The Left and the Right Deserve Each Other

Jon Gingerich

I can’t think of another time in recent memory when a single incident has revealed the left and the right’s hypocrisy so succinctly, when both cohorts have been so quick to flip their long-held positions on an issue simply to appease their respective echo chambers. Neither group is operating within the bounds of reality, but I’ll give them this: their tribal commitments are truly commendable.

To wit: The murder of conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk, which has Republicans—including Vice President J.D. Vance—actively encouraging Americans to contact the employers of anyone who made light of Kirk’s death. This is an astonishing development, considering conservatives’ opposition to cancel culture has been a cornerstone of their platform for the past decade.

Meanwhile, after years of repeating the mantra that “cancel culture doesn’t exist”—apparently, they’ve never read “The Scarlet Letter” or heard of the McCarthy-Era blacklists of the 1950s—the left is now throwing a collective tantrum over the fact that scores of its ranks have lost their jobs for saying untoward things about Kirk. This is an equally puzzling about-face, considering those of us without selective amnesia recall that same group trawling the Internet and gleefully participating in recreational call-out campaigns wherein people’s lives were ruined for sport, which, just weeks ago, included labeling actor Sydney Sweeney a “racist” over her appearance in a silly jeans commercial.

It’s as though two social clubs updated their terms and conditions, and their respective members dutifully followed orders by instantly altering their suite of beliefs. Truth is now determined by committee. Politics is sports—and we root for the home team every time.

And so, after years of crying “censorship!”, conservatives are now stealing a page from the left’s playbook to become our latest outrage inquisitors. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to pull ABC’s license after TV host Jimmy Kimmel made a bad joke about the politicization of Kirk’s murder, causing that broadcaster to temporarily suspend Kimmel’s show. Attorney General Pam Bondi implied the Justice Department could prosecute anyone guilty of “hate speech,” because apparently the country’s highest-ranking lawyer doesn’t understand our First Amendment. Of course, the idea that conservatives were ever vanguards of free speech is laughable, if you recall the McCarthy witch-hunts, or how the FBI went after Civil Rights leaders in the ‘60s, or the various fainting-couch routines throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s regarding everything from heavy-metal albums to gay characters on TV shows. In recent years, we’ve seen book bans and lawsuits against social media companies for deplatforming President Trump during his first term. Even Elon Musk proved he wasn’t the “free speech absolutist” he claimed to be when he began suspending X accounts that held views he disagreed with. “Freedom of speech—unless I think you’re wrong!”

The right doesn’t hold the trademark on moral inconsistency. Consider how the left took a cue from the right and began circulating the nuttiest conspiracy theories imaginable in the wake of Kirk’s death, claiming his killer was a fringe right-winger who wanted Kirk dead for not being conservative enough. And instead of admitting their error when presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, they doubled down, because, as it turns out, they’re just as desperate as conservatives for information that confirms their preexisting biases. People on the left aren’t wrong when they highlight various cultlike elements within the Trump world, but clearly, the left has a cult of its own. Tolerance and diversity are hallmarks of liberal orthodoxy, until it comes to tolerating viewpoints with which they disagree. Apparently, wanting someone dead for the words they use is an example of such “tolerance” in action, although I wonder if they’ve considered the obvious ways in which living in such a world wouldn’t be ideal for them either, or if they realize that anytime you want someone forcibly silenced for their words, you’re making a tacit admission that your words clearly weren’t enough for the task.

Similarly, the right wants us to (understandably) see the humanity in what happened in Kirk’s killing, yet two months earlier, (callously) resorted to universal indifference—and even cruel jokes—when a right-wing lunatic assassinated the former Minnesota House Speaker in her home along with her husband, which is the same behavior the right is accusing the left of now. And while we’re at it, where’s the right’s indignation about gun violence anytime kids are killed in our schools? Or consider how conservatives cheered on Trump for his frivolous lawsuit against the New York Times or for sending the Justice Department after James Comey—after years of introducing bills to stop frivolous lawsuits and criticizing two Presidents who they claimed weaponized the Justice Department. Of course, these are the same people who now support tariffs, after decades of viewing them as barriers to international trade. When it comes to hypocrisy, Republicans wrote the book.

These are stunning displays of hypocrisy, but that’s what happens when people get into politics for purely social reasons. Both sides are so steeped in their own algorithm-reinforced partisanship that it has blinded their ability to think critically. Why support arguments with reason when we can emotionally overload them? Why develop a consistent set of values when the loudest voice in the room always wins? The left and the right deserve each other—and the rest of us deserve better.