decades ago, but these unsubstantiated accusations or insinuations of racism against people who are by all accounts magnanimous human beings are frankly ugly and despicable. I say this as someone who has deeply respected you since my early 20s.
And why sneak in more insinuations about Kirk’s views way down here in the comments when there are tons of posters making very serious and well informed critiques of your points higher up? I cite William Julius Wilson (no conservative, mind you) to back up the facts Kirk is citing on black wellbeing declines, and many others cite lawsuits against aviation groups on the quota hiring and standards lowering. There is hard evidence that, rather than engage, you resort to sneaking in insulting insinuations that Kirk is racist. It is deeply disappointing to see.
Yes- Matt, who (I sincerely believe in the bottom of my heart) is an indefatigable investigative journalist has indeed stooped to insinuating a dead man who cannot defend himself is racist, way down in his own comment section, when many alternative and indeed more parsimonious explanations are available for Kirk’s statements. I have never seen Matt stoop as low as this.
Would it even be possible to phrase concerns about DEI in such a way that could not be construed as racist? How would you word it if you were to interpret his words in the most charitable way?
Is it even possible to talk about such things without being called a racist? I’m not sure that it is.
Yes. See my other comments here for my informed perspective. This may be the lowest I’ve ever seen Matt stoop. I think calling conservatives racist has made its way into the collective liberal amygdala.
So you think he is a racist? The examples you cited, both imo out of context, are squarely on that topic.
You kinda stepped in it. Provide the basis for thinking he just slipped and exposed himself as a racist. Otherwise, I’m with Wallace Barker.
But you did same with cherry picked snippet of the “better off” video.
Defend why you didn’t show the greater exchange where she agreed with his underlying premise.
I respect the shit out of you as a writer and even more as a thinker. This is why many of us expect more, or at least a much better explanation for you doing what your article complains (rightfully) of others of doing. The above, ~I stand by my inference which is not readily obvious from the transcript (pilot) or video (better off)~ comes across as complete horse shit.
You made the choice to call him a racist and offer a very slender reed in evidence to support the claim. Man up!
Yes - Matt needs to own this one and explain himself. I have always found him a person of great integrity, and was shocked to see this insinuation way down in the comments. A heck of a lot worse than just ignoring comments (fine, it happens all the time!). But to bury his reply way down here and to be passive aggressive about it in the process is shocking to me. It’s beneath Matt.
You don't know if it was an actual description of how he would really react in such a situation or a rhetorical example he was giving.
I have to admit, the thought would cross my mind also. I'm a white guy and I would have the least amount of concern about a male asian pilot. It shouldn't be this way.
Transcripts are available for the black pilot conversation. So is a video of him explaining it again after the fact. So is commentary by Jordan Peterson.
Matt’s reply is in essence, ~yes, his racism is not readily obvious nor inferable, and he explicitly denies that he believes such things. But I know he is racist anyway.~
Given a name… this feels very personal. Matt gives off the vibe that he has personal knowledge that Charlie is a covert racist but is too chicken shit to say that.
I’m so pissed. I borderline revere Taibbi. But this was “weak ass shit.” Matt being a baseball pro knows exactly what that means.
Yes - I’m going to keep pointing this out on future Matt pieces until he says something about it in writing. Maybe he said something in ATW with Walter yesterday but I didn’t have time to listen to all of it.
It needs to be in print. Either as a correction or even an explanation for why he refuses to explain the thinly veiled accusations of racism and continues to rely on an out of context quote taken from NPR of all places and a cherry picked :26 from a video that in context says the exact opposite of what he claims. If I submitted a paper in college, made similar claims and offered evidence equivalent to what Matt did I wouldn’t just get an F, I would get referred for academic discipline (I went to school when bs like that didn’t fly).
Yes - Matt has resorted to insinuating that a man who cannot defend himself against unsubstantiated accusations because he was gruesomely murdered is racist. It’s ugly stuff.
Unless Matt comes back in and explains otherwise, I think we are left to conclude that he is insinuating Kirk is personally racist, despite the availability, as the first poster said, of dispositive evidence to the contrary. It’s ugly and beneath Matt.
They have been doing the same thing to JK Rowling.
Ask any of the people who claim Charlie or JK are haters just exactly what they said that was so awful, and they cannot tell you. Or they take something out of context like you mention above.
Same playbook. They've used the damn thing for over a decade now and we need to get ahead of it and defang it permanently.
Matt—maybe the forties are a bad reference point for Kirk to use with black Americans because it is pre-civil rights. But pick 1965, say, and compare socioeconomic data on black Americans (marriage rates, intact families, church membership employment statistics, union membership, etc.) and compare it to 2025. After seeing those numbers maybe that will point to what Kirk meant. To pull that statement of his without context is of the same kind (though certainly not degree) as some of the other out of context criticisms being used by the bad-faith actors like Stephen King.
Specifically he was probably referring to studies and conclusions Thomas Sowell has published and spoken about for decades
This is also an argument advanced by Shelby Steele and later Glenn Loury. Their core empirical claim is that prior to the Great Society, there was a large and growing black middle class. Kirk picked up that argument and advanced it in a simplistic way that is easy to misinterpret...or misrepresent by a bad faith actor.
The Daniel Moynihan report from the 60s was interesting too.
thank you. Just posted the same thing.
The Report’s Argument
Moynihan argued that the structure of many Black families — particularly high rates of single motherhood and absent fathers — was both a product of historic discrimination and a continuing barrier to economic progress.
He emphasized the “tangle of pathology” language, claiming that welfare policies and systemic racism had undermined the traditional nuclear family structure among African Americans.
His conclusion was that jobs and economic opportunity were crucial, but he framed the “matriarchal” family structure as a central problem that needed to be addressed for real progress.
Moynihan was a neoliberal piece of shit who advocated for outsourcing US manufacturing to third world and Asian countries as well as backing Islamist militias and RW death squads in the ME and LA, respectively. He was also a deep state goon of the type that ostensible Trump and MAGA supporters don't like.
Sure, but don’t coyly beat around the bush. Tell us what you really think about Moynihan. Lol.
He was a pussy neoliberal neocon like you. What else do you need to hear?
How about commenting on the findings of his report instead of ad hominem attacks?
that particular individual you are talking to, is incapable of rational thought. i.e., yer wasting time&energy with that.
Doesn’t mean the Moynihan report wasn’t prescient. Because it was.
How was it prescient? Tell us. Be as articulate as you can.
Barbra Jordan congress rep for Houston Tx was a smart woman who happened to be black. She was replaced by a moronic race hustler whoi also happened to be black.
The democrat party didn't want to give up the race hustle when it looked to be resolved.
Sly and the Family Stone conveyed the feeling of the late 60's best: Every Day People
https://youtu.be/nRc0yaMW7Mw?si=ciPw5bZ4ELgbvFR5
The link took me to The Rolling Stones. 2000 light years from home. 🧐
Exactly
Yes, home ownership, business ownership, intact families
If I may say, in Harlem before the 2nd WW, people didn't even bother to lock their doors.
People should watch Amos 'n' Andy reruns on YouTube. They're a delight. They do not insult black life of the era. They're funny because the characters are funny, not because white Americans of the time thought blacks were invariably shysters and fools. The characters are "types" and their original sin is not their blackness but their humanity.
And, they were no more insulting or disrespectful to black culture than Petticoat Junction, Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres were to rural white culture.
My father used to call TV, "The Boob-tube". No word of a lie.
Great point!!
Want a moment to reconnect to race free America watch (on Youtube) the NIGHT MUSIC episode with Sonny Rollins and Leonard Cohen. It's what American night clubs were like in those days.
Oh, yes! And there's other great stuff on YouTube, such as Ralph Gleason's "Jazz Casual." All sorts of legendary people turn up, such as Jimmy Rushing and Vince Guaraldi with Bola Sete.
On YouTube you can find film/video of Monk, Mingus with Eric Dolphy a couple of weeks before Dolphy's death, Wes Montgomery, all sorts of folks. As distasteful as Hugh Hefner was, the man had an ear for great talent. There are several episodes of Playboy Penthouse, with guests such as Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, and the tragic Beverley Kenney, the least ambiguous suicide in history.
I don't remember the program and I can't remember whether the female singer is Peggy Lee or Jo Stafford, but the male singers are Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. It's probably from around 1960, and if you look for it, you should be able to find it.
What the three of them do is indescribable. An ordinary TV evening sixty five years ago.
Rick Beato has a video from several years ago entitled something like "The Greatest Solo in History." It's Oscar Peterson with Barney Kessel and I am not sure which bassist. Flabbergasting.
Also on YouTube, live on most Wednesday evenings starting at 8:30 PM EST, is Guitar Night Live at Birdland, hosted by Frank Vignola. A few months ago, one of the programs was a tribute to Django Rheinhardt. Great stuff.
"shysters" is officially an "antisemitic" term and should get you BANNED from Racket News, the only true source of Zionist hasbara truths on the Internet. Well, along with Bari "Cancel Queen" Weiss's "The Free Press" (and soon to be CBS News).
"antisemitic" is a word/term invented by fascists, used by cowards, to manipulate morons. Just sayin'.
