Amid riots, armed guards, and a tense atmosphere, Rob Schneider, Andrew Doyle, Frank Turek, and I gathered to champion civil discourse and honor Charlie Kirk’s memory
You are doing incredibly important work, simply showing up for events like these, despite the hostility and the danger. I was born in Berkeley, to parents who were attending Berkeley in the 60s, when it was the cradle of the free speech movement. Eighteen years later, I enrolled at Berkeley, traveling halfway across the country to go there. I couldn't have landed at a better place at that time. I received an extraordinary education in every way.
I learned to think for myself, I learned to chase down my own questions and ideas, I learned to grapple with challenge, I learned to express myself in a civil and compelling manner. In short, I learned how to learn and how to be an adult in a civil society that expects and needs much from its citizens.
It grieves medeeply to see what the campus culture has become. Once Berkeley was a genuinely intellectual and curious environment, supportive of inquiry and exploration, a place where you knew for sure you could try on any idea and any way of being without being attacked for it. This is no longer so, and has not been so for many years.
Thank you for the work you are doing to change that.
Locals for sure, I recognized many regular "protestors", some students were involved, most were east bay anarchists/BAMN activists. I am local, and we took a walk up to the event, talked with people on both sides.
I attended Cal at the same time and had the same experience. Berkeley in the 1980s was such a great place to learn. So many points of view sincerely interested in sharing ideas.
Disagree. Even then, one would be severely chastised by both faculty and students for having any type of wrongthink. It was just more benign then since it was anodyne to critique the ReaganBush years.
The last ~decade is just off the rails: those that cry out against authoritarianism use illiberalism as a prime tactic to exhort actual authoritarianism. Its wild.
The campus leaned left, to be sure, but I’d crudely estimate that at least a quarter of my dorm mates were strong Reagan supporters, and another third didn’t care much about politics at all; we mostly argued about music. Rather than the College Republicans, who were very active on campus, the burned out 60s radicals hanging around town were much more worthy of our contempt. My freshman year PoliSci prof was GHW Bush’s speech writer. I often disagreed with him, but he was a wonderful man from whom I learned a lot. I encountered very few ideologues in the classroom. Listening to John McWhorter, I think the free-speech climate began to worsen in the 90s. I noticed this myself in grad school in the Midwest.
I dunno man...I lived off campus, so maybe a diff experience? Main thrust of my comment, tho, is how high the temp has gotten and how disagreements are now 'violence', etc. Illiberalism is now firmly seated on the 'left', not just in Bay Area, but globally. Its a massive issue.
I feel the same way you do: I spent 9 years at Berkeley in the late 1970s and early 1980s and got an extraordinary education there that I will always cherish as a real privilege.
But that university has disappeared and only the buildings are left.
Thanks for sharing your experience. The universities and their red guards need to be held accountable. If Trump lets them off the hook again, it will only embolden Antifa to commit more violence.
As an Evangelical Christian and licensed marriage and family therapist, I just want to say thank you for the way you engage with people. Especially in the are of trans ideology. I’ve been listening to you for many years and really appreciate how you go about developing and having conversations. A subject with which I am constantly challenged in my work helping people who are often at “war” with each other. Thank you for putting your life on the line. You are an inspiration!
I witnessed your great take in person, Peter, and only wish they'd allowed you more time to explain this message everyone needs so desperately to hear: We have to keep talking! But, yes, the conversations are getting more crazily difficult every day. We audience had to make it through a gauntlet of hate, both on our way in and especially on our way out, with protesters throwing out epithets, slurs and in some cases punches and bottles for our crime of ... listening.
And here's my report from the event. Berkeley gave birth to the free speech movement and the anti-free speech movement, but here's what happens when you stop talking: https://aynsrants.substack.com/p/berkeley-can-we-talk
The security is no surprise for me and it's what I'd demand if I were appearing to speak publicly. The recent viral videos of rapper and Black lesbian, Tish Hyman, after she was yet again accosted/harassed by a crossdressing man in the women's locker room at Gold's Gym (now EOn, or something) also attest to the violence of the trans cult camp. The subsequent revelation that this man who renamed himself "Alexis," the same name as his ex-wife, served a year in an Ohio prison after a guilty plea to breaking her jaw in three places as well as guilty pleas for 2 cocaine felonies, ripped through my trans widow sisterhood. I suddenly gained over 100 new subscribers, hearing the facts: in my data on 76 women who divorced suddenly full time crossdressing, "transitioning" husbands, 39% of us were sexually assaulted by him and 38% of us were physically assaulted in separate incidents. The 54% of us who were defamed by him publicly were not at all surprised by his slurs of Ms. Hyman and his smarmy, arrogant attitude, "I'm a woman." As always, I'd love to find that the plight of trans widows is brought up in these fora.
