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"Edna St Vincent Millay: Dirge without Music; For the Late Charlie Kirk"
Sunday, 14 September, 2025
“I have been trying to process the assassination of Charlie Kirk… what it means for our whole country and for the soul of our country.” (Full transcript below the video) Watch Now:Outspoken with Dr Naomi Wolf is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Transcript: Hey everyone, it's Naomi Wolf. I haven't been streaming for a few days. Like everyone, I have been trying to process the assassination of Charlie Kirk and not just what it means, which I can't possibly know for that real human being and his real young family, but what it means for our whole country and for the soul of our country. I feel like this for our country has almost been like a Rorschach. I try never to treat real people as kind of archetypes or symbols. And this was an extraordinary young man. I didn't know him personally in any kind of friend way. I just was interviewed by him or interviewed him once or twice as I recall. But I remember so vividly what it was like to have that conversation with him. And it was actually about the Pfizer papers. And I remember we talked for an hour, and I remember being all alone in this house, just kind of in this virtual space, talking to this young man, and I really didn't know anything about him at that time. I was new to the world of conservatives, and I hadn't followed his work. I knew he was very highly regarded. I knew he was popular, but I remember having this conversation with him in which kind of time and space didn't really matter because in our identities, like a woman of another generation and a young man from a completely different background and different educations or different worldviews or whatever, didn't matter because he was deeply, deeply, deeply focused on finding the truth of what I was saying and assessing the truth and seeking the truth and expressing the truth. And it was just this very pure, I don't want to say pure intellectual quest because that sounds pretentious, and it's even more than that, but this very pure moral living in the space of truth and dedication to manifesting the pursuit of truth and in a not ideological way, there was no baggage. It was almost the way children ask questions, but with all of the kind of training and sophistication and intellectual heft of an adult, highly educated young adult, but with that open-mindedness and that open-heartedness.But apart from that, and apart from the obvious horror of this horrific tragedy, I feel like as I was starting to say a few beats ago, this very public symbolic or symbolism-laden execution, right? Because what it was, we don't know all the details. I'm quite sure. My instinct is one guy's been apprehended, but I don't think one guy is the whole story. We just don't know. But things are happening it seems at this time in history, in both a personal way with personal real human beings and in an archetypal, metaphysical, spiritual way. And I feel like in addition to, and I'm not trying to kind of turn a human tragedy that affects so horribly one young family and family of families and friends of families into a metaphor, but kind of beyond that immediate personal situation, which I can't speak to because I wasn't part of that friend circle. I'm not going to presume to know, I can't even imagine what it would be like to lose your young husband if you've got three small children. In addition to, I want to say that horrific personal tragedy. I feel like this experience has happened to the whole country, maybe the whole world in a kind of blazing photographic exposure or x-ray almost, in which people are illuminated and their souls are illuminated and their evil and good is illuminated, and you can't hide. The light is so blinding from this experience. And the other thing that's extraordinary about it is with most horrible deaths, as horrible as they may be, they kind of lose momentum over time. But I feel like over time, just in the couple of days since this happened, two days that the impact on our nation or our nation's soul has grown and grown and grown, and the poison that it's brought out has festered and brought itself to the surface and the heroism and good intentions and morality that we're trying to hold onto. And it's not as simple as left and right, but good people and bad people. It's really down to that is also coming to the surface and there's no hiding. And I read someone posted that passage from the gospel, I forget which gospel I'll be separating the sheep from the goats. And I'm not trying to go right to end times because that's a cliche, but it definitely feels like there's a separation taking place that's even more profound than the separation of the pandemic. Even more profound than would you help the Nazis? Did you side with the tyrants restricting liberty even more profound than 2020 to 2024?And I'm just seeing online, and maybe I shouldn't even go via this because the algorithm creates its own sick echo chamber, but it's