You just had to get your pokes in about Jew's ...eh Tommy boy??
Oy. The Limnowitzes moved from Brooklyn to New Orleans while I was still a baby.
You lived there?
Yes but not at thay time. Heard it ftom old timers in the neighborhood
Drug use limited to jazz musicians, far lower rates of out of wedlock births than those of contemporary whites, most significantly, aspiration. Studying wasn't scorned. I know there are histories of the thriving black middle class which existed pre 1964.
Aspiration. Personal agency. That is a very big factor, whatever your race. Whatever your era.
And many have pointed out that an elderly black couple could walk down the street in a black neighborhood in the 1950s without the fear of being robbed and assaulted--unlike today.
Yes, the "bad old days" of the 50s may have been far better than the conventional wisdom often suggests --and that it was better for everyone, whatever their race or gender.
"...an elderly black couple could walk down the street in a black neighborhood in the 1950s without the fear of being robbed and assaulted..."
Now tell us what would've happened to them in a white neighborhood or suburb - especially in the south - until the mid-1970s...
We'll wait.
Truth is, an elderly black couple would have been safer in the average white neighborhood of the time than they are in today's urban hellscapes. Racism was real, but it was not nearly as malignant nor as pervasive as we have been told.
Fun fact: the NAACP homepage (a reliable source for this info) claims, based on FBI data, that between 1883-1968, about 4500 documented lynchings occurred nationally, about 3500 of them of black people. That's less than one per week, nationally. Compare that to 2021, when nearly 10,000 blacks were murdered, the overwhelming majority by other blacks... So you tell me when "the good old days" were. Certainly not now.
Don't know what university you went to that poisoned your mind and intellect, but maybe you should ask for your money back.
I grew up in an area north of Philadelphia and any race people could walk down my mostly white neighborhood street, and almost nobody would bat an eye.
There were however 2 neighborhoods in 10 minute drive that Police still today, don't go in solo, Ambulances don't go in without the Police, and I as a white male would have been dead in 20 minutes.
This isn't hyperbole. I worked in a restaurant when I was in my late teens (late 80's), and one of my coworkers lived in one of these 2 neighborhoods, and I would often drive him home. He never let me take him all the way to his home and I always had to drop him off outside the neighborhood almost like a bus dropping off at the bus stop. The first time I did this I said to him, "You're with me, why is this a problem?" His answer to me was, "I'm with you on the way in, I am not with you on the way out!"
I can't speak for the south, and I understand things were different and in radical ways. We live in a world that doesn't try to understand things from others points of view. What angers most people I know is that there are people like me, that truthfully don't give a shit what you look like or what you do as long as you aren't a full on asshole to me... but if I say something off color, or stereotypical, I suddenly am called a racist, or a fascist or a bigot. I am a moron that grew up in a trailer park with MANY types of friends and acquaintances. I was raised to believe that you just don't know what it's like to be in someone else's shoes, so you try to live in the do unto others mold... Today.. that makes me a Nazi it seems.
The same thing that would probably happen to them now in a Black neighborhood.
I read that most Heroin used in the US was buy whores in New Orleans. i always liked the name heroin a Bayer trademark short for ' Hero within'. The patent name became so popular it turned into a generic name like Kleenex.
In German, “heroic.”
Thomas Sowell and another economist, Walter Williams, both have written about this.
I thought it was obvious before ever reading Sowell.
I agree, but it's always nice to have the hard research.
Oh I have that, too.
Thomas Sowell was actually offering mostly his opinion in his various writings. A lot of it was not based upon his academic field.
Whereas mine is based upon both my opinion and my academic training.
The difficulty for many people is that they want a familiar "voice of authority" who has what they see as media clout. This is almost a "cult of personality" issue, where readers/listeners want something which they believe indicates authority....even if it just the fact that someone has appeared speaking to Oprah Winfrey. Or released a self-made podcast. You would be surprised at what the modern world will accept as supposed authority.
Thanks for clarifying. Can you supply a link to some relevant hard research?
You took the words out of my mouth...
Dr Walter E Williams, too
🛎️🔨
Exactly. That opinion is straight from Sowell
“It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.”
- Thomas Sowell
Yes, and you cannot use facts and logic to change someone's position that they did not arrive at through facts and logic.
"Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired," (Jonathan Swift, 1721)
No offense to Taylor Swift and her fans, but you are the kind of Swiftie we really need!!
Her proposal was far from modest.
100‼️
Nor, the ring.
LOL!!
One wonders if he was looking in the mirror when he typed that.
Big believer in centralized authority are we?
Same with the black pilot reference, which critiqued the insidious effect of racial preferences on perceptions. https://youtu.be/wl3UwsNZ544?t=32. Matt probably best to link to the guy's videos directly rather than npr etc if referencing his statements, given the state of things.
Back in the late 1980s or early 1990s, Jesse Jackson said that once he heard the voices of several young men behind him as he walked down a sidewalk at night. He was afraid to turn around and look at them, but when they passed him and he saw they were white, he was relieved.
Jesse Jackson said that 30 or more years ago. But, in the age of rampant racial and other preferences used for the explicit purpose of lowering qualification standards, Kirk is the bad guy for saying something about a pilot that most sane people of any race, even NYT reporters, would be concerned about.
I remember when Jesse Jackson said that.
When the right is quoting Jesse Jackson favorably, we know there's a problem. Tell us what he said about the crack epidemic and the CIA.
I don't remember what if anything he said about the CIA, tho I imagine you could Google it. In the 1980s/90s, the CIA was not the popular issue it became, later, and he may not have said much.
At that time (late 1980s), it was Black legislators and activists who wanted very stringent penalties for crack cocaine, which they feared would swamp their communities, being markedly cheaper than powder. I assume Jackson was on that train. It was only about 10-15 years later, after crack had taken over the cocaine trade in Black areas despite the penalties, that the Left and its Black faction decided that those higher penalties for crack were racist and should be reduced, as they memory-holed their origin story.
Hell, Jackson was against abortion, as were many Blacks, who saw it as aimed primarily at their people (which it was when Sanger started Planned Parenthood in the 1920s era), and reducing their future political power. Jackson did a head-spinning 180 when he ran for President in 1984, as it was already a litmus test issue in the larger Democratic Party.
Just like how open immigration used to be a Republican issue, representing businesses that wanted cheap labor, and was opposed by Democrats who saw it as competition for union labor that was such a big part of their base. Cesar Chavez, for one progressive hero, was adamantly opposed to allowing in large numbers of seasonal agriculture workers, while the Republican growers in California backed it to the hilt. Or, that in the early 1990s, NAFTA was primarily a Republican thing, though Clinton backed it. NAFTA got more votes from Republicans than from Democrats, despite Democrats having majorities in Congress and their own President pushing it.
People who think each party has always taken the positions it takes today, on all sorts of issues, are ignorant. A lot changed after the GFC, and especially when Trump executed his hostile takeover of the GOP. But, really, things are always moving around, and always have.
Heck, I am pretty damn MAGA, having voted for Trump 5 times (I missed the 2020 GOP primary because of COVID), but if the Democratic Party was still the Party of JFK, just based on the issues I would be torn. As so many have said, starting with Reagan, they didn't leave the Democrats, the Democrats left them
Lol, if one can get over the fear of flying on an airplane manufactured by Boeing, the pilot is just a detail. BTW, has anyone looked at the data, to see what is the percentage of crashes of black pilot over the total flights they make and compared? Otherwise the argument is totally bogus and needs not be brought up
Yes the quote needs the context to be fully understood. Thanks for providing the link.
Additional context:
KOLVET: We've all been in the back of a plane when the turbulence hits or when you're flying through a storm and you're like, "I'm so glad I saw the guy with the right stuff and the square jaw get into the cockpit before we took off. And I feel better now, thinking about that."
KIRK: You wanna go thought crime? I'm sorry. If I see a Black pilot, I'm gonna be like, "Boy, I hope he's qualified."
KOLVET: But you wouldn't have done that before!
KIRK: That's not an immediate … that's not who I am. That's not what I believe.
NEFF: It is the reality the left has created. "
This still won't be good enough for many... even though the racist argument doesn't hold up with context, they will quickly make it a sexist argument for Kirk assuming the pilot is male by stating "I hope he's qualified".
😄
I’m getting a shirt that just says “CONTEXT” on the front. And another that says “NUANCE”
Yeah, I'm really surprised Matt didn't understand the full context of those statements that shocked him. They shouldn't have.
Right, it's not hard at all to find what CK was talking about - and it's not what Matt thinks.
Wrestling champion turned folk philosopher Tyrus said much the same thing on Gutfeld!, the other day. When he’s on a plane, he wants to see a white guy with gray hair in the pilot’s seat.
Yeah right, except that no proof has ever been provided that pilot training - which has nothing to do with universities or affirmative action - might lead to less qualified candidates becoming licensed or experienced pilots.
The very fact that Kirk, at the time a stupid dumbfuck 28 year old nobody with no real education or skills, even thought to say something like that is only slightly less repulsive than an ostensible adult such as yourself attempting to paper over it with bullshit.
