Charlie Kirk's Bad Arguments

Clear proof that Charlie Kirk makes lots of terrible arguments

Introduction

I’ve long maintained that most people don’t have good reasons for holding their political beliefs. If they end up holding the right political views, it is almost by accident—a bit like if someone thought this article was by

Amos Wollen

and declared it to be written by a devastatingly handsome writer whose wit is surpassed only by his humility. I’ve already written a bit about how bad most arguments people make for the pro-choice position are (I’m tentatively pro-choice by the way). But in recent days, I’ve been lying in bed on account of a TREMENDOUS illness (a mild cold) and spending an unusual amount of time listening to clips of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk.

Kirk’s arguments are bad and irritating enough that I thought I’d explain what’s wrong with them. Notably, I don’t think Kirk’s arguments are abnormally bad. Kirk is probably more politically reflective (though wrong) than the average person who doesn’t have strong political convictions. He’s at about the median degree of unreasonableness for political commenters. I’m commenting on Kirk not because he’s worse than others but because I’ve been exposed to an intolerable amount of Kirk’s wrongness in the last few days. He also recently spoke with failed Governor of California Gavin Newsom, so he’s influential enough that it seems like addressing his errors is worthwhile.

So, without further ado, here’s a bunch of Kirk saying wrong stuff. Note: I found all these statement from a few minutes of searching Instagram—I did not have to dig.

Should abortion policy be determined by what fetuses look like?

In the first clip, Kirk is explaining why he’s against abortion in cases of rape. Kirk asks: “[suppose there are] two ultrasounds. One baby is conceived in rape. One baby was conceived by a loving family. Which one is which?” When the person he’s speaking with acknowledges the obvious point that you could not tell whether a baby was produced by rape just by looking at them, Kirk says “therefore universal human equality spans to all people regardless of the methods of your conception.”

I have a serious question: did Kirk get a lobotomy before making this argument? Is someone paying him to make conservatives look dumb?

Here’s an analogous argument against imprisoning rapists. “Suppose there are two people. One of them committed rape. The other didn’t. Can you tell which one is which just by looking at them? Therefore, universal human equality spans to all people regardless of the extent of one’s raping.”

Presumably if someone made this argument, Kirk—like any reasonable person—would respond that even if you can’t tell if someone committed rape just by looking at them, this doesn’t mean that how we should treat people isn’t affected by whether they committed rape. You can’t tell if someone has cancer just by looking at them in many cases, but whether someone has cancer is relevant to whether you should give them chemotherapy.

In fact, you can’t generally tell various animal fetuses and human fetuses apart just by looking at them—as Charlie Kirk recently learned as the result of a very dumb gotcha someone employed against him, where after misleading him into thinking a dolphin fetus was a human fetus, they got him to say dolphin fetuses should have an inalienable right to life. That was obviously a dumb argument because one’s rights don’t depend on whether you can tell them apart from some other beings that have rights just by looking at them. Kirk’s argument is equally idiotic. It wouldn’t be quite so irritating if he weren’t so smug!

What is a woman?

In this next clip, Kirk asks someone what a woman is. The person replies hilariously “dude, I don’t know.” Kirk then asserts that a woman is an adult human female with XX chromosomes. When the person who Kirk is talking with responds that they disagree Kirk asks “well if you disagree then what is your alternative?” He then smirks and says “so you disagree without an alternative?” before declaring “a civilization that cannot define very basic biological terms and stay close to them is a civilization in moral chaos.”

Everything about this clip is stupid. First of all, a woman is obviously not someone with XX chromosomes as some people (e.g. those with Swyer syndrome) who obviously don’t count as male—having breasts, vaginas, and sometimes even the ability to give birth—have XY chromosomes. This is why even philosophers who think one can’t change their gender deny this definition.

Second of all, why in the hell does one need to randomly define terms they use? Can you declare you’re against cancer without having a precise definition of cancer? Can you declare that you’re against communism without having a precise definition of communism? Can you deny that knowledge is justified true belief on account of decisive counterexamples even if you don’t have a definition of knowledge?

Even an elementary acquaintance with human language indicates that people do not learn how to use various words by being given a highly precise definition. People learn what words mean by how they are used. This is why asking people to define political terms is almost always a cheap gotcha. As philosophers have known for many decades, it’s almost impossible to find the definition of any philosophically interesting term. To this day, the smartest philosophers are still arguing about the definition of knowledge.

Third, Kirk’s claim that “a civilization that cannot define very basic biological terms and stay close to them is a civilization in moral chaos,” is almost superhumanly dumb. Even if this were right, those who think trans women are women obviously deny that woman is a biological term. That’s sort of the entire point. So declaring that one needs to define the term woman because it’s a biological term begs the question.

