There Must Be Consequences

Have you ever heard of the prisoner’s dilemma? Author William Poundstone explained it this way:

Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of speaking to or exchanging messages with the other. The police admit they don’t have enough evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge. They plan to sentence both to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the police offer each prisoner a Faustian bargain. If he testifies against his partner, he will go free while the partner will get three years in prison on the main charge. Oh, yes, there is a catch … If both prisoners testify against each other, both will be sentenced to two years in jail. The prisoners are given a little time to think this over, but in no case may either learn what the other has decided until he has irrevocably made his decision. Each is informed that the other prisoner is being offered the very same deal. Each prisoner is concerned only with his own welfare—with minimizing his own prison sentence.

In a single interaction, the rational course of action is to “defect”; that is, to snitch on the other prisoner. There is no honor among thieves, and a sentence of one year is much better than three. This video by Derek Muller of Veritasium does a fantastic job of explaining the concept:

As you can see, so long as the game is iterated (played over multiple rounds) and indefinite (nobody knows how long it will go), the best strategy is to retaliate when your opponent defects, but forgive once they resume cooperation.

What does this have to do with politics and current events? Everything.

Politics is really about relationships—between individuals, between people and governments, between the public and private spheres, between nation-states, and so on. That means politics can be described as a series of prisoner’s dilemmas, iterated and indefinite. Cooperation is usually the best way forward, but what happens when a faction starts defecting?

Ever since the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk last week, and the revelation that thousands, perhaps millions, of leftists have been publicly excusing or even celebrating that murder, conservatives have been grappling with how to respond. For many years, it was the left that engaged in so-called cancel culture, using their megaphones to get people fired for the pettiest of reasons. Remember the rodeo clown who wore an Obama mask? The police officer who donated to Kyle Rittenhouse’s legal defense fund? The many conservatives who suggested Covid-19 came out of a lab, or questioned the 2020 election?

Today, the shoe is on the other foot, as many leftists who gloated about the assassination of an influential conservative have found themselves summarily fired. Progressive pundits and politicians are naturally complaining about this, appealing to our principle of free speech and suggesting that we’ve gone too far, that this is madness.

Is it?

First of all, dancing on the grave of a young husband and father is very different from questioning the results of an election. As Dale Stark put it on Twitter:

Cancel Culture is when someone gets fired for a meme they shared 10 years ago while in high school from an anonymous account. Getting fired for publicly supporting domestic terrorism & demonstrating you’re a threat to everyone around you is just real life in a civil society.

Or this, from Seamus Coughlin:

Love that the lefty argument is “Wow after 10 straight years of us cancelling people for petty reasons and you remaining patient, you’re finally fighting back against us for celebrating the assassination of an innocent man?” and they think that’s some kind of dunk

Beyond that, conservatives are finally beginning to learn how to play the prisoner’s dilemma. For decades, the left has held us to standards they themselves do not share. When a right-winger questioned the election, criticized Dr. Fauci, or simply made a politically incorrect joke, leftists had no qualms about getting those people fired and even debanked. Just last month, they cheered when a mom in Minnesota was charged with a crime for uttering the forbidden word on video. By their actions, they show they do not believe in free speech at all.

Even Democratic politicians have spent the last decade or two calling for government control of speech.

Now that conservatives are getting people fired for publicly gloating over a man’s death, suddenly those same leftists are acting very concerned about free speech. Whereas their instinct following any crime that could be pinned on the right—such as the unauthorized tour of the Capitol on January 6, 2021—was to call for our political annihilation, today they are whining about “unity.” As Peruvian president Oscar Benavides said:

To my friends, everything; to my enemies, the law.

Obviously, we’re not even talking about the law here. I haven’t seen conservatives calling for anyone to be prosecuted for their speech, which is still kinder than how the left has treated us for the past few decades.

(EDIT: As I was writing this, Attorney General Pam Bondi made an asinine comment about “hate speech” that drew unified ire from nearly everyone on the right.)

As Frank Herbert put it in one of his novels:

When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.

The left has always been focused on power, and they have never had a problem engaging in flexible morality to acquire and keep it. In the 1960s, when a conservative old guard still controlled American universities, the left demanded free speech, appealing to what they called our shared principle. By the 1990s, with the left firmly in control of academia, they censored right-wing speech, deaf to those same appeals. In both cases, they were acting in accordance with their real principle: power.

Saul Alinsky, the scribe of 1960s leftist power politics, advised activists to force their opponents to adhere to their own standards and rules. It must be remarkably freeing, not having any standards oneself.

The right has finally learned how the game is played. We have long been the prisoner who has continued cooperating even as our opponent defects every time. But remember what the Veritasium video demonstrated: If you want your opponent to cooperate, you must punish defection with defection. If we want the left to stop breaking the unwritten rules of civilized society, then they must pay a price. Not through censorship, not through illegal persecution, but through the social tools that we have available.

The practitioners of realpolitik during the Cold War understood this well. With both the United States and the Soviet Union stockpiling nuclear weapons, the only way to prevent an attack was to make sure the other side understood that any attack would be met with complete obliteration. “Mutually assured destruction,” they called it.

And it worked. Neither the USA nor the USSR ever pressed the button, and humanity survived the Cold War.

Perhaps my favorite demonstration of this concept comes from an old British game show. Check it out:

The only way to ensure that your opponent does not defect is to make it absolutely, positively, 100% clear that you will respond to defection with defection of your own.

