Charlie Kirk: The Man, the Message and the Meaning of His Assassination

This was written a frew days after  Kirk's assasination on the 10th September, 2025  when Candace Owens and co. had not distorted all meaning with their conspiracy nonsense.

There is something profoundly disturbing about the assassination of Charlie Kirk that goes beyond the tragedy of one man's death. Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025, while doing what had become the defining feature of his public life: engaging people in political debate. The FBI has described the killing as a murder and has emphasized that an attack on the First Amendment is an attack on the foundation of American democracy. 

Whatever one's opinion of Charlie Kirk, nobody should be violently attacked, let alone killed, for exercising the right to express an opinion. If you dislike what someone says, defeat them with a better argument. Challenge their assumptions. Expose their contradictions. Debate them publicly. Vote against them. Write against them. Organize against them. But once political disagreement becomes a justification for violence, the argument has already been lost.

That is why I find the reaction of some people to Kirk's death almost as troubling as the killing itself. I have unfortunately seen people I know personally either celebrate the assassination or attempt to rationalize it. There is no moral sophistication in doing so. One does not have to admire Charlie Kirk, agree with his politics or even particularly like him to recognize that celebrating his murder is morally repugnant. The same standard must apply regardless of who the victim is or which side of the political spectrum he occupies.

And that principle cuts both ways. Advocating tit-for-tat violence against those who celebrated or justified Kirk's death is equally deplorable. If our response to political violence is to demand more political violence, we have learned precisely the wrong lesson. A civilized society cannot operate according to the logic that my side is entitled to violence because your side used it first. The answer to political extremism cannot be political vengeance.

Nor do I believe that every person who says something tasteless or offensive should automatically lose his or her livelihood. Free expression becomes meaningless if it protects only opinions we find agreeable. That does not mean there should be no consequences for speech. Institutions have legitimate standards, and people who use positions of authority to promote hatred to a captive audience—particularly schoolchildren—can reasonably be held accountable under the rules and mandate of the institution that employs them. But there is an important distinction between institutional accountability and the increasingly fashionable impulse to destroy anyone whose political opinion falls outside an approved ideological perimeter.

It is in that context that I think Charlie Kirk deserves to be remembered more honestly.

Kirk was not a saint. He had faults, said things I thought were wrong and occasionally expressed himself in ways I found unnecessarily provocative. But I believe he was, on balance, a good man with considerable strengths who was making an honest attempt to change the political and intellectual conversation on American campuses. He understood that something had gone badly wrong in the culture of debate at many universities, where wokeness, cancel culture and increasingly divisive forms of identity politics had narrowed the boundaries of acceptable opinion.

His response was not to retreat from those institutions but to walk directly into them. That was, in many respects, his greatest contribution.

Youth outreach was Kirk's bread and butter, and he possessed an unusual combination of energy, verbal fluency, confidence and optimism that made him exceptionally effective at connecting with young people. He understood something that many established politicians and commentators never quite grasped: young people don't necessarily need to be lectured; they want to be challenged. Kirk was willing to stand in front of a crowd of students, invite disagreement and argue his position in public.

That approach made him enemies on both the political left and the political right.

It is worth remembering that Kirk was not an ethnic identitarian. His conservatism was fundamentally political rather than racial, which helps explain why he was criticized not only by the far left but also by elements of the far right, including the so-called Groypers. Nick Fuentes, among others, was a persistent critic of Kirk. Given that history, I find some of the subsequent expressions of sympathy from that corner of the political world difficult to take at face value.

Kirk was also an unapologetic Christian. His faith was not merely a branding exercise; it was central to his worldview and public identity. At the same time, I never regarded him as a Christian nationalist in the sense in which that term is commonly used. His political vision was rooted in the American constitutional republic rather than in an attempt to establish a specifically religious state. That distinction is important in an era when political labels are routinely stretched beyond recognition.