not just my algorithm. There's liberals and leftists online who are celebrating. And this is a thing, and it's so much of a thing that the legacy media is covering it as a thing and covering the reaction of conservatives to the celebration of Charlie Kirk's assassination by the reaction of the right wing as a thing. But as a liberal, I still think of myself as a classical liberal. I'm not letting go of that. I mean, I feel like a lot of things that Charlie Kirk sought to do were kind of liberal minded in the classic 19th century sense of that word, the European meaning of that word, of open-minded, seeking the truth, seeking civil debate, seeking civil society, building civil society. I mean, he was a conservative, but he was going about it with liberality in the 19th century term, right?There is no way to hide from this tsunami of horrific, evil, ugly, demonic sentiments that are being expressed on the left. And that's shaking me to the core, and it's shaking my community, my friends, we're looking at this and it's like a dam has burst and all this bile and toxicity has just erupted out of humans who look like people, but are acting like demons, literally celebrating. And I don't even get how this works, but using the same language, the same, the same. How do you put it? The same talking points to repeat the same horrible phrases. I have no empathy. That's a talking point, right? I have no empathy for this man who was fill in the blanks, transphobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, homophobic, all the phobics. My empathy is for his kids, and I hope that they grow up in a better society than the one he was building. I'm seeing iterations of that over and over and over in the posts of many, many different people who don't know each other, who are differently situated in different professions. I don't even get that unless Soros is sending out talking points. Seriously, I don't get how that's possible or unless the propaganda, unless the talking points are coming from other influencers that I don't know or that I don't follow, or coming from NPR in a way that I don't listen to. I can't imagine they're coming from NPR, such brutal talking points. You may hear cooking sounds or wandering around sounds.Just doing this stream in the middle of my family life in a visit from my mom and looking after the dog, and I decided not to be formal about it and just turn on the stream. So please forgive the family sounds of cooking and so on in the background. But I'm also seeing, I don't even get how this happens, but these clips of leftists celebrating the assassination of a young father, I'm seeing the same demonic presence or entity, this very specific kind of laughing, mocking. And I've read this phrase, mocking in exorcism literature going back like 500 years, this mocking entity, laughing gleefully with this kind of crazy, crazy eyed look laughing and laughing and laughing in a kind of almost inhuman way. Why would say in inhuman way, and it's the same demon, but it's the same demon in a little blonde suburban 21-year-old girl or a gay trucker or a upper middle class woman walking her dog in a fancy suburb. It's the same demon, a very specific demon, a very specific gleeful, mocking, laughing, demonic presence, which is different from other demonic type personas that took possession of people who were urging people to vaccinate their pregnant selves during some of the other demonic possessions of our nation and world in the recent past. But I don't even get how that works. I don't get how all these people with all these different backgrounds, different geographies, different jobs, different educations, different personalities, are manifesting the same demonic glee in the same way with almost the same expressions and the same mannerisms. And honestly, it's scaring me to death. And I also, as a public figure, I am definitely thinking about the fact that all these crazy people or all these people who are employed in very senior ways in many situations, who are like college counselors or deans of universities or departments or civil servants at a high level or just distinguished people or are expressing sociopathy, and specifically the pride in having no empathy that's just repeated and repeated.Well, the definition of a sociopath maybe. Is it a sociopath or a psychopath that has no empathy? Sociopath. Sociopath. So the definition of a sociopath is lack of empathy, right? I mean, that's not the definition, but that's a major attribute. So my husband who's taking a nap next to me or about to says that the lack, and he has a criminology degree, says that the lack of empathy is a major attribute of a sociopath. So my point is the fact that before this outpouring of crazy bile, if you're a public figure or a controversial public figure, or you criticize Islam or you criticize Israel, you criticize men and women's bathrooms or whatever it may be, you could expect, you could be afraid of certifiable lunatics who were rare in the population who might endanger you or pose risk to you or become