“I don’t condone violence, but . . .” is wrong.

Now that you are past the headline, I’ll be more specific. “I don’t condone violence, but . . .” is usually wrong. As with most ethical and moral issues, there are some exceptions and cases where it is a bit gray. But most of the time, “I don’t condone violence, but . . .” and similar thinking is at best a moral/ethical confusion and often it is simply wrong akin to how cheating, lying, and stealing is immoral. Frequently it is functionally little different from a step toward actually justifying violence. And the reason is that most of the time whatever comes after “but” is implicitly contrary to “I don’t condone violence.” I don’t filter my social media feed by politics. People can say all the stupid political stuff they want, and I’ll just ignore them. Even if they get really annoying, I still I don’t unfriend them because I don’t want to exist in the echo chamber that the algorithms keep trying to push us into. So for the past few days I’ve seen most of my conservative friends mourning the murder of Charlie Kirk and the more liberal ones (some might call themselves moderates) have been saying things like, “I don’t condone violence, but he was a terrible person.” I’m certain in their minds this is OK or even good as they think he was a terrible person, and they have a natural moral revulsion to seeing him murdered, especially in such a horrific fashion.  Having a moral revulsion to horrific murder is good. But that’s where it should end. Otherwise you are opening the door to justifying violence. So now I’ll explain. Shortly after we got married my wife told me that she believes if you apologize by saying, “I’m sorry, but . . .” the exception, qualification, or addendum you are adding undermines and undoes the apology. While this is not always true, she has a point. It frequently is true that adding things to an apology undermines it or is a way of attempting to avoid responsibility. So just apologize and don’t add qualifications to it (at least most of the time). Likewise, by adding a qualification like, “but he was a racist,” “but he was a trans-hater,” “but he was a terrible person,” etc, you are undermining your claim that you “don’t condone violence.” You are, if not creating, allowing and/or laying the groundwork for a structure that allows, justifies, or even celebrates violence. When you add the qualification, you are in effect leaving the door open such that maybe you will condone violence at some point, and this guy was a bit closer to that door than other people are. Now as I explain below, most people do think violence can be justified, but (see I’m undermining the prior statement) simply saying horrible things or holding wrong beliefs doesn’t qualify. In order to cross the threshold where violence is justified there has to be a real, tangible, physical threat to other human beings that the violence will eliminate or mitigate. And simply saying things (no matter how bad they are) does not and will never cross that threshold. This is just basic moral/ethical reasoning. I really doubt that most people who have said things like this intended to leave the door open for violence as a reasonable response to speech. You probably just haven’t thought it through and are repeating what you have heard other people in your political tribe say. But that’s the effect of saying “I don’t condone violence, but . . .” so stop doing that. It’s wrong. Just say “I don’t condone violence” and leave it at that. So to explain in more detail. Violence is either justifiable, or it is not. If you think it’s never justifiable then you are a pacifist and you really should end at “I don’t condone violence.” I’m not a pacifist (I find most arguments for pacifism to be horrifically naïve, if not actually stupid) and in my experience neither are most people. Most of us think that violence, including lethal violence, is justifiable in some circumstances. There are numerous complications and difficulties involved in establishing when violence is justified (and I don’t have time to go through them all here), but most people will think it’s justifiable for me to fight someone attacking my daughter or if a police officer must use force to stop a serial killer. So for most people who say, “I don’t condone violence,” that’s just not true. You actually do think violence is acceptable in some (hopefully rare) circumstances, and this is a very reasonable and common-sense position that nearly everyone shares. Now I don’t think anyone is lying here. Rather I think this is an attempt to communicate something like, “I don’t condone that type of violence” or “I don’t condone violence in that circumstance.” One of the many downsides of social media and slogan repeating is that it encourages us to not think and communicate clearly and I think that’s happened here. Suppose instead that an actual murderer or a murderous dictator had been assassinated. Someone who was directly responsible for the deaths of other people and, if left unchecked, would almost certainly do it again. My moral, religious, and philosophical convictions cause me to say that no human death is something to be celebrated. They are all tragic. But preventing the further evil such a person would do is a good thing and so I would say of such people, “It’s tragic that they had to die, but the world is a better place without them.” Every human being has a value that is incalculable, so all human death is tragic and the only reasonable way to justify violence is if it is protecting the lives of other human beings. Naturally there are difficulties and complications in establishing which people are in that category, but I argue that some people are. However, Charlie Kirk was absolutely not in that category as he was not a murderer nor did he order or directly cause the deaths of anyone. And that’s the case even if I grant you that he was a terrible person. Being a terrible person doesn’t mean you deserve to die. Most of us have worked for terrible people in the past, and those awful bosses didn’t deserve to die (perhaps they just shouldn’t have been in positions of authority). The idea behind the first amendment is that because all human beings have that incalculable value then it follows that all human beings should be able to speak their minds, even if their minds are reprehensible. So when you say, “but he spread hate!” you are undermining that idea. As soon as you add a qualification it is no longer a universal idea, but the idea of free speech is that it is a universal human right. So when you say, “I don’t condone violence in this circumstance, but he was a terrible person,” you are undermining the prior. If violence in this circumstance really is a bridge too far, just leave it at that. Otherwise you are opening the door to justifying the very violence you claim to be condemning. i.e. “OK this was wrong, but if he’d been just a bit more terrible of person then maybe it would be fine.” You are implying that perhaps the world would have been a better place without him, so of course that undermines your claim that you don't condone violence. This suggests that you think he should have died, and you just don't have the stomach for it. It’s one thing to say that the world would be a better place without a serial killer. Reasonable and morally responsible arguments can be made for that idea. It’s quite another to say, imply, or think that about someone who said racist or hateful things. For that I can only turn to a quote from one of the wiser characters from literature.