Politically, I agreed with Kirk on many issues. His opposition to illegal immigration was broadly consistent with my own views. I agreed with his defense of open debate and meritocracy, and I thought he was often right to challenge some of the intellectual orthodoxies that had become embedded in contemporary institutions. His criticism of DEI initiatives, in particular, struck me as addressing a genuine problem: the substitution of identity categories for individual merit and the creation of institutional structures that sometimes seemed more interested in ideological conformity than genuine equality.

But agreement should not require pretending that Kirk was always right.

I disagreed strongly with his position on abortion. I do not believe that life begins at conception, and therefore I found his position on abortion too categorical. I also thought his position on gun rights could be too dismissive of measures such as background checks. Nevertheless, I respected the consistency with which he held his views. It is entirely possible to believe that someone is wrong while recognizing that he has arrived at his position honestly.

I was also skeptical of his decision to platform Tucker Carlson through Turning Point USA. I thought there were good reasons to regard that decision as a mistake. But Kirk also took pride in refusing to create a one-thought political bubble, and that principle should be applied consistently. If the objective is genuinely to encourage debate, then inviting controversial voices into the conversation cannot automatically be treated as an endorsement of everything those people believe.

Foreign policy was perhaps the area in which I found Kirk least compelling. He generally seemed to understand the realities of international affairs better than some of the more committed American isolationists who attempted to pull him in their direction, but I don't think foreign policy was ever his strongest area. Indeed, I suspect Kirk himself would have acknowledged that.

One issue on which I think the caricature of Kirk has been particularly unfair is Israel and the Jewish community. Kirk was a strong supporter of Israel and a vocal friend of the Jews. There are clips circulating in which he appears to say things that can be presented as evidence of hostility toward Israel or Jews, but many of these snippets are stripped of their surrounding context. In an era of social media politics, the shortest and most inflammatory interpretation almost always travels further than the complete argument.

That does not mean every statement Kirk made should be defended. It means that public figures deserve to be judged on what they actually said and believed rather than on selectively edited fragments designed to produce maximum outrage.

The same principle applies to accusations that Kirk was racist or homophobic. He was frequently described in those terms by political opponents, but I don't believe those labels accurately describe the man I observed. Like every public figure, Kirk could say things that offended people and could frame arguments in deliberately provocative ways. That is not the same thing as holding every hateful belief attributed to him.

Perhaps the best way I can describe Charlie Kirk politically is as a classical liberal who had been schooled in the Burkean conservative tradition. That may sound contradictory to people who have come to associate the term “liberal” exclusively with the contemporary American left, but historically it isn't. Classical liberalism places considerable emphasis on individual liberty, free expression, constitutional government and the ability of people to pursue their own lives without unnecessary interference. Burkean conservatism, meanwhile, emphasizes tradition, institutional continuity and skepticism toward grand attempts to remake society from the ground up.

Kirk occupied much of that territory. The problem is that the Overton window—the range of opinions regarded as politically acceptable—has shifted dramatically, particularly on university campuses. Positions that would have been regarded as conventional conservative arguments only a generation ago can now be characterized as extreme. Opposition to affirmative action, skepticism toward DEI bureaucracy, support for merit-based advancement, concern about illegal immigration or an insistence that controversial ideas should be debated rather than suppressed can suddenly place someone beyond the boundaries of what certain institutions consider acceptable.

Kirk understood that shift, and he deliberately challenged it. That does not make him infallible. It does not make every argument he made correct. It certainly does not make him a saint. But it does make the manner of his death especially tragic. A man whose life's work was largely about political argument was killed in the midst of exercising the very freedom that allowed that argument to exist.

That should concern everyone. The appropriate response to Charlie Kirk's assassination is therefore neither hagiography nor revenge. We should not pretend that he was perfect, nor should we demonize those who disagreed with him. We should reject the temptation to answer ideological violence with ideological violence of our own. And we should be especially wary of those who suggest that political opponents somehow deserve what happened to him.

They don't.Charlie Kirk's family has suffered an unimaginable loss, and I wish them strength and peace in the years ahead. I also hope that the people who believed in Kirk's mission will carry forward the part of his legacy that mattered most: the willingness to walk into hostile rooms, engage people with whom you disagree and argue rather than silence.