obsessed with you. And that's something I've lived with my whole professional career. But now that I've seen, and I kind of couldn't stop, I was up really late last night for the last two nights clicking through these crazy leftists people I would know from my world, my former world gleefully celebrating bloodshed and ghoulishly focusing on details of the execution detail, like physical details or calling for more. It reminds me of that passage in scripture that says, my name is Legion. Jesus asks this entity, this demonic entity possessing a crazy guy, what is your name? And the answer of the demon is, my name is Legion, and legion is Roman term for a group of soldiers, many, many soldiers, and in a formation, right? But it literally means I am multiples, I am many. And indeed, when Jesus cast out these entities, they took over not a flock, a herd of pigs of swine, and they went over a cliff. And that's what I feel like that it's like one negative force, but it's in multiple, multiple, multiple bodies, but so many, they're everywhere and they look normal and they're everywhere. And the reason I bring this up as a public figure is I think this is going to have a profound impact on our civil society unless we're very brave and very careful because why would you ever venture out again?Why would you do a book signing? Why would you go speak openly to an auditorium full of a thousand people? Why would you go to a book festival and be outdoors? Why would you address a rally again? Why would you go speak at the European Parliament as I did last week? Because the crazy people have shown, the sociopaths has shown that they're all around you, that they're all around you, and that they're proud of having no empathy. And they're making hit lists like, who's next? I've seen this over and over online. Who's next? Who's next? You have no empathy and let's move on to the next Joe Rogan. I mean, I've seen these hit lists, Ben Shapiro, and why would you want to raise your head above the parapet? I'm not saying I'm going to back down, right? I mean, the beautiful thing about conservatives and independence right now is these people are not cowards and they believe in life everlasting, and they believe a lot of 'em are Christians or observant Jews or religious in some way, and they believe in God and accounting for themselves. And so those are hard people to scare and cow that being killed isn't the worst thing that they think can happen to them. But I'm not that brave, and I think normal people who are, who've been in the public eye or who have small kids or elderly parents, I think that the threat level against them, their assessment, like the math, what I've been feeling for the last 48 hours is the math has changed, right? I've got to calculate things in a different way now. And I know my husband never likes it when I talk like this, and my mom doesn't want me to talk about it, rather I didn't. And I understand that, but I always tell the truth to my followers and my readers, and that's the truth. And it's not just me. It's like everyone I know, especially women, right? Not because we're cowards, but because someone's got to look after the kids and the old people we are calculating in a different way, should I run for office? Should I go greet my constituents? Should I go to this event, this convention, this dinner? What's the situation going to be like? What's the security situation going to be like? Can we afford security? Do they have good security? And so on. And I think it's really going to change our civil society.And I think that that was one of the goals. I mean, I don't know who's behind this, alleged should 22-year-old shooter, but if indeed he's the one, right? We don't know. It's, the investigation is not concluded, it's just the beginning. But I know that civil society was what Charlie Kirk championed. Civil society is an open society. It takes trust, it takes safety. It takes the incredibly radical ability to hear out the views of people you hate and whose views you hate to hear them out peacefully to argue with them and not resort to violence or censorship to silence them. And I just know and feel like whether there are censorship laws that are enacted or not, and execution like that, very public, dramatic, iconic execution is going to have a ripple effect of commentators going, do I really want to take on Muslim immigration in this essay? Do I really want to, do I really stand up for female athletes in this essay or whatever it is, whatever the crazy people are crazy about. And there's so much, it's very hard to sidestep. But even do I want to put my head above the parapet? Do I want to show up in person for this book signing? And I think you're going to have a lot of collapsing of public space, which is so important. Public space where people assemble to hear ideas or debate ideas or teach is going to collapse without any laws being passed. Because why should public figures put themselves at risk in this way when they're surrounded by lunatics?I'm not saying brave people will stop, but I'm