This just makes me so sad. In America we have always yelled at each other now and again and again, but only after the other guy got a chance to say something. WTF happened to us?
Thanks to all of you for once again providing decent, sane, and civil examples of leadership and discourse. It’s exhausting, for sure, to keep showing up and behaving like adults. But not as exhausting as it will be to rebuild the smoking hulk of our civilizations if we continue on this recklessly illiberal path. I am surprised not at all that the individual who allegedly attacked the fellow in the “FREEDOM” t-shirt is named Jihad, because of course he is, and that Jihad apparently works for the California Department of Public Health, because of course he does. You couldn’t write this stuff as fiction. It would be too outrageous.
When it comes to the left you have to remember that everything they say is the opposite of what they mean. For example, there is nothing affordable about the Affordable Care Act.
Lebo Von Lo~Debar
Former/Always 82nd Airborne Infantryman, Disabled Veteran for Life, & Author of the book, "The Separation of Corporation and State" subtitled "Common Sense and the Two-Party Crisis" Available on Amazon.
Thank you for your service. All of my uncles served in WW2 and my father, 4F for health issues, worked in the Pentagon designing boxes for hand grenades shipped to the European Theatre.
It is an honor to serve my American People like you Ute Heggen...not so much those democrat&republican politicians.
Most people who didn't serve don't understand the military, and that is normal. What your father did during WWII was just as important to the war effort as the soldier who threw those hand grenades. Without your father, and those like him, the war would not have been won. It was a team effort then, just as it is today, a team effort.
I would like to thank your father, and your uncles, for his/their service and for helping America win, even if it is posthumously.
Lebo Von Lo~Debar
Former/Always 82nd Airborne Infantryman, Disabled Veteran for Life, & Author of the book, "The Separation of Corporation and State" subtitled "Common Sense and the Two-Party Crisis" Available on Amazon.
Thanks, I very much appreciate this reply. They were The Great Generation, and you are a part of that thread. We witness a lack of instruction of our own national history at this point in time, but I am the eternal optimist, always hoping for the next ones. When I was teaching Kindergarten in NYC, we recited the Pledge of Allegiance every day, as per state law. I taught my students what each word meant.
Students in all states are allowed not to stand and recite the pledge. However, state law, even in NY state, requires an American flag in each classroom and the pledge recited daily. I grew up doing this, and I followed this law and made it a daily practice. This is not at all totalitarian.
I'm actually glad they had the sense to protect you. Across the bay at SF State, a mob held Riley Gaines hostage in a room with armed guards for 3 hours, and students were spitting on Jews at a meeting on UCB campus. They no doubt couldn't predict whether serious, murderous violence might break out, and Berkeley police are usually just affable bicyclists in vests. This is all a complete reversal of what Berkeley once was and what it stood for for those of us growing up in the Bay Area. We learned not just to argue, but to argue, in speech and writing, the position of our opponents. It was a place filled with physicists and poets and scholars and anthropologists, creativity and ideas on the edge, rebellion and tradition. Hopefully the pendulum will swing somewhat back, at least towards debate as a way of figuring out truth. Wonderful that you all are fulfilling Charlie's mission. Many people who used to be able to appreciate the articulated ideas of people they utterly disagree with, who would defend their right to hold those positions, even if they hated them or found them wrong, have fallen to the world of silos and received ideas (propaganda). Creepy and scary. Thank you for keeping on keeping on.
Unfortunately, the Bat Area has been inundated with illiberalism seen around most major hubs: NYC, LA, Boston, etc. University students stopped valuing discourse long ago. They value ideology instead. Not to be too hyperbolic, but we are in a world of hurt until that dissipates. If it does.
Dear Frank Turkey, Your book “I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH FAITH TO BE AN ATHEIST” changed my life. I was delighted to thank Dr Geisler personally at an SES event. I give books away all the time and your book is the number one go to book. Thanks!
You are doing incredibly important work, simply showing up for events like these, despite the hostility and the danger. I was born in Berkeley, to parents who were attending Berkeley in the 60s, when it was the cradle of the free speech movement. Eighteen years later, I enrolled at Berkeley, traveling halfway across the country to go there. I couldn't have landed at a better place at that time. I received an extraordinary education in every way.
I learned to think for myself, I learned to chase down my own questions and ideas, I learned to grapple with challenge, I learned to express myself in a civil and compelling manner. In short, I learned how to learn and how to be an adult in a civil society that expects and needs much from its citizens.