That is ultimately the legacy I would prefer to see survive him. Not vengeance. Not censorship. Not political tribalism. Argument.

Charlie Kirk spent much of his life insisting that ideas should be confronted rather than feared. In the aftermath of his assassination, that principle is more important than ever.

Abortion: A Difficult Compromise Between Principle and Pragmatism

My position on abortion begins with a recognition that this is not a problem that can be resolved simply by choosing between two opposing political camps. I support a woman's right to choose whether to continue a pregnancy, but I do not regard that right as unlimited or morally uncomplicated. I believe there is a legitimate point at which the interests of the developing fetus acquire sufficient moral weight that society is justified in placing restrictions on abortion.

For me, that point is approximately three months following conception. This position is, admittedly, a compromise. It does not fit neatly into the conventional categories of either the pro-choice or pro-life movement. I am firmly opposed to the idea that the state should compel a woman to carry every pregnancy to term regardless of her circumstances. At the same time, I am uncomfortable with the proposition that the moral status of the fetus is irrelevant throughout pregnancy and that abortion should therefore remain unrestricted at every stage.

The difficulty is that abortion involves two competing moral considerations, both of which deserve serious recognition.

On one side is the autonomy of the woman—the right to make profoundly personal decisions concerning her own body, her health, her future, and the circumstances in which she brings a child into the world. Pregnancy is not an abstract biological event. It can profoundly affect a woman's physical health, psychological well-being, relationships, economic circumstances, education, career, and entire trajectory through life. To compel someone to continue a pregnancy against her will is therefore an extraordinarily consequential exercise of state power.

On the other side is the developing human life itself. Whatever one's philosophical position concerning precisely when personhood begins, it is difficult to regard a late-stage fetus as morally equivalent to an undifferentiated collection of cells. As pregnancy progresses, the fetus develops increasingly sophisticated biological structures and capacities, and the moral considerations surrounding its destruction consequently become more difficult to dismiss.

This is where I find myself uncomfortable with absolute positions on either side.

The most uncompromising versions of the pro-life position can underestimate the profound moral significance of forcing a woman to continue an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy. Conversely, the most uncompromising versions of the pro-choice position can sometimes treat the developing fetus as though it has no moral significance whatsoever, regardless of how far a pregnancy has progressed.

Neither extreme adequately captures the complexity of the issue.

My support for a roughly three-month period following conception is therefore not based on the belief that a magical moral transformation occurs on a particular day. Biology does not operate according to the political or legal calendar. There is no precise moment at which something morally insignificant suddenly becomes morally significant.

Rather, a three-month boundary represents a pragmatic attempt to establish a point at which the competing interests should be weighed differently.

Early in pregnancy, the argument for preserving a woman's autonomy is, in my view, considerably stronger. The pregnancy is at an earlier developmental stage, and the state has a weaker justification for overriding the woman's wishes.

As development progresses, however, the moral argument becomes increasingly complicated. The developing fetus becomes more biologically organized and increasingly recognizably human in its characteristics. At some point, society has a legitimate interest in protecting that developing life.

The precise boundary is therefore necessarily somewhat conventional. But the fact that a boundary is imperfect does not mean that boundaries are unnecessary. Law frequently has to establish thresholds in circumstances where nature itself provides no precise dividing line.

For essentially the same reason, I am opposed to late-stage abortion except where compelling circumstances make it necessary.

The phrase "partial-birth abortion" has been used in political debate in highly charged ways, and I recognize that terminology itself can obscure rather than illuminate the underlying medical circumstances. My concern is with late-term procedures in which a pregnancy has progressed substantially and the fetus has consequently acquired greater moral significance.

I would therefore support restrictions on such procedures, while recognizing important exceptions.

If continuing the pregnancy presents a serious threat to the mother's life, for example, the moral calculus changes dramatically. There can be circumstances in which there is no genuinely satisfactory outcome and where terminating the pregnancy becomes the least harmful available option. Similarly, catastrophic fetal abnormalities or other extraordinary medical circumstances can create situations in which rigid rules become morally indefensible.

