From Socrates to Charlie Kirk: The Refusal to Examine One’s Self

I want to be very clear that this [killing of Charlie Kirk] is a political assassination.

                                                            Utah Governor Spencer Cox, 9/10/25

Not much time will be gained, O Athenians, in return for the evil name you will get [from those] who will say that you killed Socrates, a wise man; for they will call me wise even although I am not wise … If you had waited a little while, your desire would have been fulfilled in the course of nature [because I am already old] … The difficulty … is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.  … And now, O men who condemned me, I prophesy to  … who my murderers, … Me you have killed because you wanted to escape [justifying] your [unjust] lives. But that will not [work].  For …there will be more accusers of you than there are now; accusers whom hitherto I have restrained: … For if you think that by killing men you can [escape your critics,] you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honourable; the easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves.

                                                            Socrates, Plato’s, Apology

                        The unexamined life is not worth living.

                                                            Socrates, Plato’s Apology

In the city-state of Athens in ancient Greece 2500 years ago, a mob of establishment elitists who had been embarrassed by Socrates’ searching ethical and philosophical questions, in perhaps the most famous example of corrupt political lawfare in human history, managed to get him, Plato’s teacher and, arguably, the creator of moral philosophy, executed in 399 B.C.  And what were Socrates’ crimes?  Did he steal people’s money?  Did he murder anyone?  Did he rape anyone?  Or engage in arson?  No.  What his accusers claimed is that he committed two main crimes.  He corrupted the youth and did not believe in the gods recognized by the city of Athens.  But when one says he did those things, what, precisely, did they mean?  Did they mean that he gave the youth drugs?  Or that he showed them how to steal?  Or that he desecrated the Parthenon (the temple dedicated to Athena, the patron god of Athens)?  Of course not.  Socrates’ accusers were, like corrupt modern partisan practitioners of lawfare, a bit creative, so to speak, with the law.  For what Socrates actually did, concretely, was to talk to the citizens of Athens.  He would ask them what they believed about fundamental ethical issues and why they believed it.   In other words, he tried to engage them in ethical and philosophical reasoning.  Plato, Socrates’ student, gives an artistic record of these discussions in his “Socratic dialogues,” e.g., the Crito, the Euthyphro, the Laches, the Lysis, the Meno, perhaps, the first Book of Plato’s Republic and others. The Socratic dialogues, with a few exceptions or modifications, usually took a certain form.  Socrates engages an Athenian citizen in dialogue on some fundamental issue, for example, the questions about the nature of justice, or virtue, or knowledge, or beauty or love, etc.  His fellow discussant puts forward a definition of the term in question.  For example, in the Meno, a bright young boy, says that there is no difficulty defining virtue,

[T]he virtue of a man [is] know how to administer the state … to benefit his friends and harm his enemies; … A woman’s virtue … [is simply] to order her house, keep what is indoors and obey her husband …

To make a long story short, Socrates proceeds to demolish this thoughtless definition of virtue.  He had asked for the definition of virtue.  Not a list of (alleged) virtues.  The same basic pattern is repeated throughout the “Socratic dialogues”.  In the first book of the Republic, the Sophist Thrasymachus basically defines justice as whatever the strongest person says it is, e.g., justice in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is whatever Saddam says it is.  If one goes against Saddam, one finds one’s self convicted in a court of law and put in front of a firing squad.   Socrates tears this absurd definition too, which actually describes a fake simulacrum of justice in a lawfare state like New York, not real justice.  A similar pattern is repeated throughout the “Socratic dialogues”, each of which describes Socrates’ refutation of one or more of the fake experts in Athens.  For example, in the Apology, Socrates’ argues that one of his chief accusers, Meletus, representing the poets, had not only not proved his accusation that Socrates corrupted the Athenian youth, but that he had never ever properly thought about the issues or properly defined the key concepts, goodness, corruption, etc., required to decide such issues.  Socrates: “And you, Meletus, have sufficiently shown that you never had a thought about the young: ….”  Since Socrates was much smarter and much more sincere than any of these self-centred partisans, and since these discussions were typically held in public in front of young people, Socrates usually embarrassed his critics as utter frauds, creating the hatred that eventuated in Socrates’ execution.  That is, the charge against Socrates that resulted in his execution was based on nothing more than that he embarrassed arrogant people who put on airs of superiority because they believed they knew things they did not know and had not even properly thought about. 

            One can witness the same process today.  Peter Boghossian, former philosophy professor at Portland State University (until he began exposing the corruption in academia), and a liberal, not even a conservative, conducts Socratic discussions with the self-satisfied geniuses at what’s left of our “universities”.  Consider, for example, Boghossian’s discussion with a self-identified female-to-male “trans” person about the definition of “trans-person”.  Call them “M”!  Although M is full of contempt for Boghossian’s questions and sanctimony about their own “position,” M never even tries to answer, the question.  M’s responses are embarrassing.  At several points Boghossian, frustrated, blurts out: Why don’t you just answer the question?  The answer is quite simple.  M has no idea whatsoever how to go about answering such questions.   Rather, having been indoctrinated with a lot of shallow self-indulgent “thinking,” the relativistic “it’s my truth” movement, the rejection of objective truth, M is not even interested in knowing how to answer such questions.  Indeed, M literally has no idea whatsoever what is required in order to answer such questions.   M doesn’t even know what they don’t know.  Rather, like whole generations of pampered Americans, and not only Americans, M is only interested in one thing: themself. 

            More recently, a coward put a bullet through husband and father of two girls Charlie Kirk’s throat, killing him immediately.  And what was Charlie’s sin?  Did he steal, murder, rape or engage in arson?  Of course, not.  What Charlie did is, basically, what Socrates and Peter Boghossian do.  Charlie, always polite, asked people to justify their positions.  And, as happened in Socrates’ ancient Athens and in Boghossian’s discussions today, his interlocutors often show that they have not even seriously thought about the issues about which they are so emotional … and so intolerant.  Since their heads have been filled with mush by a plethora of “educational” and political charlatans, and puffed up with pride, they cannot tolerate being questioned.  Examining one’s life is hard and, more important, it requires actual courage.  Much easier to kill people who challenge you to learn.   

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