Fifty-eight Democrats opposed a resolution to honor the life — and condemn the assassination — of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Friday.
The resolution is composed of a straightforward description of Kirk’s accomplishments and beliefs as he himself understood them, as well as an articulation of the seemingly uncontroversial principle that “leaders at every level — government, education, media, and beyond — must stand united in unequivocal condemnation of political violence, regardless of their ideology.” “The tragic loss of Charlie Kirk must not be allowed to deepen the divides in our Nation, but instead serve as a turning point to recommit ourselves to better angels, and to the timeless American principles of liberty governed by truth and the virtues of peaceful dialogue,” it read.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was among the dissenters to these sentiments.
“The majority proceeded with a resolution that brings great pain to the millions of Americans who endured segregation, Jim Crow and the legacy of bigotry,” wailed Ocasio-Cortez on the House floor.
‘Ignorant’
“We should be clear about who Charlie Kirk was, a man who believed that the Civil Rights Act that granted Black Americans the right to vote was a mistake,” she declared. “His rhetoric and beliefs were ignorant, uneducated, and sought to disenfranchise millions of Americans.”
Ignorant? We know you are, but what was Charlie Kirk?
Ocasio-Cortez not only reminded the country of her deficit of character by smearing Kirk, but of her deficit of knowledge by flubbing the most basic facts.
Newsflash: African-American men were granted the right to vote by the 15th Amendment.
They were subsequently denied that right in many jurisdictions by discriminatory Jim Crow laws.
But it was the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — not the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — that remedied this great wrong.
Perhaps Ocasio-Cortez ought to spend less time on TikTok and more time hitting the books; the least the congresswoman’s constituents ought to expect of her is a remedial understanding of America’s civic history.
If only that was where the lazy, dishonorable lies ended.
It’s true that Kirk called the Civil Rights Act a mistake, and that it was among his most inflammatory opinions — one worthy of interrogation, and arguably harsh critiques.
Twisted argument
Yet Ocasio-Cortez and the legion of leftists echoing her online are destroying their own reputations, rather than Kirk’s, by taking his words out of context.
“Parts of the Civil Rights Act were great,” explained Kirk after being confronted on his stance by a student.
“The intent was noble, which was to say that no American can be not allowed into a place of business based on the color of their skin, or their ethnic heritage,” he continued, stressing his agreement with that objective.
The problem, as Kirk saw it, is that these days, it’s used to “force men in female bathrooms” and “push forward the trans agenda.”
It also “created a massive, anti-racist DEI army, that then gave us affirmative action,” he lamented.
There’s nothing wrong with rejecting Kirk’s argument as it was actually made.
But twisting it beyond recognition to paint him as a bigot days after one of your ideological bedfellows robbed a wife of her husband and their children of a father is unbecoming of any adult, much less the leader of America’s progressive political movement.
Ocasio-Cortez and her miserable band of self-righteous know-nothings see Kirk’s death as, above all else, an opportunity to virtue-signal about their opposition to his life’s work.
By acting on this ignoble impulse, they’ve only advertised their own surplus of contemptible vices — ignorance and spite chief among them.