"Proof"? It's common sense. If you prioritize something other than the ability to do the job when hiring, you will get hires who are less qualified to do the job than you otherwise would.
If United had said "We're committed to hiring 40% Mormons," I'd be concerned to find out my pilot is a Mormon. It's not about having prejudice against any group. Do you people really misunderstand this simple and obvious point, or is it a rhetorical strategy? I've never been sure.
" Do you people really misunderstand this simple and obvious point, or is it a rhetorical strategy?"
IMO it's deflection. Tom is clearly a troll interested more in ad hominems than presenting an argument. To wit:
"The very fact that Kirk, at the time a stupid dumbfuck 28 year old nobody with no real education or skills, even thought to say something like that is only slightly less repulsive than an ostensible adult such as yourself attempting to paper over it with bullshit.
I can't take this person seriously. Moreover, I suspect Charlie had a more valuable and useful "education" than Tom. Clearly, Charlie carried himself with far more class and respectfulness than Tom.
Yes, because if they give a certain number of jobs to candidates based on race, rather than on qualifications, they're going to wind up with a very diverse -- but less qualified work force.
Please look in the mirror. Understand why the rest of us view you and your ilk as repulsive and juvenile (in the best interpretation) right now.
The man who said it is dead, can no longer defend himself. It falls to the rest of us, even his detractors, to first ensure his words and arguments are presented honestly, whatever our feelings about their merit. An adult with decency and class would understand this duty. You and your ilk shirk it, and the magnitude of this failure the nation over is rapidly corroding what remains of our shared humanity.
DEI aka social justice fundamentalism, has resulted in many unqualified people in many positions. Personally I have seen it in local government and courts here in Pittsburgh. This is specifically the criticism of and the problem with DEI. It is not ultimately helpful to anyone and it’s extremely harmful, especially to those it purports to help.
“No real education?” Please. College is no longer education. College is about mind-closing indoctrination.
Being combative doesn’t open hearts and minds. Charlie knew that.
Like you would never think that a Black Supreme Court Justice would be comically incompetent because of DEI principles ruling the roost during the Biden administration. That would be a major racism!
But she wants us all to know how she "feels" about these cases.
...while refusing to comment on what a "woman" is due to insufficient scientific training! DEI at its best...
And the fact that you retarded dumbfucks even got into the "gender" or "sex" part of your usual bullshit is papered over as though it's either totally or completely irrelevant to the conversation.
Stupid Jews.
Thanks for including the link. So many times people have judges Charlie Kirk on an issue when they only seen a snippet of the conversation.
Exactly context matters in this quote, I don’t believe Kirk to be racist but the one line sounds like he is.
actually Matt's comment stands. In that video CK claims on the basis of "DEI studies" that affirmative action means admitting underqualified candidates (very slick that, "underqualified" heh). But Harvard has way more qualified ones than they can possibly accept, so increasing the number of those who achieved what they did without the advantages others had just adds character to the mix: determination, discipline, perseverance. The least merit-based admissions are the legacy students--mostly rich and white--whose parents went there.
The fallacy in this argument is that merit is binary, and that everyone who is a “1” is equal and can therefore be sorted on the basis of race to satisfy quotas. But merit is a continuous scale. Would you rather have a C-grade pilot or an A-grade pilot? Both are “passing” in the binary scale. But who wouldn’t choose the A-grade pilot if they could?
True, merit is not binary but to continue with the mathematical language what you are neglecting to consider is that there comes a point where the variance is in fact not statistically significant. The comparison is unlikely to be analogous to the difference between a C- and an A- pilot. The relevant analogy is likely closer to comparing two A- students (C- students aren’t admitted to Harvard even if they are legacy lol), one having a GPA of 92 and the other of 93.
This is an interesting premise but the facts belie it: https://nypost.com/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-action-case-showed-astonishing-racial-gaps/
Thanks for the link! Definitely sheds a more comprehensive light and much-needed CONTEXT to the comment.
Thanks for providing this video clip and recommending Matt links to videos (not clips taken out of context) and not articles from NPR, etc., especially not that article from NPR, that intentionally takes Charlie Kirk’s statements out of context.
Eh. Take Whites from 1965 to 2025 and it's the same downward spiral. Hispanics? Same downward spiral. The last 60 years haven't been good for any large demographic group (maybe Asians?), why? I'd lean towards the crushing of the unionized middle class, others might lean to the breakdown of marriage. Or religion.
One thing for sure, sending all the kids to college starting in the 1960's wasn't the cure-all that our parents thought it would be...
Check out The Truly Disadvantaged by William Julius Wilson. Inner city black communities were devastated socially and economically between the 1950s and 1980s. People can disagree over why (Wilson says industrial change, which Matt could probably sympathize with as someone who has critiqued outsourcing…while conservatives blame the Great Society). But Kirk is right - the data are the data, regardless of the explanation we attribute to them.
William Julius Wilson deserves to be well-known like Sowell.
Non-left-conforming intellectuals are invisible.
I hope Matt reads Wilson’s book. It’s really right up his alley with its main argument, and delivers all the facts Kirk is alluding to without hitting any conservative talking points that might cause a socially liberal reader like Matt to close the book.
"left" lol.
At the risk of putting too fine a point on it: in the humanities and social sciences (my degrees are in math), it seems that there is a sort of "campus radical" fashion which favors (faux? pseudo?) leftist thought.
For instance, there are loads of campus communists who of course have never run a business, or a farm, or lead any effort involving natural resources (e.g., mining, lumber, etc.). Yet they'll tell you how society should be organized.
And such parties do seem to dominate the culture in a lot of departments.
So, "left" in that sense.
And, again risking too much attempted precision, black (African American, whatever is the correct term) intellectuals are assumed to toe the line.
Wilson is an analytical thinker who does not fit this mold. Ergo, he's invisible.
Meh. I would need to have a much longer conversation with you in private chat if we're really going to address this, especially the part about farmers - perhaps other than miners (both professions near and dear to my family's place in this country) - and/or the fact that "Mexicans" and Blacks have ALWAYS been here, for that matter.
DM me man. We are not going to accomplish anything in Matt's toxic comments.
Charlie Kirk understood socio-political data analysis? Gee, he truly was a Renaissance Man ahead of his time. We'll all miss him greatly!
As other posters have commented, the facts Kirk is alluding to have been very public and very well known for 40 years. It’s not rocket science. Why those facts are the way they are is up for more debate. You claim elsewhere you could destroy Kirk in a debate but have little to show in the comments other than sarcasm and petty insults.
Probably understood it better than many.
Also, your angle is now understood.
I admit I never followed Kirk very closely. However, what I heard and read was thoughtful. And brave. Not afraid to express his opinion and challenge positions he thought were in error.
"Not afraid to express his opinion and challenge positions he thought were in error."
As a 30+ year old man going against stupid 19 year olds. But sure. I would have loved to have debated him. I could have destroyed him. Still does NOT justify his killing and I am abhorred by it.
Fair enough and point taken.
Actually, I'd (respectfully) add that a 30+ year old man taking the time and showing the interest and concern in the opinions of 18/19/whatever year olds is a net positive.
Most of these kids have never been challenged or possibly even heard a debate.
I'll use myself as an example!
I started college at 17. Total little wannabe-hippie radical. Felt like I was *supposed* to be a radical.
The circumstances of the debate are a tad murky. I had to be in my first year of college and the encounter occurred in the coffeeshop in the basement of Cobb Hall (University of Chicago).
I don't know how I got into the debate and I have no memory of the face of my opponent.
I just remember staring at the ground and the sense that he just demolished everything I lobbed (probably half-@$$3d macroeconomic content).
I have a memory of his shoes and my shoes and of getting my @$$ handed to me. It was an extraordinarily positive experience.
As such, I'd say that willingness to engage college students, even being a little provocative by simply showing up on a campus and offering to debate, is probably good. From what I can tell (and my direct experience is admittedly limited), Kirk never conducted himself maliciously or as a bully. Seemed like he was just trying to get kids to open their minds (college!), ask questions and consider alternative points of view.
So, your point is taken and I may have jumped to conclusions myself!
:-)
You are "abhorred by it," huh?
They’re both correct.
The last 60 years haven't been good for the usual reason. Decadence, the long slow end stage of every prosperous society. To paraphrase Hemingway, how did you fall? Two ways, gradually, and then suddenly
I’d lean to the breakdown of the money. Only since 1971 has humanity been on a worldwide fiat-money system. Prior to 71 there was a commodity tied to the monetary unit.
When the money is fake, the rest of the economy is doomed to follow.
"It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class as political constitutions and bills of rights.”
- Mises
Interesting thought, thanks for bringing it up
If it’s your first exposure to the idea - I apologize for being an imperfect messenger - but use 71 as your anchor for reviewing the explosion in wealth inequality, growth in home prices, cost of secondary education…
Those who shit on sound money are walking, talking testaments to the folly of man…
“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
- FA Hayek
I watched Charlie pose this argument a couple of times with interlocutors - remember David Mamet - "ABC - Always Be Closing." I didn't like some of the things Charlie said, but there was never any confusion in his message - "All glory to God" - and that's what Charlie wanted for all - his wife repeated his message best - "make Heaven crowded" which taken out of context could be construed as "Charlie Kirk wants everyone to DIE!!!"