“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

Now again I strongly suspect that most people who have been saying this don’t realize the implications and have just been mindlessly repeating it as it’s the slogan that people who seem to align with your politics have been saying. That is, I doubt that most of you actually do think the world would have been a better place without Charlie Kirk and I could probably get you to agree (perhaps with some hesitation) that because he was a human being, and all human beings are good things, the world is now a lesser place without him. If you can’t bring yourself to recognize that you need to do some serious moral and ethical reflection. Now you might object that isn’t this slogan still better than saying that violence and murder is good? Sure. There is a sense in which leaving the door open to something bad isn’t as bad as the thing itself. But that’s kind of like saying that lying to your friends to preserve your reputation isn’t as bad as murdering people to protect your reputation. That’s correct, but not because lying is at baseline a good or OK thing. And of course it’s just basic human decency to not speak ill of the dead. I’ve probably said things like “I don’t condone it, but . . .” before and it was probably wrong when I did it.

Notes

And a lot of them do. This is not to deny that words can hurt people, but that is a different type of hurt than violence. Some words and ideas are incredibly dangerous. But that’s a very different thing from actual violence. This is why if a man is provoked into rage by his wife mocking him and murders her, we put a lot more blame on him than we do her. A wife should not mock her husband. But no one should be murdered for mocking others. Murder is a far greater evil than mocking someone is. If this is something that you cannot see or you find that you are unable to distinguish words from actual violence, you need to get off the internet until you grow and mature emotionally. I’m not mocking anyone who is this situation. Rather it’s much the same as why I don’t allow my seven-year-old to watch

Gladiator

with me. It’s not because there is something wrong with

Gladiator

, it’s a great film, but he’s not mature enough yet. If you really think words are violence the odds are that you are not mature enough yet to be engaging with politics and social media. Part of growing up is recognizing this basic moral distinction. Since virtually all those accusations are coming from political tribes that opposed Kirk, I’m suspicious and skeptical of those claims. Yes I am aware that there are plenty of places where this is not the case legally and politically, and that’s wrong. This is Gandalf in

The Fellowship of the Ring.

Excepting of course mass murders like Stalin and so on.