A single shot rang out from around 200 yards and killed political commentator Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10. It was horrifically filmed and witnessed in front of an audience of more than 3,000 students, supporters and curious passersbys in Utah Valley University. Most tragically, leaving behind his wife and kids, Kirk was assassinated while advocating for the very thing that killed him: firearms. Political violence is intolerable, yet that’s not exactly what I come to speak of today.
I come to paint the very landscape Kirk found himself in: the effects of hate-speech into tangible, barbaric consequences. For campuses, administrations and individuals, it is time we define the difference between free speech and hate speech.
Comparatively, I think of speech as something similar to market competition: diverse voices push ideas forward, sparking growth and innovation. When a few corporations monopolize the markets, progress dies in the hands of elites. Similarly, if speech is monopolized — when a small, hateful elite dominates discourse, ideas stagnate and freedom decays.
Like the Federal Trade Commission protects fair markets, we could imagine an independent body that safeguards speech from media monopolies and extremist groups. Such regulations would not police content. Rather, it’d ensure the diversity of voices by preventing hateful or exclusionary speech.
This is where problems arise, however. Under precedent like Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the speech of Ku Klux Klan members was protected under the First Amendment unless it was “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and likely to incite or produce such action.” This standard creates an absurd paradox: even groups built on violent ideology are legally innocent until their words cross a vaguely defined line.
Applied more broadly, today’s American climate must address that same dilemma: can we limit hate speech even when it does not present prima facie evidence of imminent harm? I think we can, and in doing so we must redefine the term harm — this is where I dissent from the prevailing faith in universal free speech.
Stemming from John Stuart Mill, liberty ends where it inflicts harm upon others — yet we’ve been desensitized to see harm only when blood is drawn or chaos unfolds. But harm often hides itself. Yet, it still festers and corrupts our speech when we deny someone's identity and replace their existence, monomanically, as dispensable.
Michel Foucault, as always, beautifully adds that discourse is never neutral; power, like harm, hides in the freedom we claim to protect. When hate goes unchecked, it decides who gets to speak and who must stay silent. To redefine harm, then, is to recognize that speech which dehumanizes is not free — it is domination disguised as liberty.
To elaborate and give examples from Kirk himself: if your ideology considers homosexuals deviant and worthy of inflicted violence, or if you vilify a woman's right to bodily autonomy, or think of African Americans as professionally unqualified and violent, or transgender people as abominations — you are no longer valid in thinking this idea freely as it disqualifies and forecloses the right of this person to exist unburdened. This speech is heavily plagued with hatred, therefore, shouldn’t be protected under the First Amendment.
The threads that weave superlative speech require two things: compassion and substance. Compassion allows for a space free of judgment while prioritizing the need to be critical of historical and ethical implications. Substance is not the mere presence of an idea, but the rigor and ethical awareness behind it — the ability to contribute constructively to collective progress. One may say xenophobic speech is substantive, but it is not compassionate. It is the effect of conjoint causation that compassion without substance is equally hollow.
I have heard from many professors how they’d love to foster a safe environment for students to express their opinions with liberty. That’s possible but only under the two aforementioned conditions. If you find that you have nothing compassionate or substantive to say, perhaps it's better not to speak at all.
Let me be very clear, Charlie Kirk’s mission, although embellished in innocent faith and love, was far from tolerant or compassionate and pushed heavily towards indoctrination. He weaponized the Church, faith and God. And instead, filled those willing to listen with half-baked, oppressive notions of political thought used as ammunition towards already socially disadvantaged populations — and harmed them, again and again.
Festered long enough, these notions become voting issues, political movement and, eventually, legal frameworks to institutionalize hatred. Hate is not natural; it is fabricated. Laws are not natural; they are imposed. We must be careful whom we allow to distort nature through speech, and scrupulous about what laws they impose as a result.
Charlie Kirk was not a martyr of liberty. Liberty is vested in those conscious of its powers. It is vested in a pure heart with intentions to share wisdom; not for the advance of an ethically corrupt minority, but for the progress of an undogmatic majority.
The purest essence of free speech scoffs at the abuse it’s endured from people so poorly apt to wield it.
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Adrian Belmonte '28 is an Opinion Columnist studying Government in the College of Arts & Sciences. Hailing from D.C. and Spain, his fortnightly column Saved By The Bel has a voice as cosmopolitan as it is candid. Belmonte takes on politics and media with clarity and a touch of wit. He can be reached at abelmonte@cornellsun.com.