Stephen King had no reason, imho, to apologize for his ridiculous tweet - what I'd be apologizing for is demonstrating so openly my willingness, even eagerness, to believe the worst about others. King's a writer, for fuck's sake, he's going to retweet a post claiming a guy he's never met wants to stone gay folks to death without checking?
Who does that? And more important, why?
During my youth, relatively, I maligned Republicans I'd never met or attempted to understand. Twasn't till I and others were accused of racism myself for questioning Obama that I began to recognize my own unthinking bigotry as hate speech, and understand how my laziness was polluting the public square.
That I was a partisan is no excuse.
Wonderful. And I wish Matt would come in here to explain why he disagrees with Kirk’s statements that he felt were so abhorrent to be worth mentioning two days after the man was assassinated for his statements.
Take my comment. Does Matt agree that marriage, family, stable employment, community ties etc. are important? (I hope so). Are all of those things measurably worse for black Americans (and disproportionately so) in 2025 than they were in 1965? (Yes). Then Kirk is right. Unless one believes it is not normatively desirable for black Americans to have all those things despite wanting them for oneself (which would make one a racist bigot), you can’t disagree with the factual point Kirk is making.
A similar three step, simple argument could be made in Kirk’s defense on the pilot comment. (1) Is there evidence airlines have set explicit hiring quotas for racial groups? (Yes) (2) By definition, does using race as a criterion in hiring mean excellence is no longer the only criterion used to hire? (Yes) (3) Therefore, is it not purely rational to wonder when one sees a person from a group targeted by quota hiring if that person was not hired solely for their excellence? (Yes).
Cheers! Excellent points - culture matters and that starts in the home. I expect Matt hasn't settled on these issues as firmly as others have - yet! Matt's on fire this weekend and clearly enjoys the fight.
I suspect Kirk absorbed this take from the great Thomas Sowell. Ironic ain’t it.
The civil rights movement brought with it a whole lot of unintended consequences. An argument could be made that black culture itself was a lot healthier than the hollowed-out hybrid mess we've all ended up with.
It's a pretty sure bet that Kirk was working from Thomas Sowell's data. Charlie was most likely focused exclusively on the number of intact black nuclear families as well. The number of black homes without a father in 1950 was something like 9%. Black marriage rates from 1890 to 1950 exceeded white marriage rates. Kirk, like Sowell, probably doesn't explore the role of urbanization in the process, but they're not wrong.
I'd imagine Matt could have fully understood his point and still not be thrilled with the statement. Op-ed pieces don't need to provide an accompanying essay of clarifying apologetics for each factoid shared. That falls to an educated readership to supply themselves.
Sure - though the point of the op-ed is to criticize people for making poorly informed if not misinformed critiques of Charlie Kirk days after he was gruesomely murdered. So for Matt to critique Kirk by linking out of context videos to his statements is a bit ironic, yes? And if Matt thinks Kirk’s statements are self-evidently abhorrent and don’t need explanation, then he should say so.
The black pilot quote is even worse for being taken out of context.
And yes, if Matt just wanted to say the comments reflect poorly regardless of context he has a duty to say so. Especially in an article criticizing exactly that error of misusing quotes.
One of the richer ironies I read in some time.
I was going to write a similar comment, but you covered it, flyoverdriver. I spent the first ten years of my life, 1954-1964, in a largely black, working class neighborhood in southeast Washington, D.C. Families were intact, dads went to work, moms stayed home with the kids, and we all -- black and white -- celebrated Christmas (there was no such thing as Kwanzaa). We were out of the country on a naval base until 1967, and a lot changed, even in that short a time. Fewer intact families, fewer dads, more moms working outside the home, more latchkey kids... Kwanzaa. Better than now or worse? Or just different.
I perceived no malice in Matt, he nor we can always have all the facts and context. That’s why we need to help each other.
Sure, but Matt taking a gratuitous cheap shot at Kirk’s views on race by linking to out of context videos when he purports to be criticizing that very practice by others deserves to be rebuked.
I agree. I often say, knowing full well that most black Americans were poor as dirt, they were families then, and no matter what life brought you, that family was there to support you and make sure you always had a home. The urban life destroyed the rural values and today, as for decades now, little black kids roam around the cities in the dead of night while mom is busy elsewhere and Pops not to be found. Clarence Thomas is an example of the good people that were turned out by a combination of needing to escape the poverty and a love of learning. There are still plenty of black stars in all fields, but the moral foundation has been replaced all too often by the schlock that the Dems sell as values.
the later Walter Williams wrote numerous columns pointing out the blacks led better lives before the Civil Rights law and the War on poverty
https://www.dailysignal.com/2017/09/20/black-family-struggling-not-slavery/
http://walterewilliams.com/the-true-black-tragedy/
https://intellectualtakeout.org/2020/09/the-welfare-state-did-what-slavery-couldnt-do/
https://www.creators.com/read/walter-williams/09/17/the-welfare-states-legacy
https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/economist-walter-williams-welfare-state-destroyed-
Those of us who were around in the 60's know the diabolical "Aid to Dependent Children" was a dirty trick played on Black families by a mean-spirited "good-old-boy" southern Democrat. He singlehandedly destroyed the fabric of the Black family and created a bunch of illegitimate babies that grew up without father figures in their lives.
Thank you for saying in a better way what I came to say
I have also heard this stated by Walter E. Williams and Thomas Sowell.
There is more context regarding the “black pilot” quote. I listened to him explaining his viewpoint regarding this. He said he was concerned that DEI would result in the lowering of basic standards for pilot applicants leading him to say “I don’t want to wonder if my black pilot is among the most qualified to fly this plane” no one wants to wonder. That is what he was getting at and he’s not wrong. It’s not fair to the passengers and it’s not fair to those perfectly qualified black pilots who have made the grade. Context is everything. I’ve listened to a lot of Charlie Kirk.
He was absolutely right on this - and he was likely responding to articles written about the hiring process for our national pilots + air traffic controllers.
There have been scandals around that where they were prioritizing people on very strange things (presumably to increase 'diversity') instead of just recruiting people on merit.
Pretty sure this was brought up in congress not long ago as well.
You can literally take that ATC biographical test and see how completely bullshit it is:
https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/
It's been a while since I dug into the specfics, but IIRC something like 90% of people failed the test (if you take it you'll see why), but then a very specific group of people were given the "correct" answers so they'd pass. (How there's a "correct" answer to "The high school subject in which I received my lowest grade" is another problem. It's science, btw.)
Ultimately, they blew up multiple classes of people who went to air traffic school because those people "failed" the biographical screening test. It didn't matter that their actual scores in actual air traffic control school were immaculate. (Think we could use more trained ATCs today or nah?)
Edit to add a link to a screenshot I made during my research. This is from an FAA manual published in 2000:
https://ibb.co/TMt6r1hc
Exactly. I'm surprised Matt T doesn't know this. Yo Matt, love ya, but ya can't say stuff like that about Charlie K. Sorry, but it shows either you forget or didn't know the whole story!
Charlie was pointing to a truth many even Obiden's AG was worried about, passenger safety.
Many qualified applicants were turned away from federal jobs in agencies - including the FAA. It was because of Obama's DEI Executive Order in 2011. There was a big class action lawsuit over it in 2019, Brigida vs FAA. In 2024 the AG also connected it to affecting passenger safety. Obama was clear - his "new approach" was to remove skilled-base hiring to hiring based on race and sex.
https://www.saveservices.org/2025/02/white-men-targeted-by-faas-discriminatory-dei-program/
Do you have any reference to explicit Obama's declarations of that goal?
Ya don't have to dig too deep. But here's another for you. The substack, at the top (click on the pic) on this reddit, and some of the comments below it, will help you connect the dots. It's actually very scary learning what they did to push this on us all!
https://www.reddit.com/r/centrist/comments/1ieagd2/the_faas_hiring_scandal_a_quick_overview_2024/
I assume that by switching to discuss specific cases of DEI, you gave up the task to demonstrate that the stated intent of the law was to destroy competence-based hiring, which was the subject we were discussing. On the general subject, I can’t help pointing out that there is a large measure of obstinate blindness in pointing at DEI as the root of incompetence when cronyism, political affiliation elevated over competence and the revolving door create the disasters under everyone’s eyes. Are you claiming that the disasters at Boeing are a result of DEI? Or the county in Texas that decided not to pay for flood advisor systems? One can make thousands of example and will still hear the very personification of incompetence, our inept “secretary of war” still blame DEI
Aug. 18, 2011, EO 13583, signed by Obama. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/08/18/executive-order-13583-establishing-coordinated-government-wide-initiativ
Thanks. That’s a long boring document in legalese. I went through it quickly and could not find any mention of the goal of eliminating skilled-based hiring. Maybe you can point the specific passage.
In general, it’s a basic concept in mathematics that the larger the set in which one searches for a solution, the higher the chance to find a better one. But I can see how many despise the policy, as expression of a nanny state forced to remind its citizen of basic logic. And we know how it’s in human nature to prefer being wrong than told what to do
Hope this helps you.