saying that it has ratcheted up the risk so dramatically before in the COVID era, I used to yell at my fellow people because especially for my old world, because I was like, what are you afraid of? You're going to lose your job, right? You're going to lose some professional opportunities. Big deal. Don't be a coward. I mean, I use stronger language than that, but that was the gist. But now there's a lot to be afraid of. And this kind of execution used to be something that happened to John F, to a president or to an attorney general or to great, great national leader like Martin Luther King. Not saying that was okay, obviously, or to Abraham Lincoln, but people who were in charge of wars or leading huge movements. I mean, yes, arguably Charlie Kirk was leading a huge movement. I understand a massive movement. I understand. But I guess what I'm trying to say is it has reached down. He was also just a young man and he wasn't elected or appointed. He was just being a public intellectual. And I think, yeah, Martin Luther King was also a public intellectual honey. But I'm not saying there's a category that's fixed between Martin Luther King and Charlie Kirk. I'm saying that I never thought, oh, they took out Martin Luther King. I might be in danger. But now there's a whole stratum of public intellectuals who just write books or show up on college campuses or write substack or whatever, who are also included in the targeting. That's what I'm trying to say, sweetheart and I, it comes closer to home. And also, he was so young, right? So he was just starting. So I think that that also kind of creates a dragnet effect. I think a lot of people are going to identify with what happened to Charlie Kirk who might not have seen themselves in what happened to Malcolm X or what happened to Martin Luther King or what happened to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. That's what I'm trying to say, sweetheart. You may agree or disagree.So I wanted to say that, and I want to give a specific example of what I'm talking about. And then I want to end with a poem by Edna Vincent. I went to Oxford, as you probably know, and twice actually as a young graduate student and as a middle-aged graduate student. And I love Oxford. I love it for a lot of reasons. But one is that for a thousand years, it's been the repository and treasure house of civil society and open discussion and free exchange of ideas. In fact, that's the thing about the Oxford Method that is so extraordinary is that you are like two or three people in a room with a don and a glass of Sherry and just debating ideas and looking at the text and seeing if you agree, disagree, making your case using the evidence. It's very pure. It should be very pure scholarly engagement. And it stood for discussion analysis, rhetoric, right? Rhetoric is debate. It's the old fashioned term for debate. There's entrances to some of the ancient libraries that say ours rhetorica the art of rhetoric. It's been teaching the art of rhetoric, which is debate for hundreds and hundreds of years. And there's a beautiful, beautiful institution called the Oxford Union that I've spoken at maybe six or seven times over the course of the decades. And I've spoken on a number of things on feminism on Israel and Palestine and David Rubin and I were just there a few months ago speaking about censorship. Ironically, my doctoral thesis was on censorship.And it's such a beautiful place because heads of state, academics, intellectuals, controversial figures from every country, every walk of life, every point of view have been invited to the Oxford Union. And in a very highly structured debate format, they present their point of view, and then they take challenges or questions or it's even more structured. They present their point of view as Dave Rubin and I did. And then opponents present their point of view and it's all carefully timed. And then the students vote on who won the debate. And it's a beautiful way to do. It's a very old fashioned way. They vote by walking through two doors. The eyes are the nays and someone counts how many are walking through the store.But this tradition, it was started in the first few decades of the 19th century to train young Oxonians to go into politics and into parliament, which also has the UK Parliament used to until recently have a beautiful, beautiful, robust tradition. There's records that go back a couple of hundred years, every word of these debates and their work of art. But I bring this up because Charlie Kirk spoke at Oxford and he spoke in opposition to the incoming president who is a young man whose name I don't have up right now, but I imagine that the debate went in Charlie Kirk's favor. And so here we have the BBC reporting. What happened? A student named George Abba posted on social media after news of the shooting broke. The BBC is so lame seeming to welcome the attack according to media reports. They're not quoting it. And finally, according to the Telegraph, they quote it, Charlie Kirk got shot L-O-O-O-L, an elongated version of