The principle I would apply is that the later the pregnancy, the stronger the justification required for terminating it. That strikes me as a reasonable middle ground between two propositions that are both difficult to reject entirely: that women should possess meaningful control over their reproductive lives, and that developing human life acquires increasing moral significance as pregnancy progresses.

Ultimately, I regard abortion as one of the clearest examples of a moral tradeoff. There are issues in which the morally correct course seems relatively obvious. Abortion is not one of them.

Here, two legitimate values collide: individual autonomy and the preservation of developing human life. Neither can simply be wished away by declaring the other irrelevant.

This is why I find the polarization surrounding abortion somewhat misleading. The political debate often presents the issue as though there are only two possible positions: unrestricted abortion on one side and an absolute prohibition on the other.

But most people, when confronted with sufficiently difficult circumstances, recognize exceptions and qualifications. Even many people who describe themselves as pro-life acknowledge circumstances in which abortion may be justified. Likewise, many people who describe themselves as pro-choice recognize that there is a moral difference between an abortion performed very early in pregnancy and one performed much later.

Once those distinctions are acknowledged, the apparent gulf between the two positions becomes considerably narrower.

The real disagreement is often about where the boundary should be drawn, what circumstances justify crossing it, and how much weight should be assigned to the competing interests at different stages of pregnancy.

That is a much more interesting—and much more honest—conversation.

There is another aspect of my position that I find important to acknowledge. Although I support the woman's right to choose, I do so with something of a heavy heart.

My position is not based on the conviction that abortion is morally benign. Nor do I believe that the developing fetus has no moral value. Rather, my support for legal access is grounded substantially in utilitarian reasoning: given the competing interests, the consequences of prohibiting abortion, and the enormous consequences of compelling women to continue pregnancies against their wishes, I believe that allowing abortion within reasonable limits produces the better overall outcome.

But acknowledging the utilitarian basis of my position also means acknowledging its discomfort.

Utilitarianism can force us to make decisions that are rationally defensible while remaining emotionally or morally troubling. Something can be the least harmful available option without being entirely good.

That distinction matters to me. I do not believe that because abortion should be legally available, it should consequently be regarded as morally trivial. Nor do I believe that the existence of a legal right automatically settles the underlying ethical question.

There is a difference between saying "the state should permit this" and saying "there is nothing morally significant about this.".I support the first proposition without necessarily accepting the second. The  most important element of my position is that I recognize the limits of my own certainty.

Questions about when human life acquires moral status, whether biological humanity is equivalent to personhood, and what obligations society has toward developing life are ultimately philosophical as well as scientific questions. Science can tell us enormously about embryonic and fetal development, but it cannot by itself determine the moral value we should assign to those biological facts.

That requires philosophy, ethics, and ultimately individual judgment. For that reason, I am wary of people who speak about abortion as though the answer is self-evident and anyone who disagrees must therefore be either immoral or intellectually deficient.

Reasonable people can look at the same moral dilemma and assign different weights to autonomy, potential life, suffering, responsibility, and social consequences. The appropriate response to such disagreement should not be contempt.It should be humility.

My position, therefore, is neither that abortion is simply a matter of personal choice nor that the state should categorically prohibit it.

I believe women should have a meaningful right to choose, particularly during the early stages of pregnancy. I also believe that this right should become increasingly constrained as pregnancy progresses because the moral claim of the developing fetus becomes increasingly significant.

A roughly three-month period following conception represents, for me, a reasonable point at which the balance should begin to shift. Beyond that point, abortion should generally be restricted, with exceptions for circumstances in which the continuation of the pregnancy poses a serious threat to the mother or involves other extraordinary medical conditions for which reasonable alternatives are virtually nonexistent.

This is not a position born of certainty.  It is a position born of compromise.

I recognize the moral argument for protecting developing human life, but I also recognize the extraordinary consequences of subordinating a woman's autonomy to that principle. I therefore arrive at a position that attempts to preserve both values rather than pretending that one can simply eliminate the other.