Link - The Biographical Assessment test. https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/
Link - A summary substack, (quote is from the 1st paragraph). "The questionnaire awarded points for factors like "lowest grade in high school is science," something explicitly admitted by the FAA in a motion to deny class certification." https://www.reddit.com/r/centrist/comments/1ieagd2/the_faas_hiring_scandal_a_quick_overview_2024/
But the lefts take on it was “Charlie’s racist against black pilots” what a bunch of idiots.
Yes, and this is a concern. I wouldn't want white pilots to fill internal quotas either if it comes at the expense of hiring a better qualified Asian pilot.
Of course, I'm skeptical we ever lived in as much of a meritocracy as we think we do.
In many cases, it seems to be much more important to know someone...
We may not live up to meritocratic ideals as we’d like to believe but certainly less than we used to. That is a necessary and inextricable byproduct of race quotas like DEI and AA.
Yes, to be sure. In a sense, it made a bad situation even worse.
Not really. Excluding by default certain subsets of applicants is not guaranteed to lead to a better solution than being forced to pick some elements of that subset
Yes, I think Trumps cabinet is a great example.
Yes -- given how his administration was undermined from within in the first term, Trump clearly prioritized loyalty to his mission highly when staffing.
By near necessity, that involves prioritizing people he knew.
That said, in my lifetime, I haven't considered any president's cabinet appointments to be terribly meritocratic. The political nature makes these worse than the private sector as the profit motive has been removed, and loyalty to the executive is almost always a very important factor.
You mean SUCCESSFUL captains of industry?! Oh, no!- he hired winners!
Cute. Can you explain who is unqualified for the position they hold and why? I doubt it, but give it a whirl.
It's almost as if a professional demonizer ~ or a team of them ~ works on twisting messages 24/7.
DNC
Every time someone has brought up the “mean thing” Charlie Kirk said, there’s a perfectly rational not mean argument to be made for why he said it. And then they look like fools. I was able to do that twice yesterday with a young colleague who thinks Kirk said “hateful and mean things” all the time. Take the emotion out of the argument and it all boils down to a strong conviction he has and it’s never a personal attack. The young ones believe that a different opinion or belief = personal attack and that is not what Charlie Kirk was doing.
Pointing-out factual inaccuracy isn't doing me much good. When I show a criticism of Kirk to be untrue or out of context, I get: "He spread hate and disinformation. He was a white supremacist. And he was a far-right Christian. I don't have to do research; I know what those people believe." Then for the finish, some unintentional Biblical irony: "He loved guns. Live by the sword, die by the sword. End of." Followed by whooping and high-fives. The dearth of nuance or logic is pitiable. And these kids have way more formal education than I do. One, who doesn't seem to know the definition of the term, even told me I lack, "Critical intelligence." Comedy gold.
Fortunately I was dealing with one who was not so far gone, also though I’m not sure I convinced her that Kirk didn’t say awful things. I did manage to get her to admit that he wasn’t personally attacking someone in his arguments as much as she doesn’t like his arguments/opinions. Small win, but I’ll take it if it helps her to not be so quick to judge and to have a bit more care when throwing out slurs against others.
In the same vein, look at this data for medical school acceptance rates by race. It's from 2017, so a little old, but it can't have gotten better post George Floyd. Now, they just don't make the data available. Bring it up, get in trouble.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-chart-illustrates-graphically-racial-preferences-for-blacks-and-hispanics-being-admitted-to-us-medical-schools/
Search on [atlas air crash].
See also the commuter flight that broke the right wing off in Toronto six or so months ago.
I remember that. I went down the rabbit hole to see wtf was going on with DEI regarding pilots and air traffic controllers. I believe there are extra hurdles faced by minority groups trying to get ahead, but you can’t fix it at the endpoint (the point of licensure)
See Washington states recent proposal to get rid of the bar exam.
“ I believe there are extra hurdles faced by minority groups trying to get ahead, but you can’t fix it at the endpoint (the point of licensure) …”
Nailed it.
Ultimately, the government was terrified of being sued for hiring discrimination based on race, and so their big idea was to make the FAA workforce mirror the workforce at large.
This meant incorporating hiring discrimination based on race.
https://ibb.co/4gnQbrrt
Omgosh! What’s next? No medical degree to perform surgery??? 🤦♀️
Definitely a high probability. Right now in my area it is difficult to get to see an M.D. level physician in a timely manner for ordinary clinical problems. The last time I went to an E.R. I wasn't even seen by a resident, I got a Physicians' Assistant. P.A.'s deliver a lot of the care in outpatient urgent care centers, and yes, they do already assist in surgeries. P.A.'s do not attend medical school and have something like a master's degree.
They don’t go to medical schools??
Correct.
Sorry to delve off airline safety …but it seems Charlie wasn’t that interested in, or couldn’t recognize, the quality of the endpoint…Charlie was just as quick to misinterpret and twist the words of others to fit his agenda. What….are women supposed to think we could have voted without the law allowing it? That blacks could enter all white schools of the 50s and 60s, own property, run for congress, or even vote, with laws that specifically mandated the white ruling class make it so? The reason they couldn’t eat in white restaurants still exists. Did DEI go too far? Did some get jobs who weren’t qualified? Of course. But the nation was served well overall. Charlie, Trump, P2025 would turn us back to the 50s or worse. How stupid to use Obama, Jackson Brown, Reid as examples
https://x.com/alluring_nyc/status/1965931096539017536
Ok. When you kid needs surgery I’m sure you’ll be happy to take the DEI candidate. ❤️
Funny you should bring that up!! My fav doc is a now retired or near retirement. She went thru the wringer getting into med school and given her age, was very likely was DEI bean for the count. Half of the docs my husband and I now see, including specialists, are women. We are fortunate to live in an area where we have a decent choice of docs. We usually go by recommendations. Not gender. Our docs were accepted into med school, a couple into very prestigious schools. If not DEI candidates per se, I know damned well that that number of women were not in medicine decades ago. My selection of docs in the 60s and 70s was confined to almost all men. White men at that. My first simple gyn exam was a young male doctor who insisted “it couldn’t and therefore doesn’t hurt” as he jabbed my insides so hard I cried and it bled. Since the nineties I’ve had a great selection of women ObGyns…for me and my babies. BIG sigh of relief. You’re dreaming if you think DEI has t helped improve this country for the better in so many ways.
DEI didn't do that, market forces did. Women gynecologists are preferred by patients.
Some? Airline pilots and ATC? How about NONE but the most qualified. I don’t think you appreciate the implications
Sorry to delve off airline safety …but it seems Charlie wasn’t that interested in, or couldn’t recognize, the quality of the endpoint…
https://x.com/alluring_nyc/status/1965931096539017536
I thought that every reasonable person realized what Charlie meant by that statement. Because with DEI, most of us worry in the same way.
Multiple airlines (especially United Airlines), touted programs to get more black pilots and first officers piloting their airplanes that fly all of us around. In order to make this happen, they HAVE, in fact, lowered the standards to become a pilot. Fewer hours of in-cockpit training, fewer fours in simulators, lower standards all around. Was this a move to improve airline safety? No. It was to virtue signal to America and corporate shareholders that they want to appear “antiracist”. Charlie Kirk didn’t make this up, nor were his concerns about this unfounded. Nobody wants to have these kinds thoughts when they see a black pilot (and very, very few did, including me, prior to this insane initiatives and announcements) but anybody paying attention has to be having these thoughts. My god, how could you not have these thoughts? He was correct, very unfortunately, for everyone - including our black neighbors and friends and family. This is verifiable fact - it has happened. And it was not Charlie Kirk’s idea. Don’t kill the messenger.
I am a pilot (white)… I agree! Merit based assignments are without doubt preferable to DEI! Piloting an aircraft is demanding; appropriate training and application of that training is essential! Color of skin doesn’t matter; when it becomes an issue, the airspace becomes very dangerous! If a pilot earns his seat because of his skin, he is suspect! And the airspace becomes more vulnerable! Meritocracy takes precedence when people’s lives are at risk! Whether the pilot is white or black .. or Indian!!!
I happen to know an 85 year old retired commercial “pilot’s pilot”. Literally tens of thousands of flight hours. He has no racial prejudice that I’m aware of. He tells a story of a new black co-pilot that must have been one of the first DEI hires, before it was called that. By his account, the guy was terrible, but nobody would say anything. Finally, the copilot was reassigned to retraining and not seen again at his airline. The next guy, according to my friend, was great. Called himself “Dark Gable” and was known far and wide.
Although I cleared up a misunderstanding about Charlie and the black pilots quote, while talking to a friend to the left of me he suggested I look at some of Charlie’s views on the civil rights act. I found a video clip and I don’t like what I heard:
In the video Charlie said he thought the passing of the civil rights act was giant mistake. I was really disappointed. He was talking to 2 other white men and he was arrogant and subtly sneering. He acknowledged as an aside that the act prevented discrimination but lamented affirmative action. I support affirmative action and I think it is different than DEI. I feel that I saw the real Charlie in that clip. We need to keep talking to each other civilly so that we can exchange information and maybe humbly change our views.