the phrase LOL, which means laughing out loud. And he's also said to have posted in WhatsApp chat with fellow students appearing to welcome the incident. They're not quoting it, but Charlie Kirk got shot, let's go or let's f*****g go. I think it was, and pardon my language. And so this young man faced off with Charlie Kirk, and then some months later, Charlie Kirk was executed publicly and this young man is celebrating. Now this young man is the incoming president of the Oxford Union. Yeah, so he was one of several students to debate Kirk at the Union in May.And so the Oxford Union said that they're independent of the university. We delore comments appearing to endorse violence. They're unacceptable and entirely contrary to the values of our community. But the BBC doesn't mention that this is the incoming president. If I understand this correctly, whether it is or not, you guys have to understand what it does to the Oxford Union to have a student representing the union, and they're not going to take any disciplinary action against him for his posts. And you could say it's free speech, but it isn't protected speech because it is communication of a threat. And I'll tell you why. If you President Oxford Union, if you are the incoming president of the Oxford Union or a student tasked with debating a guest at the union, oh, it is the incoming president, look at this. So it says, atop venture capitalist is pulled out of an event. I knew this would happen at the Debating Society. Oxford Union after its president-elect appeared to have cheered the death of Charlie Kirk, a right wing US free speech activist. Josh Wolfe, co-founder of VC firm, Luxe Capital, said he had withdrawn from the event after the Oxford Union's next president George Aberra appeared to have said, let's f*****g go in elite group chat message. After Kirk was shot on Wednesday, he was going to speak on tech and venture capital and historically prestigious venue. And he said he had withdrawn from the event until cultural leadership from the top celebrates peace and coexistence and civil discourse and denounces violence. Good for him. Well, I've been posting today that's going to happen, happen. Why should any public figure go speak at a venue where the president who's responsible for overseeing the security of the venue celebrates the death of one of the speakers?Why should any public figure put themselves in that situation? Again, it's suicidal. So in that regard, what the President-elect did is not protected speech. Even though the UK doesn't have a First Amendment, it does have human rights law, which is supposed to protect speech, and I believe in free speech as you know. But this is not protected speech. It's communication of a threat. Let's f*****g go. They killed one of our speakers. Let's go the next speaker, anyone who's invited to speak, and I see this as someone who's invited every year practically to speak, the Oxford Union is going to feel threatened and is going to be threatened because the president cheered the death of a speaker. I can't believe I have to point this out. But in addition to the communication of a threat and the fact that the Oxford University, my alma mater has done nothing to act on this communication of the threat, again, it's not protected speech. I support freedom of speech. This is a communication of a threat of violence specific, but also by implication. Any other speaker that the president elect of the Oxford Union doesn't like he could be celebrating or encouraging their death, their execution, but in addition to just immediately collapsing the value and prestige of the Oxford Union because people like Wolf, the other wolf or people like me will never put themselves in the hands of the president elect of the Oxford Union and his allies who are moving ahead as this all completely normal at Oxford or at the Oxford Union. In addition, it's collapsing the incredibly beautiful tradition of open debate, of listening to someone you hate civilly of testing the validity of their point of view, showing the weakness of their argument, nonviolently, it has collapsed. All of that, and I say this with love for my alma mater, I hold that institution in my heart.The fact that no one has come forward from a leadership position to censure, let alone encourage the removal of this president-elect from his position, the fact that the Oxford Union has been so tepid, condemning whatever, he's still, your president, is going to cut the heart out of one of the great beating centers of civil society in Britain, which is already on its last legs as a free society. And I don't know if it can recover from that. It won't recover if the Oxford Union goes along with this. And I would also say Oxford administration, I mean it's tricky, right? Because Oxford isn't like other colleges. It's not one administration overseeing the whole college. It's over 20 different colleges, all of them, many of them ancient, all with their own administrators. And the university is kind of a construct that oversees it. But there are codes of conduct