By Mani Basharzad, CapX
My favorite line from Ludwig von Mises is not about economics, but about ideas. In ‘Liberalism’, he wrote: ‘Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect’. Violence, in other words, is the last refuge of bankrupt ideas. Those who cannot prevail in intellectual debate fall back on force, seeking to silence opponents rather than persuade them.
This line has been on my mind in the aftermath of the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist best known for debating opponents on university campuses. You may not have agreed with his views – I certainly didn’t on many. As an atheist, I could not share his positions on abortion or religion, and on Ukraine I found his stance deeply unconvincing. Still, I often admired his willingness to cite Mises and Hayek when criticising modern economics curricula. But this is not the point. The point is what Kirk himself once said when asked why he spent so much time on campus. His answer was simple:
When people stop talking, really bad stuff starts… when you stop having a human connection with someone you disagree with, it becomes a lot easier to want to commit violence against that group.
It is a bitter irony that violence claimed the life of someone who dedicated himself to conversation.