Good for you and your integrity Andrea. As someone who had only vaguely heard of Charlie Kirk and find myself resisting going through his archive because I know I'll be doing it for a ghoulish reason, cheering for the hope he turns out to be perfect martyr material, this is appreciated
Thank you so much for adding this clarification, Andrea.
It's basic logic which everyone has somewhere in their mind anyway. "We need more Type XYZ pilots! We are prioritizing hiring and promoting more Type XYZ pilots." Then you see your pilot is a Type XYZ. Of course you're going to think "Hmmm..."
Alan Dershowitz makes the same point. When we see a person of color in a position of responsibility, SOME people worry that the person did not meet the rigorous standards expected for a person to be in that position.
Seeing a person of color in a position of responsibility does not bother me. Seeing a person with an Ivy League education in a position of responsibility DOES worry me. I remember interviewing for a senior staff attorney position in a major US corporation. While I was going through the interview process, I saw that there was a distinct difference between the staff attorneys who did the bulk of the work with local and federal regulatory agencies, and the executive level attorneys in the C suite area. The attorneys doing the bulk of the work came from local law schools. The attorneys at the executive level were generally younger and came from Ivy League schools. Many of the executive level attorneys had held similar jobs at other major corporations.
The caste system was fascinating. It made me wonder whether these people at the top level really understood the work that was going on. A few years later, I was doing a document review assignment where I was reading the emails and memos between the executive level attorneys and the other C suite people. It was not good. The lack of wisdom and knowledge resulted in this company committing ethical violations that became a major political scandal in my home state. Sad thing is that everything the company did COULD have been done legally, but the "brilliantly" educated Ivy League attorneys advising them f'ed up.
I look at all the well funded NGOs corrupting the legislative and political scene today and I marvel at how this major company screwed up so badly. They could have just emulated what other interests were doing.
"The line that struck me said Kirk believed “Jews are trying to replace white Americans with nonwhite immigrants,”"
Yeah, I would be genuinely shocked if Charlie Kirk said that. Don't believe it for a second.
Charlie actually took a ton of heat from people on the right for either avoiding the question of Israel or for being too deferential towards them.
For gods sake, the Times of Israel article on his death is headlined "Conservative influencer and Israel advocate Charlie Kirk shot dead at Utah event".
As for his Christianity as well - his type of Christianity (in my opinion) was 1000000 miles better/softer than the type of Christianity that we all remember was absolutely mainstream in politics back in the 90s. It's not even close.
He was accurate with scripture, but he wasn't some dogmatic fire and brimstone hateful kind of person. His was much more tame, gracious and charitable. And he actually was that kind of person, which I think is borne out by all the testimonies of the people who knew him.
Charlie Kirk was, by all accounts, a very good and decent human being.
So yeah. Shame on the people who are smearing him posthumously. It's gross.
thanks. this is a really good and thoughtful comment. really good.
💯!!!
Well said and he was only 31 years old. He had at least another 30 + natural years to develop further. What an absolute shame. Heartbreaking 💔.
Wasn’t Kirk a Jew?
Read the full quote, here, I believe: https://www.factcheck.org/2025/09/viral-claims-about-charlie-kirks-words/
The fact check doesn't provide dates, times, and other critical details, so...
Thank you for providing the link. Charlie was probably right in claiming that Jewish donors, who fund a lot of liberal organizations, end up supporting groups that seek to undermine traditional Western culture by opening the borders to people that hate the West, hate America, and -- it turns out, as Charlie said--that hate Jews and Israel, too. His remarks were not antisemitic -- they were more in the nature of a warning to secular Jews.
The full quote isn't in there. It's not mentioned anywhere.
Dont waste my time fact checking your sources for you, it's a rude thing to do.
I couldn't care less about this specific instance and stipulated clearly that the link had multiple flaws.
When I'm rude I write things such as "fuck off and learn to read."
As a lifelong Democrat and New York Times subscriber, I became disillusioned with these institutions during Covid. I disengaged from the Democrats and, astonishing to me, cancelled my NYT subscription. Lately I have become even more appalled by the outright manipulation and seeming indifference to truth. Not to mention the disgusting celebrations of Kirk’s death. I want nothing to do with these people. They seem nasty, or crazy, or ethically compromised or all of the above.
So many in this forum fit your profile. I 'me too' your comment.
second
It is not indifference to the truth. The defining characteristic of the contemporary Left is zealous commitment to demonstrable untruths, and vicious hatred towards all who present the evidence and arguments debunking their dogma. That’s why Charlie was killed and why a good chunk of the Left is dancing on his grave.
This is really nothing new in human history. The modern Left is just the latest version of a long line of deranged religious zealots looking for heretics to punish.
Good point.
It's all of the above.
Thank you. As a conservatarian, I root for there being more of you.
As am I
“Mistakes were made.” That’s all the press is capable of these days.
Reminds me of reading police reports of bad shoots.
"The gun discharged and the victim was struck."
An SUV jumped the curb and plowed into a crowed in.........
“The victim was struck.” Wonderful use of passive voice.
A law prof told me of one of his long term studies on firearms. He’s been doing it 50+ years. I’ve only been doing it for 25 since I learned of it.
But the premise is to safely store your guns and over time record every instance of them, “going off.”
It has been an uneventful study.
For the sake of science, I will now attempt to replicate your experiment. (I wasn't writing it down before, but now I will!)
Yeah, was tempted to back date it.
I try to avoid bring it up but when someone starts going off (ahem) on guns going off I’ll mention this. Though, not sure why. They don’t seem to get that pulling a trigger requires both a physical act and intent.
Or the classic line given by Mrs. Clinton after Benghazi:
"What difference, at this point, does it make?"
Note passive voice.
glad you caught that. After all, it is well settled that one should always avoid passive voice. :) :)
Unless you’re ducking blame 😉
That and a petty insult to the already wronged party.
The "revelation" (i.e. correction) is convenienlty only in the on-line edition for quick removal.
But were they really mistakes?
That’s a good point. Sometimes, no, they just have to make a correction because they got caught.
Yes, this type of comment is super weaselly
Yeah except they’re saying Charlie made the mistakes.
I knew Charlie, argued with him periodically about language and argued the need for precision. Despite all that, I had enormous admiration for his courage to discuss, to argue, to debate and really get into difficult topics. He was unfailingly courageous. The parsing by papers like the Times and others who can’t simply acknowledge his murder as a profound assault on THAT - the courage to speak your mind and debate - ought to scare the living sh*t out of journalists and editors but instead they seem incapable of altering their dug-in behavior.
This was a rare individual who gave it his all and probably induced more young people to engage in our political discourse than anyone (either party) in the last CENTURY. And the idea that THAT isn’t celebrated makes me want to pull my hair out.
The idiots at The NY Times and Wash Post (not even to mention MSNBC) ought to report this: Charlie’s murder has likely spurred a multi-digit alteration in the political landscape of America.
Young people know a hero and they gravitate to them. Charlie was that guy in life and I guarantee he will be even larger in death. TPUSA will see a surge in its members and activism in ways these small minded journalists can’t even fathom.
They didn’t see the power of these young people before….but just wait and watch what happens now.
"This was a rare individual who gave it his all and probably induced more young people to engage in our political discourse than anyone (either party) in the last CENTURY. And the idea that THAT isn’t celebrated makes me want to pull my hair out."
This is exactly how I feel.
Unfortunately, it’s also exactly what got him assassinated. Engaging young people in reasoned political discourse is not allowed by people whose current position and power is threatened by rational, conversant young people.
From your lips to God's ears.
Hear hear!
>Charlie’s murder has likely spurred a multi-digit alteration in the political landscape of America.
You're way more optimistic than I am. I think his murder will harden existing tribal allegiances and lower the bar for future acts of political violence. We're in a tailspin and I don't see how to pull out of it.
People compare this to the political violence of the early 1970s, but in that case there was a singular animating principle, the Vietnam War, and the domestic violence petered out after it ended. The modern culture war is just about hating the other guys, plain and simple.
Matt, these psychopaths believe words are violence. They've been told that by a particular part of the political slider, but we can't say which. Because, you know, both sides need to cool it.
Because, you know, both sides and all.
It is weird how both sides don't burn down police stations, federal buildings or loot. That's just one side. It's so weird.
The only reason to claim words are violence is to justify violence to stop words.
If you have a chance to watch Boghossian's street epistemology, you see this play out. The degree of mental illness amongst certain parts of academia is alarming, and I'm not even talking about their problems with academic cheating, AI or political extremism.... I'm just talking about the head cases running the social sciences.
The demarcation between political ideology and mental illness is pretty fuzzy, I’m afraid.
Also, the people who claim "silence is violence" prove their pacifism by never shutting the hell up.
Can you put this on a t-shirt? If not, will you allow me to?
I actually really like this idea but don't want to cash in on somebody else's quote if I DID read it somewhere. I'll do some more digging when I have free time tomorrow and let you know :)
I want one too, if they can be made!!