at the university. People do get expelled from the university. And I'm just saying as someone who is an Oxford alumna, a Rhodes scholar, and as someone who is invited to speak all the time to these young people at the Oxford Union, this is so terrifying, so wrong. And to me, I do not believe that this is first freedom free speech that should be protected. This is communication of the threat and that if it's allowed to stand, if there isn't a robust movement against this by alumni, by other members of the Oxford Union, by the warden of this young man's Oxford College who should be speaking up, who should be cing or sending down this young man for communication of threat, that the university will die inside and the union will die inside and it will take another a thousand years to regain the tradition and the prestige and the reality of open debate and free expression that it stands for.So it's a really bad idea. Oxford, you may be in a warped bubble of tyranny and not aware of how bad this is, but I'm saying this as someone standing outside university system, you will never regain your prestige. No one will want to fly across the Atlantic or come from India or from Africa or from Asia or anywhere to appear in your beautiful facility. If they fear for their lives or if they feel like you're such tyrants, why should they? Why should they come speak to young people who want to revert to brute force if they don't agree with something? You may hear my beloved husband snoring in the background. Please ignore that. We're just going to keep talking. Okay? So I just want to say that to Oxford. I hope it gets through to the university. I hope it gets through to the Oxford Union.It's very, very serious. I hope that people invited to speak will not. I mean, I always want more speech, more speech, more speech. But no one should show up for the Oxford Union until they take action to not be led by someone who celebrates the death of a speaker. And now I'm going to go to, that's all I want to say about all of these things. Now I'm going to go to dirge without music. And a St. Vincent Malay is one of my favorite poets. She was born in 1892. She died in 1950. She was a great lyricist. She became very well known, very young, I think with the publication of a few figs from thistles. And she wrote this about young brave people dying wrongly. And she said, or she wrote, it's called George without music. As I mentioned, I have not resigned. And the reason I want to read this is that nothing I say or write is adequate to the execution of a young man with such high ideals. So senselessly, so destructively in such a cowardly way, leaving behind a beautiful young family, like nothing I could possibly say or write rises to that. And that's why we have poetry, and that's why humans who still have their empathy intact and their prefrontal prefrontal lobe intact reach for prayer and poetry in times of great sorrow and grief because prose is just inadequate, dear, without music, I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is. And so it will be for has been time out of mind into the darkness they go the wise and the lovely crowned with lilies and with lilies and with Laurel, they go, but I am not respect lovers and thinkers into the earth with you. Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust, a fragment of what you felt, of what you knew, a formula, a phrase remains, but the best is lost. The answer is quick and key. The honest look, the laughter, the love, they are gone. They're gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know, but I do not approve more precious with the light in your eyes than all the roses you world down down into the darkness of the grave. Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind, quietly they go. The intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know, but I do not approve and I am not resigned. We need freedom of speech. We need to hear ideas that we hate. We need to give air to ideas that we hate. We need to not execute people for having ideas that we hate. We need to create a civil society that where sunlight is the best disinfectant. Like our founders said, they did not censor ideas that they hated.They mocked them, they argued with them. They hounded them intellectually to the ground. They didn't, but they spoke up for a beautiful First Amendment. So there was no point in even having a First Amendment. If you kill people with ideas you don't like. Alright, so Eric Haka, I challenge you. Show me. And even as I'm saying that, I'm nervous because I don't know how mentally stable you are and I don't know if you have a weapon. Okay, thank you darling. But please go ahead and show me where I'm wrong. And Brian was joking. Brian was joking. Darling, I don't want you communicating a threat and being arrested. Okay, well kind of alright.Okay, well, my husband wants to say that whoever shoots at me that he'll shoot them. Thank you, darling. Isn't that still communicating a threat? It's not communicating a threat. So again, I try to be patient again. My