What We Had Here Is A Failure To Communicate

1 Corinthians 13:11, 

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

Back in our formative days we wrote a stage play that won a book prize at University of Toronto. Flushed with success we hastily dispatched the play to our former prof, the late Urjo Kareda, who was then dramaturge at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. And we waited.

A short time later he returned the play. As I opened the package I could see the pages marked up like some Napoleonic battle plan. My eyes went to the title page where four angry slashes underlined my artful title. “What kind of meaningless glop is this?” he wrote. It went downhill from there. 

We quickly penned a hurt note, pleading, “I thought you were my friend.” To which Urjo replied, “I thought you wanted to be a writer.” Game. Set. Match. Two years and about a hundred drafts later the play was produced at the Tarragon Theatre Writers Workshop. Because we had much to learn. 

We were reminded of that epiphany while watching video of Charlie Kirk’s Socratic debating (mostly) students over the years. Seeing eager young people in debate was remarkable. After unloading their box cars of prefab hate— racist, sexist, transphobe, Nazi— they were clinically defenestrated by Kirk’s casual “Name me one time I said that”. Or Kirk correcting them on Scripture texts. Or the contradictions of pro-choice politics. That began the humana-humana-humana phase of the encounter.

Our fave was Kirk offering $10,000 to anyone at Oxford Union who could name a U.S. citizen deported by ICE. That was followed by a crestfallen silence. Soon followed by the recognition from the mini-AOCs that their education and the hundreds of thousands they spent were wasted by corrupt professors and radical institutions. This produced either a) resignation or b) in the case of Tyler Robinson, a vengeful wrath and a bullet.

Because they have been indoctrinated into an education cult that equates classic argument with arguing, words with violence and religion with poison they suddenly realize that going through life depending on your feelings— as they’ve been taught since kindergarten— is going to be a disaster for them. They’re lost in a secular hellhole with no moral signposts. Just slogans. Had they been encouraged to discipline their minds to the Socratic model they might have stood a chance.

Socrates described his method as "midwifery", because it is employed to help his interlocutors develop their understanding in a way analogous to a child developing in the womb. But their heroes told them to be nice. Or to support Hamas. Or both.

Now they were standing outside the Woke bubble with their pants at their knees on social media. "Yes, he was a bit of a jerk,” wrote one of his debaters, “Yes, he held extreme political beliefs. That does not justify violence."

Modern education has failed them on the exchange of ideas. Marinated in radical chic by their union leaders who told them to read the room, not the books. “If your opinion depends on reliably knowing another person’s inner thoughts,” Scott Adams writes in his book Loserthink, “you might be experiencing loserthink… Keep a few examples of your wrongness fresh in your memory so you can generate the right level of humility about your omniscience in future situations.”

But enough about Jimmy Kimmell. Humility would require self awareness which is verboten for those graduating from contemporary public schooling and colleges. That’s why critics tried mightily to demean Kirk’s signature open-mike format. “Instead of debating experienced left-wing political commentators,” blubbers leftist New University, “these right-wing talking heads intentionally target college students who are often inexperienced in debate, studying subjects other than political science and uninformed in the particular policy area they are being grilled about.” Also because the late-night Edward R. Murrows would never risk it. Ah, the cruelty!

These bunkered beauties think they’ve achieved some enlightenment for reading minds. Wrong. “You can be smart and well informed while at the same time be a flagrant loserthinker,” notes Adams. Once you learn to see the walls of your mental prison, “and you learn how to escape, you will have better tools to help usher in what I call the Golden Age.”

The classic teaching model once was the erudite John Houseman as the Harvard law legend in the Paper Chase movie and TV program in the 1980s. “You teach yourselves the law, but I train your minds. You come in here with a skull full of mush; you leave thinking like a lawyer.” Houseman’s rigourous professor inspired dread in his students, and at the same time a measure of hero worship; he literally wrote the books they study. 

He was pitiless in the face of the casual stereotypes that are the meat of Gavin Newsom or Jagmeet Singh. In one famous scene Houseman’s character tells a struggling student, “Call your mother, and tell her you will never be a lawyer.” (Today he’d be arrested for assault.) Moving young minds away from using feelings in argument was his goal. Tender hearts need not apply. Kirk replicated that discipline, demanding that critics bring the receipts. But it bruised the tender sensibilities of those disinclined to match his scholarship and commitment. Best to shoot him, allowed his critics.

Silencing Kirk’s voice— or replacing it with faux victim Jimmy Kimmel— is supposed help the Rachel Maddow scholars reach total consciousness. Here’s a Canadian feminist in the Globe and Mail dancing on his grave. “Charlie Kirk’s videos thrived on controversy as he used the manosphere playbook to reshape politics”. It’s all so tired, so trope, so predictable. 

But it’s worked on a generation of typically well-off kids who entered schools with open minds and left as bitter, angry antifa foot soldiers. In between came the purveyors of white capalist guilt. As Voltaire is reported to have said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Welcome to 2025 M. Voltaire.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.