The process is a little more involved than I thought and may take a day or two....
Great sentence. Truly superb.
Brilliant
It's so good I'm positive I read it somewhere else.
I'm pretty sure it was some libertarian who said it.
I actually googled it and searched it on X to give credit and didn't find any matches, to my surprise.
Pretty sure they only mean other peoples’ words. Like the vicious attacks on religion that are just refuting their tenets or denying a prophet is the sole conduit for virtue and are responded to with physical violence.
And the key point is that their own words never cause violence - just love, get it Hitler?
That was exactly my thought in anger and despair yesterday. Has there ever been an act of violence in the decades of my adulthood anywhere near equivalent to a person of the left killing a person on the right!
The problem that (some on) the left is having right now is that they're basically saying "He deserved to die because of his political views" and half the country realizing they also hold those views.
For example, I spent days researching the FAA discrimination scandal and know the agency has been hiring based on race for 25 years. I know the air traffic controller test was changed to be almost random -- in the name of 'equity' -- and that some people were given the answers to the test. And while that lawsuit didn't concern pilots in particular, I think it would be logical to at least wonder if the reduction of standards also bled over into pilots.
Yes - yours is the companion post to mine about the historical sociological data being much more favorable to black Americans than the present data. Matt falls for the same trick as those he criticizes here by letting some out of context statement by Kirk trigger the inner hardwired social-liberal alarm bells about racism, when there is actually a deeply rational, non-racist, and policy-serious statement being made by the speaker.
And it really has nothing to do with race.
I'd be equally against the FAA declaring the height of their workforce must match the height of the workforce at large, then discriminating based on height. Ditto religion or literally any other metric other than capability.
I think many liberals (including me up to a few years ago) still maintain that anything conservatives say related to race is just another Reagan at the Neshoba County Fair repackaging or dressing up the same old Jim Crow bigotry in new language. But we are two generations removed from that with a vastly different electorate. Kirk is speaking to college students for whom Reagan is only a textbook reality. Seems Matt gave away here in this post that he is still having that knee-jerk assumption about conservatives when they talk about race.
I wish the whole idea of race could be discarded. Back in the heyday of Carl Linnaeus (18th century), science was a new thing, and categorizing everything was a “thing.” So Cuvier and Buffon came up with “race” (root, ironically, means root), based on mostly superficial characteristics, like skin melanin content and epithelial eye folds. What a disservice! We need to retire this concept, forever.
At a fundamental level, I wonder how these things are even determined. We'll use the FAA example since we're already talking about it. The categories to be "balanced" with the civilian workforce were:
Black
Hispanic
Asian Pacific Islander
American Indian/Alaskan Native
White Non-Hispanic
The black, white and Hispanic categories make sense, but who decided that Asian Pacific Islander should get its own category, and further decided what that even entails?
(Ironically, at this specific snapshot in time, the American Indian/Alaskan Native category was pretty heavily over-represented....meaning these "diversity goals" may have actually hurt this group!)
https://ibb.co/4gnQbrrt
And then you have black hispanic! Might not be on FAA’s list, but I’ve seen that one, too. Originally, intersectionality came about from a suit with GM, where the contention was that the plaintiffs were discriminated against on two counts, for being black AND being female. Probably was legitimate at the time, but that idea has been blown out of all proportion. It’s all absurd
The concept of race has become preposterous and increasingly meaningless in our mixed race country. I was talking with my teenage granddaughters (who are racially mixed--1 grandfather is African-American), and the oldest was recounting how mortified she was when she was recognized as having scored well on the PSAT for an African-American---she had just checked the racial boxes and didn't realize how the categories would be used. Her younger sister said, "you were the whitest person up there! I would never check those boxes! Plus I could never pass as black!" Ironically, the same thing happened to their mother 25 years ago.
This stuff is so aggravating. Instead of identifying as black, or white, or “mixed race” (whatever that is), why can’t we just identify as humans and let it go?
I'm not yet willing to discard ethnic gene pools as one of the factors in assessing intelligence, but I place a lot more importance on the culture in which people are raised. Everybody knows by now that a number of Asian cultures (and gene pools?) produce people with the highest IQ's in the U.S., and they also push scholarship, achievement and excellence. If I had to choose a surgeon from a group with diverse skin colors and I know nothing else about them, I would go for the East Asians and Indians.
“ I think it would be logical to at least wonder if the reduction of standards also bled over into pilots.”
Retired airline pilot here. Your logic is sound.
I appreciate the Matt/Walter belief that truth/fact based American journalism can create a national conversation capable of replacing the (my view) "everything means everything so nothing means anything" amoral surveillance hysterics the MSM, and the people who pay them, are using to strip Americans of their connection to the moral lines of demarcation our Republics founding fathers worked hard to enshrine in our Constitution. The ideological extremes of both Marxism and Capitalism are totalitarian. I do believe that the malignant narcissism of the purely mercenary leadership exploiting the ideological utopians of both camps care for nothing but themselves. Whatever the word populist means, both the "left" and "right" see it as an enemy to be destroyed. This assassination and the violence now poisoning the American psyche across our Republic is the result of allowing the American national conversation to be captured and reduced to the vacuous amorality and psychopathy of the lie now covering for the grifting mal actors and perps feeding on the lives and labor of hard working Americans. Slice it any way one wishes but the greatest economy in the world was looted and left in civilizational and cultural ruin.
There is the Republic, the Constitution and the free citizen. Everything else is psyop. Depart the psyop and live.
Demand, participate in the creation of and support the solutions oriented truth/fact based national conversation that will create the truth/fact based reality the citizens of the American Republic must have to survive.
Explain how any degree of capitalism is totalitarian.
I'd imagine that the reference is to the financialization of everything and the inevitability of the merger between corporate and governmental power. When CEOs cocktail with senators, policy and legislation happens for the benefit of the corporate sector. Those who can participate in the financial markets may have some collective financial benefit, but working class interests are essentially reduced for the most part to an accounting line item, and messy things like individual rights/responsibilities are also thusly reduced in the name of cost-management. Think of the centralized power of managed health and see a totalitarian system in action. Those vertically organized corporate enterprises squeeze profit out of managing the relationship between doctor and patient with an iron fist.
But that's not capitalism. That's corporatism, also known once as mercantilism, later state socialism or pejoratively these days as fascism. Capitalism is the FREE exchange of goods and services, managed not by force but by ordered liberty.
I agree - we don't live under a pure capitalist system. But given that there is the ideal, and then the real, it's unlikely that any human system can survive centralized power without becoming totalitarian. I described the process by which the illusion of capitalism devolved to the corporatism we slave for. I might say that the only chance for a better version of capitalism to happen would be if we can get the American experiment in constitutional republicanism back on track. Seems a big ask in these days of so many clamoring for positive "rights" rather than the negative right to be left to solve one's problems in one's own community, in one's way. Stripping "personhood" from corporations mug be a start. But whose 401k would survive that (says the citizen whose retirement plan is to work till I'm dead) ?
You win. I'm for ordered liberty and free trade. Call the rigged game looting and stripping the free peoples of the world of their civil liberties anything you like. (You might enjoy the Mike Benz take on USAID/Ukraine/Soros/NGO/spook land.)
The left labels anyone they disagree with "controversial." I'm sick of it. The assassin aimed for a media-created cartoon character named Charlie Kirk and the bullet killed a human being named Charlie Kirk who was a good man, a husband, a father and a patriot.
Fuck the media, fuck the SPLC, fuck the hate speech laws and fuck all the billionaires and NGOs funding this bull shit.
If you go out of your way to point out how “bad” somebody was on the occasion of their murder, what could be your purpose other than to justify it?
There's a sense among Democrats that they're being railroaded into saying nice things about someone whose views they regard as harmful just because he got shot, and they resent that, which I do think is understandable.
I don't care if they have to preface it with "he was bad" as long as they clearly condemn political violence, as most of the party leadership has done.
If they say political violence is bad but he essentially had it coming because of all the bad things he said, the second part negates the first. Condemning assassination doesn’t mean you have to also heap praise on the victim, you can even say you disagreed with him (I did) and he still shouldn’t have been killed over his beliefs. And it always takes zero effort to stay silent- if you’re not a prominent politician, you don’t have to publicly comment on everything.
I know emotions are high right now, but we really do have to distinguish between people who say "he had it coming", or use extremist rhetoric, versus people who just want to make it clear they strongly disagreed with him.
If Zohran Mamdani got shot, I imagine my own reaction would be something like: political violence is always wrong, but socialism is extremely destructive and NYC will be much better off without him as mayor. That isn't justifying violence. It's making it clear that violence doesn't canonize its victims.
Party leadership is Pelosi, Schumer and Jeffries. They are all on record inciting violence against Trump and MAGA and the USSC.
The previous president of the U.S. gave a speech with a blood red background and two marines in the dark flanking him, calling Trump and MAGA the greatest threat to American democracy. They have encouraged this hate for nearly ten years against the people of the United States. No modern president until Obama that I am aware of had ever attacked the voters, not the politicians, the voters, of the other party.
I could give a damn about a “sense among Democrats that they’re being railroaded blah blah blah…”.