platform is right here. Show me. Show me where. What I'm saying is a violation of my principles in the of America. And if you guys can show me the horrible quotes from Charlie Kirk, you can, but I'm not here. It's like that preparation. I come not to bury Caesar, not to praise him. I don't remember the exact quote, but I'm not here to say that everything Charlie Kirk said was good or in my point of view or that I agree with everything he said. I'm sure he said a lot of things that would've really annoyed me or upset me. That isn't the point. You just said things that annoy me and upset me.I'm not going to try to execute you or silence you. I'm going to have a conversation I just did. I just said, show me. Let's talk about it. Let's argue about it like grownups, like Americans, like Westerners. And honestly, if you guys don't at this point in history, if enough of you don't rise up and clinging to the ideal of the West and the United States and the First Amendment and are free expression and civil society and civil debate, then people like me are just going to turn our backs and stop fighting for you. Seriously. You guys need to step up now. You do. You can't leave it on anyone else. You can't leave it on the leaders of the movement. It's on all of us to stand up for the First Amendment, clinging to it, clinging to our way of life. And in Britain, Oxford Union, if you don't step up and champion your free speech tradition and shun and discard this president who celebrates the assassination of a speaker, I'm going to encourage no one to ever speak at the Oxford Union again.The only reason people risk their lives to bring ideas to you is when they think there's hope in the audience. And if we are shown that there is no more hope in the audience and in the next generation, why should anyone try to be of service to history, to freedom? I just want to put that out there. You can't use up your leaders forever. You can't put them at risk. Let them go to jail. Let them get assassinated. Let them be bankrupt. Let them lose their medical licenses on and on and on without showing up for your own damn first Amendment. You do it. You do it. You go out front now. Alright, seriously, speak up. I don't want to hear anymore that anyone's condoning this kind of horrific collapse of our civilization. I want to hear people being proud to have this Western tradition of free speech, being proud to be American, proud to be British, proud to be oxonians and standing for something worth saving because I don't want to keep fighting for you if you don't.I'm honestly, I'm sick of all of you. I'm sorry, honey, I said it. I'm sick of almost all of you. The ones who stand fast and protect the First Amendment I'm not sick of. But there are mighty few of us. Alright, I'm sorry I was very angry just then I, let's wrap it up. I'm sorry to have gotten very furious, but I am upset and I need you to be brave and I need you to be Patriots and I need you to clinging to the civilization and not stand by or be on your phone while it collapses because you have something so beautiful. Freedom of speech, civil society, first Amendment in the US Second Amendment, even with this violent death. That is a beautiful, alright, I don't want that quote taken out of context. The fact that you can in America defend yourselves against tyranny, state.Tyranny is a beautiful thing. Look what's happening in Britain, what's happening in Australia, what's happening in Canada? Those countries have collapsed. People have no more rights. All of Europe, they have no more rights because they can't defend their countries. The fact that we have due process of law, our beautiful constitution, our beautiful Declaration of Independence, the fact that you in Europe have a human rights act if you act on it and use it and find out about it and get out of your own. Tor the fact that you in Oxford have the Oxford Union. That is a beautiful thing if you defend its history and its mission. But I'm done with people who won't stand up for freedoms of speech and civil society. I'm just done. You don't deserve martyrs, right? You need to step up everybody. Be Patriots. Embrace the First Amendment. Embrace in Britain, your tradition of as invented free speech.It's on you now. Okay, I'm done. I'm done. That was my elegy for Charlie Kirk, and for America, and for Britain, for Oxford. It's all one Elegy. Thank you. If you care about this podcast, please support it over at Substack. It's called Outspoken over at DailyClout. You can support us there. Please go look at Legisector, as it’s more important now than ever. LegiSector.com lets you follow, share, and engage with any state or federal bill by sector and by industry. An incredible tool for transparency. Go read Edna St. Vincent Malay, go speak out for liberty. Go save this country. Go save the West. Go save Oxford. The fight's on me now, you guys. Okay, thank you for listening. Bye-bye.Outspoken with Dr Naomi Wolf is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. 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