It grieves medeeply to see what the campus culture has become. Once Berkeley was a genuinely intellectual and curious environment, supportive of inquiry and exploration, a place where you knew for sure you could try on any idea and any way of being without being attacked for it. This is no longer so, and has not been so for many years.
Thank you for the work you are doing to change that.
I have to believe you because many brilliant things came out of Berkeley, but I wouldn't wish a Berkelely education on my worst enemy today.
Perhaps it’s worth pointing out that this was a public event and the rioters were probably not even students or locals. (Cal grad 2007)
Locals for sure, I recognized many regular "protestors", some students were involved, most were east bay anarchists/BAMN activists. I am local, and we took a walk up to the event, talked with people on both sides.
I attended Cal at the same time and had the same experience. Berkeley in the 1980s was such a great place to learn. So many points of view sincerely interested in sharing ideas.
Disagree. Even then, one would be severely chastised by both faculty and students for having any type of wrongthink. It was just more benign then since it was anodyne to critique the ReaganBush years.
The last ~decade is just off the rails: those that cry out against authoritarianism use illiberalism as a prime tactic to exhort actual authoritarianism. Its wild.
The campus leaned left, to be sure, but I’d crudely estimate that at least a quarter of my dorm mates were strong Reagan supporters, and another third didn’t care much about politics at all; we mostly argued about music. Rather than the College Republicans, who were very active on campus, the burned out 60s radicals hanging around town were much more worthy of our contempt. My freshman year PoliSci prof was GHW Bush’s speech writer. I often disagreed with him, but he was a wonderful man from whom I learned a lot. I encountered very few ideologues in the classroom. Listening to John McWhorter, I think the free-speech climate began to worsen in the 90s. I noticed this myself in grad school in the Midwest.
I dunno man...I lived off campus, so maybe a diff experience? Main thrust of my comment, tho, is how high the temp has gotten and how disagreements are now 'violence', etc. Illiberalism is now firmly seated on the 'left', not just in Bay Area, but globally. Its a massive issue.
I feel the same way you do: I spent 9 years at Berkeley in the late 1970s and early 1980s and got an extraordinary education there that I will always cherish as a real privilege.
But that university has disappeared and only the buildings are left.
Thanks for sharing your experience. The universities and their red guards need to be held accountable. If Trump lets them off the hook again, it will only embolden Antifa to commit more violence.
Thank you
As an Evangelical Christian and licensed marriage and family therapist, I just want to say thank you for the way you engage with people. Especially in the are of trans ideology. I’ve been listening to you for many years and really appreciate how you go about developing and having conversations. A subject with which I am constantly challenged in my work helping people who are often at “war” with each other. Thank you for putting your life on the line. You are an inspiration!
As always. Great writing sir and proud to be a supporter.
I witnessed your great take in person, Peter, and only wish they'd allowed you more time to explain this message everyone needs so desperately to hear: We have to keep talking! But, yes, the conversations are getting more crazily difficult every day. We audience had to make it through a gauntlet of hate, both on our way in and especially on our way out, with protesters throwing out epithets, slurs and in some cases punches and bottles for our crime of ... listening.
And here's my report from the event. Berkeley gave birth to the free speech movement and the anti-free speech movement, but here's what happens when you stop talking: https://aynsrants.substack.com/p/berkeley-can-we-talk
Watching those people outside the event reminded me of a Rick & Morty quote: “Your boos mean nothing, I’ve seen what makes you cheer.”
Great quote, thank you.
The security is no surprise for me and it's what I'd demand if I were appearing to speak publicly. The recent viral videos of rapper and Black lesbian, Tish Hyman, after she was yet again accosted/harassed by a crossdressing man in the women's locker room at Gold's Gym (now EOn, or something) also attest to the violence of the trans cult camp. The subsequent revelation that this man who renamed himself "Alexis," the same name as his ex-wife, served a year in an Ohio prison after a guilty plea to breaking her jaw in three places as well as guilty pleas for 2 cocaine felonies, ripped through my trans widow sisterhood. I suddenly gained over 100 new subscribers, hearing the facts: in my data on 76 women who divorced suddenly full time crossdressing, "transitioning" husbands, 39% of us were sexually assaulted by him and 38% of us were physically assaulted in separate incidents. The 54% of us who were defamed by him publicly were not at all surprised by his slurs of Ms. Hyman and his smarmy, arrogant attitude, "I'm a woman." As always, I'd love to find that the plight of trans widows is brought up in these fora.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb7pUsZXyOI&t=24s
Part of the tactic is to charge student groups for security, knowing they could not possibly cover the costs.