First, where were they when their leadership was repeatedly demonizing the opposition and their voters? Second, my complaint isn’t with people who couch their hate or dislike with qualifiers that political violence is not OK. It is with the people who literally are celebrating the murder, mocking his wife and children, and saying he deserved to die and/or hope he is the first of many more.
Finally, the haters and mockers have a first amendment right to make total assholes of themselves, but that right ends the moment they incite violence. If they want to be dickheads and cunts, fine, but they should expect to be treated like the dickheads and cunts that they are and shamed by civil society and even fired. Who wants to associate with such scum?
Well said.
sounds like you Agree with JD.
Consequentialism - the ends justifies the means - is a nasty, nasty doctrine in the hands of people who believe that truth is subjective.
Such people have no principles but their self-interest.
I can’t stand your pessimism. Because I fear you are right. But I keep trying. Being catholic im not supposed to have that kind of hope. But I do
Totally 💯
Consequentialism isn’t quite that tidily “ends justifies the means.”
It decides the morality of an act by its outcome. It is retrospective.
So, good intentions acted upon that come to disaster through no fault of the good actor is an immoral act.
Yes, it certainly the system does condone bad acts that produce good results. And on that basis, yeah, 100% agree. It is a system we should reject.
Yes, it certainly is accepted by those who find truth relative to their interests. We’ve seen far too much of it.
Your comment summarizes how I’ve been feeling for a number of years so well, I actually took a screenshot of it.
NYT set out to defame Charlie Kirk in death and they had no problem lying to do so.
Indeed. They have actually become quite good at it over recent years. There was a time several decades ago (I cancelled my subscription to NYT years ago) when they were a must-subscribe -to newspaper. What a sad waste of a news icon.
—“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
I think this famous gem best describes our postmodern academy, the sewage pit that poisons our civic discourse, much more than inscrutable quotes from Foucault and Derrida, those emperors of bullshit.
First it was there's no such thing as truth (which encouraged infinite lies), then it was there's no such thing as right or wrong or good or bad (those are terms the oppressor uses to further his power), no book or artwork is better than any other (great art makes mediocrities anxious and angry), any possible interpretation of a text is as worthy as the view of its author (the author was killed off and replaced by "theorists"), along with one culture is no better than any other culture (leading to the contextual defense of clitorectomies and other indigenous "ways of knowing"), which then became things like America fought its Revolution to preserve and protect slavery and the mammalian sex binary is actually an oppressive imposition of the patriarchy.
Which leads us to where we are today, the official slogan of the postmodern Left: “Your speech is violence; our violence is speech.”
Hate has no home here! Love wins!
When you quote Kirk as saying “I’m sorry, if I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified,” to demonstrate one of his supposed “bad” statements, I think you are guilty of the same dishonest characterization you decry in the NY Times. He was talking about the pernicious effects of DEI which causes the credentials of all black people in positions of responsibility to be questioned. You make it sound like he simply viewed black people as inferior, which is not true. He had a long history of working with black groups. That’s an unfair quote out of context.
As I said, I’m aware of the DEI context, and I still think that quote is unintentionally revealing.
But how, exactly?
See my other comment in this reply thread. I thought Matt was just ignoring the commenters criticizing his potshots against Kirk (totally forgivable - Matt is busy and has better things to do than argue with us). But no, he comes way down here in the comments and has the gall to insinuate he thinks Kirk is racist when the man was just gruesomely murdered and can’t defend himself.
Matt - I hope you read this. It would be like, if you were shot, Zaid Jilani wrote a piece three days later insinuating horrible things about your character based on things you were alleged to have done in Russia in the 1990s. I have never once believed those accusations against you, and thoughts they were weaponized by your critics because they couldn’t contest your excellent investigative reporting. But try that empathy exercise with you in the place of Kirk, and maybe you will see how ugly what you are doing is.
Besides having the audacity to argue with an unfalsifiable (because he was just gruesomely murdered) inference about Kirk’s beliefs Matt, you’re pulling on the old, old script that any time a conservative talks anything remotely critical of the liberal consensus on race they must be Reagan in Neshoba County in 1980 speaking in code to a bunch of bigots. But this is 2025, and Charlie is speaking to kids in the Sun Belt born after 9/11. You may have been right decades ago, but these unsubstantiated accusations or insinuations of racism against people who are by all accounts magnanimous human beings are frankly ugly and despicable. I say this as someone who has deeply respected you since my early 20s.
And why sneak in more insinuations about Kirk’s views way down here in the comments when there are tons of posters making very serious and well informed critiques of your points higher up? I cite William Julius Wilson (no conservative, mind you) to back up the facts Kirk is citing on black wellbeing declines, and many others cite lawsuits against aviation groups on the quota hiring and standards lowering. There is hard evidence that, rather than engage, you resort to sneaking in insulting insinuations that Kirk is racist. It is deeply disappointing to see.
Unintentionally revealing of what?
Yes- Matt, who (I sincerely believe in the bottom of my heart) is an indefatigable investigative journalist has indeed stooped to insinuating a dead man who cannot defend himself is racist, way down in his own comment section, when many alternative and indeed more parsimonious explanations are available for Kirk’s statements. I have never seen Matt stoop as low as this.
That he is a racist? That he thinks less of the ability of dark skinned people?
Would it even be possible to phrase concerns about DEI in such a way that could not be construed as racist? How would you word it if you were to interpret his words in the most charitable way?
Is it even possible to talk about such things without being called a racist? I’m not sure that it is.
Yes. See my other comments here for my informed perspective. This may be the lowest I’ve ever seen Matt stoop. I think calling conservatives racist has made its way into the collective liberal amygdala.
So you think he is a racist? The examples you cited, both imo out of context, are squarely on that topic.
You kinda stepped in it. Provide the basis for thinking he just slipped and exposed himself as a racist. Otherwise, I’m with Wallace Barker.
But you did same with cherry picked snippet of the “better off” video.
Defend why you didn’t show the greater exchange where she agreed with his underlying premise.
I respect the shit out of you as a writer and even more as a thinker. This is why many of us expect more, or at least a much better explanation for you doing what your article complains (rightfully) of others of doing. The above, ~I stand by my inference which is not readily obvious from the transcript (pilot) or video (better off)~ comes across as complete horse shit.
You made the choice to call him a racist and offer a very slender reed in evidence to support the claim. Man up!
Yes - Matt needs to own this one and explain himself. I have always found him a person of great integrity, and was shocked to see this insinuation way down in the comments. A heck of a lot worse than just ignoring comments (fine, it happens all the time!). But to bury his reply way down here and to be passive aggressive about it in the process is shocking to me. It’s beneath Matt.
Exactly.
You don't know if it was an actual description of how he would really react in such a situation or a rhetorical example he was giving.
I have to admit, the thought would cross my mind also. I'm a white guy and I would have the least amount of concern about a male asian pilot. It shouldn't be this way.
Transcripts are available for the black pilot conversation. So is a video of him explaining it again after the fact. So is commentary by Jordan Peterson.
Matt’s reply is in essence, ~yes, his racism is not readily obvious nor inferable, and he explicitly denies that he believes such things. But I know he is racist anyway.~
Given a name… this feels very personal. Matt gives off the vibe that he has personal knowledge that Charlie is a covert racist but is too chicken shit to say that.
I’m so pissed. I borderline revere Taibbi. But this was “weak ass shit.” Matt being a baseball pro knows exactly what that means.
Yes - I’m going to keep pointing this out on future Matt pieces until he says something about it in writing. Maybe he said something in ATW with Walter yesterday but I didn’t have time to listen to all of it.
It needs to be in print. Either as a correction or even an explanation for why he refuses to explain the thinly veiled accusations of racism and continues to rely on an out of context quote taken from NPR of all places and a cherry picked :26 from a video that in context says the exact opposite of what he claims. If I submitted a paper in college, made similar claims and offered evidence equivalent to what Matt did I wouldn’t just get an F, I would get referred for academic discipline (I went to school when bs like that didn’t fly).
So disappointed.
Yes - Matt has resorted to insinuating that a man who cannot defend himself against unsubstantiated accusations because he was gruesomely murdered is racist. It’s ugly stuff.
I'mjust trying to understand your point.
Unless Matt comes back in and explains otherwise, I think we are left to conclude that he is insinuating Kirk is personally racist, despite the availability, as the first poster said, of dispositive evidence to the contrary. It’s ugly and beneath Matt.
They have been doing the same thing to JK Rowling.
Ask any of the people who claim Charlie or JK are haters just exactly what they said that was so awful, and they cannot tell you. Or they take something out of context like you mention above.
Same playbook. They've used the damn thing for over a decade now and we need to get ahead of it and defang it permanently.
Once an outlet marches down the road of character assassination, there’s no turning back, only a surly muttering, like Stephen King’s apology.
The King “apology” is puke worthy. He only texted what he did because he now knows CK “cherry-picked” from the Sacred Texts. What an ass hat.
He pops up on X when he’s taking a break from fantasizing that he’s Annie Wilkes and has Trump captive.
MSM is the enemy of the people. It's that simple. They are directly responsible for the division in this country