These leftists who publicly celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination grew up in a world where they had never been punished for such odious behavior. While conservatives learned to self-censor with regard to Covid, the 2020 election, crime statistics, and countless other subjects, leftists never faced that crucible. Within moments of Charlie’s death, they were on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook sharing their most evil and degenerate thoughts, assuming it was perfectly acceptable.

They thought wrong.

There is more to civil society than individual rights. Rights come with responsibilities, and one of those responsibilities is to engage with your fellow citizens in a civil manner. In a speech yesterday while guest hosting the Charlie Kirk Show, Vice President J.D. Vance related how some angry leftists screamed at his children at Disneyland, saying vile things to them simply because they disagreed with his political views. Do the concepts of individual rights and free speech necessarily mean that we simply have to accept horrific slander and abuse from our fellow citizens?

No amount of begging, pleading, or showing off how submissively weak we are will convince angry leftists to return civility to society. The only thing that will work is pain—metaphorical pain delivered within the confines of the law. That means people who engage in dyscivic behavior must pay a price—with their jobs, and even their reputations. Someone who publicly gloated over the murder of Charlie Kirk should be as unhirable as if they made Nazi salutes on video.

Only then can we share a country again. Only then, as Vance said, can we unify.

It’s telling that so many of the most vile public displays have come from people in professions associated with empathy. Many of the leftists who posted celebrations of Charlie Kirk’s death are teachers, therapists, social workers, or medical professionals. One can try to excuse their behavior by saying their political views shouldn’t matter, but is that really true? Do you want someone who thinks it’s a good thing that Charlie was brutally murdered in front of his wife and children teaching your kids, caring for your elderly parents, or sticking a needle in your arm before surgery?

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot by a crazy man. As he was wheeled into the operating room, he joked to the doctors: “I hope you’re all Republicans.” The doctors responded, “Today, Mr. President, we are all Republicans.”

If President Trump were to be shot again—may God forbid—and rushed to the nearest hospital, could he trust that every one of the doctors and nurses would do everything they could to save his life?

The same leftists who claim to be loving, empathetic, and inclusive, who emblazon their cars and homes with signs that say “coexist” and “hate has no home here,” turn out to be some of the most hateful people in the world when it comes to their political enemies. Some of the same people who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s death demanded compassion for violent people, such as the career criminal who stabbed Iryna Zarutska last month in Charlotte.

What explains this apparent cognitive dissonance? These people see no contradiction in their extreme hate for us and their demand for empathy for some of the worst people in the world.

I think they would say: “That’s different.”

There’s a hard-to-find clip from the 1990s sci-fi show Star Trek: Deep Space 9 that best demonstrates this mindset. To keep it brief: the scene shows two characters allied against our heroes. One, Weyoun, is genetically engineered to worship the Founders of the evil Dominion as gods. The other, Damar, is skeptical. They’re discussing the good and evil deities of the Bajoran religion (which we as viewers understand to be aliens existing outside space and time):

“That’s different.” To a leftist, compassion is when we show mercy to violent criminals, while a white Christian man who never hurt anyone is a legitimate target because of who he is.

“That’s different.” To a leftist, Stephen Colbert getting canceled for low ratings was a tragedy, even a martyrdom. But gloating over the death of a father and husband murdered because he spoke words they disagreed with? No big deal.

“That’s different.”

It reminds me of the old Mel Brooks joke:

Tragedy is when I cut my finger.

Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.

In their twisted worldview, tragedy is when one of their own loses a job, while comedy is when one of ours is brutally murdered in front of his wife and children.

Getting leftists fired for airing their most vile thoughts in public is not abrogating free speech; it is making clear that we as a society expect civility from our citizens. There’s no legal machinery at work here, merely citizens asking employers if this is the image they want their employees to present to the world.

This isn’t about government censorship, and it’s not hypocrisy. You wouldn’t call American GIs fighting in Europe in 1944 Nazis just because they too were firing guns at the enemy. And make no mistake, we are talking about enemies here. The people getting fired are not our enemies because of mere differences of opinion, but because they have demonstrated they have no regard for the life and liberty that America is all about. They have publicly proclaimed a belief that violence against innocent people is justified.

There can be no unity with such people. We cannot share a country with people who want us dead.

As a society we long ago decided there are certain lines one should not cross. If you go on TikTok and advocate lynching someone without trial, you should expect to lose your job and the respect of your community. If you make your profile picture a Nazi swastika, you should expect consequences. Why should anyone who glories in the death of a good man expect any different?

For too long, Republicans have been playing the role of the Washington Generals to the left’s Harlem Globetrotters: pretending to compete while being content to remain perpetual losers. Those days are coming to an end. If we want to save this country, we’re going to have to fight fire with fire. That doesn’t mean sacrificing our principles or becoming the monsters we fight. It does not mean turning our backs on the First Amendment. It simply means not giving in and letting the other side beat us to death using our own values as a cudgel.

Charlie Kirk built his career on engaging in the marketplace of ideas, but he was no naif about the depths of hatred coming from the left. He knew that winning the future meant strategizing, organizing, and outworking the other side. He spoke boldly despite the ever-present threat of left-wing violence, because he had assurance of his eternal destiny. May you and I go out with the same boldness and confront the evils that threaten our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

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