This just makes me so sad. In America we have always yelled at each other now and again and again, but only after the other guy got a chance to say something. WTF happened to us?
We really can "build back better," but we need to want to...
Thanks to all of you for once again providing decent, sane, and civil examples of leadership and discourse. It’s exhausting, for sure, to keep showing up and behaving like adults. But not as exhausting as it will be to rebuild the smoking hulk of our civilizations if we continue on this recklessly illiberal path. I am surprised not at all that the individual who allegedly attacked the fellow in the “FREEDOM” t-shirt is named Jihad, because of course he is, and that Jihad apparently works for the California Department of Public Health, because of course he does. You couldn’t write this stuff as fiction. It would be too outrageous.
I love it when great minds come together. Christian or Atheist. For all of you to sit on a stage and discuss important topics is a beautiful thing!
When it comes to 1A, remind me again who the fascists are.
Thank you for modeling such virtuous behavior (as usual). What an amazing way to honor Charlie, well done.
When it comes to the left you have to remember that everything they say is the opposite of what they mean. For example, there is nothing affordable about the Affordable Care Act.
Lebo Von Lo~Debar
Former/Always 82nd Airborne Infantryman, Disabled Veteran for Life, & Author of the book, "The Separation of Corporation and State" subtitled "Common Sense and the Two-Party Crisis" Available on Amazon.
https://a.co/d/fy5rSdW
Thank you for your service. All of my uncles served in WW2 and my father, 4F for health issues, worked in the Pentagon designing boxes for hand grenades shipped to the European Theatre.
It is an honor to serve my American People like you Ute Heggen...not so much those democrat&republican politicians.
Most people who didn't serve don't understand the military, and that is normal. What your father did during WWII was just as important to the war effort as the soldier who threw those hand grenades. Without your father, and those like him, the war would not have been won. It was a team effort then, just as it is today, a team effort.
I would like to thank your father, and your uncles, for his/their service and for helping America win, even if it is posthumously.
Lebo Von Lo~Debar
Former/Always 82nd Airborne Infantryman, Disabled Veteran for Life, & Author of the book, "The Separation of Corporation and State" subtitled "Common Sense and the Two-Party Crisis" Available on Amazon.
https://a.co/d/fy5rSdW
Thanks, I very much appreciate this reply. They were The Great Generation, and you are a part of that thread. We witness a lack of instruction of our own national history at this point in time, but I am the eternal optimist, always hoping for the next ones. When I was teaching Kindergarten in NYC, we recited the Pledge of Allegiance every day, as per state law. I taught my students what each word meant.
"I taught my students what each word meant."
So did the comedian Red Skelton.
Of course, a pledge of allegiance must not be required by any law, for that is the common action of a dictatorship.
Students in all states are allowed not to stand and recite the pledge. However, state law, even in NY state, requires an American flag in each classroom and the pledge recited daily. I grew up doing this, and I followed this law and made it a daily practice. This is not at all totalitarian.
I'm actually glad they had the sense to protect you. Across the bay at SF State, a mob held Riley Gaines hostage in a room with armed guards for 3 hours, and students were spitting on Jews at a meeting on UCB campus. They no doubt couldn't predict whether serious, murderous violence might break out, and Berkeley police are usually just affable bicyclists in vests. This is all a complete reversal of what Berkeley once was and what it stood for for those of us growing up in the Bay Area. We learned not just to argue, but to argue, in speech and writing, the position of our opponents. It was a place filled with physicists and poets and scholars and anthropologists, creativity and ideas on the edge, rebellion and tradition. Hopefully the pendulum will swing somewhat back, at least towards debate as a way of figuring out truth. Wonderful that you all are fulfilling Charlie's mission. Many people who used to be able to appreciate the articulated ideas of people they utterly disagree with, who would defend their right to hold those positions, even if they hated them or found them wrong, have fallen to the world of silos and received ideas (propaganda). Creepy and scary. Thank you for keeping on keeping on.
One of the guards was a BJJ black belt under Roger Gracie. That's like having 20 additional men.
Unfortunately, the Bat Area has been inundated with illiberalism seen around most major hubs: NYC, LA, Boston, etc. University students stopped valuing discourse long ago. They value ideology instead. Not to be too hyperbolic, but we are in a world of hurt until that dissipates. If it does.
Steps from Sproul Plaza. Upon the Gears & Wheels, indeed. Smh
Dear Frank Turkey, Your book “I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH FAITH TO BE AN ATHEIST” changed my life. I was delighted to thank Dr Geisler personally at an SES event. I give books away all the time and your book is the number one go to book. Thanks!