And why the hell would anyone think that if most people can’t define basic biological terms that’s indicative of “a civilization in moral chaos?” Can you define the term life? I certainly can’t off the top of my head. I don’t think most people can. Nor can I define the terms mammal, virus, plant, chimpanzee, feline, or bacteria. Does this mean that civilization is in moral chaos? No, it just means that knowing how a term is used isn’t primarily about having a definition of that term. I know a cat when I see it even though I cannot tell you the definition of the word cat. Similarly, those who think that trans women are woman aren’t paralyzed about how the word woman is used!

Can you tell Elon is good by the fact that twelve people burned Teslas?

One of the first videos of Kirk’s that I came across displayed the Tweet below with soothing music. Apparently the political analysis was just so brilliant that it couldn’t just be Tweeted, but the Tweet needed to be made into a video.

Now, I assume this is a bad enough argument that Kirk doesn’t really believe it—he was just emoting. But as far as arguments go…whoo boy. Here’s an exactly analogous argument:

If you’re wondering who the good guys are…

Jimmy Carter spent his life after his presidency eradicating poverty and disease in the developing world while those who hate him are engaging in terrorism.

That is a terrible argument! Yet Kirk’s argument is just as bad. I assume Kirk’s reply to that argument would be roughly “of course Jimmy Carter’s humanitarian activities are good but his political views are bad. As for the people engaged in right-wing terrorism, you can’t determine how good a political party is by the behavior of a small number of fringe extremists.” Exactly the same response can be given to Elon’s behavior—while obviously his humanitarian actions to save astronauts are good, his political efforts to choke off aid to poor children with AIDS, thus causing thousands of deaths, are bad.

I can’t imagine Kirk couldn’t have thought of this response. Kirk has an IQ above 50. He likely just didn’t think before posting his comment—anything that owns the libs will be applauded even if it makes no sense. And call me crazy, but I think you generally refrain from flinging partisan slop into the ether that just drives polarization and if it changes anyone’s mind does so for bad reasons. This alone is decisive evidence that Kirk is a partisan hack.

Is it wrong to murder a baby?

In this next clip, Kirk is explaining why he’s against abortion. He starts out by saying “it’s wrong to murder a baby.” When his interlocutor denies that a fetus is a baby, Kirk asks what it is if it’s not a baby? Then Kirk asks what species the baby is in the womb. The woman replies “it’s a human.” Kirk triumphantly shouts “therefore they should have human rights.” When the woman says she does not agree, Kirk says “oh so small humans [should have] no rights, grown humans [should have] human rights?” His interlocutor denies that it’s a small human. Kirk then declares, with equal zeal, “it has a heartbeat, it has brainwaves.”

Now, when asked whether the fetus is a baby or a human, the woman Kirk was arguing with should obviously have said that it’s a human in a biological sense but not in the sense of being a person. The fact that it’s biologically a human doesn’t mean that it’s deserving of moral consideration. Arguably what makes one deserving of moral consideration is being a conscious experiencer rather than just being biologically human.

Whether it has a heartbeat or brainwaves is obviously morally irrelevant. If there was big bacteria with human DNA that somehow had a heartbeat, it wouldn’t be morally important.

Kirk’s fixation on calling the fetus a small human was particularly strange. No one—except a few particularly crazy pro-choicers who do not include the woman Kirk was arguing with—think that the fetus can be killed because it’s small. Few people think that it’s okay to kill Peter Dinklage. Instead, they think there are critical development steps that make the fetus not yet a person.

Now, it’s hard to blame Kirk too much here because his opponent was saying similarly ridiculous things. But obviously in this clip Kirk made nothing approaching a good argument against abortion. His triumphant smirk throughout the whole video as he says things that any philosopher who supports abortion could refute after a lobotomy is just the cherry on top of the enragingness sundae.

Can you determine a person’s competence by their physical fitness?

Now, this one is likely just bigotry rather than stupidity. A major pastime of those on the right seems to be making fun of the way trans people who identify as women look. This pastime reaches even to sitting members of congress. But obviously how good someone is at being a healthcare administrator does not have to do with how buff they are. How healthy a person is has little relationship to how competent they are in designing medical policy. Jonas Salk looks like he could do with a burger, but he cured polio.

Now regarding who has more qualifications between Levine and RFK—it’s not even close, unless you count RFK’s experience in giving Samoans smallpox.

Conclusion

As I said at the start of this essay, Charlie Kirk is not atypical in his tendency to make terrible arguments. Most people in politics do. But hopefully I’ve shown that Kirk makes a great number of supremely terrible arguments. Do with that information what you will. At the very least, if you’re a fan of Charlie, upon coming to learn that he says a bunch of obvious bullshit, you should reconsider your allegiance and start following people who don’t make obviously dumb arguments. You can even stick with other pro-life Christian conservatives who are more thoughtful; just don’t let the public intellectual who you admire be someone who can’t think his way out of a paper bag!