Perhaps that is ultimately what makes abortion such a difficult moral question. It does not offer us the comfort of a completely clean answer. It forces us to choose between competing goods, competing rights, and competing forms of human suffering.

And perhaps the most honest position is to acknowledge that even when we believe we have chosen correctly, there can still be something deeply unsettling about the choice itself.

That is why I support the right to choose—but do so with a heavy heart, conscious that the position rests not on the belief that abortion is morally uncomplicated, but on the judgment that, within reasonable limits, preserving a woman's autonomy and minimizing overall harm is the least objectionable course available to us.

I Am Not Pro-Ukraine or Pro-Russia. I Am Pro-West.

 That distinction outlined in the heading seems increasingly difficult for people to understand. In the current political climate, refusing to adopt one of the competing orthodoxies is often interpreted as cowardice, ignorance or secret allegiance to the other side. But foreign policy should not be a football match in which we are required to wear one team's jersey. My primary loyalty is to the Western political tradition: constitutional government, individual liberty, national sovereignty, free expression, the rule of law and the preservation of democratic institutions. Those principles should inform how we judge both Ukraine and Russia.

My attitude toward Ukraine is complicated, and deliberately so. Jewish history makes it impossible for me to romanticize Ukrainian nationalism. Jews have suffered terribly at the hands of Ukrainian nationalists, particularly during the Second World War. The horrors of Babi Yar are seared into the history of European Jewry, and the record of Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany and the darker elements of the Bandera movement is something that should never be sanitized or forgotten. The historical legacy of Banderism makes me deeply uncomfortable with attempts to portray Ukrainian nationalism as an uncomplicated struggle for freedom.

But history does not give Russia a license to invade Ukraine.Whatever sins Ukraine has committed, whatever corruption exists within its political system, and whatever legitimate grievances Russia may have regarding NATO expansion or Western policy, Ukraine remains a sovereign country. I cannot simply ignore that fact because parts of Ukrainian history are repugnant to me.

Russia's invasion was wrong. That conclusion does not require me to become “pro-Ukraine.” It requires me to believe in the principle of national sovereignty. If we accept the proposition that a larger and more powerful country is entitled to invade its neighbour whenever it believes its security interests are threatened, then we have abandoned one of the most fundamental principles upon which the modern international order rests.

Did the West make a mistake expanding NATO? Yes and no. There is a legitimate argument that the relentless expansion of NATO eastward after the collapse of the Soviet Union contributed to the deterioration of relations with Moscow. We should not pretend otherwise. From the Russian perspective, watching a military alliance that had been created largely to contain the Soviet Union move progressively closer to Russia's borders was hardly going to be welcomed in the Kremlin.

I understand that argument. But I also understand the argument on the other side. The countries of Eastern Europe had lived behind the Iron Curtain. They had experienced Soviet domination firsthand, and when the Soviet Union collapsed, many of them understandably wanted guarantees that they would never again be abandoned to the geopolitical ambitions of a larger neighbour. The West had already made the mistake once: after the Second World War, Eastern Europe was effectively handed into the Soviet sphere of influence. The people who had lived under communism had every reason to be suspicious of another arrangement in which their security depended upon Moscow's goodwill.

So was NATO expansion wise?Perhaps not in every instance. Perhaps the West could have handled the process more intelligently and with greater sensitivity to Russian security concerns.But there is a difference between saying that NATO expansion was strategically provocative and saying that it justified invasion. The first is a legitimate foreign-policy argument. The second is not.

Neither side gets a moral free pass. I have no particular affection for the Zelensky government. Ukraine has serious problems with corruption, oligarchic influence and political dysfunction. Volodymyr Zelensky is not some immaculate democratic hero simply because he happens to be opposing Vladimir Putin.

But the alternative is hardly more attractive. Russia is corrupt. Its political system is authoritarian. Its ruling class has accumulated enormous wealth and power while ordinary Russians have been asked to accept increasing restrictions on political dissent. The idea that Putin represents some kind of morally superior alternative to the Ukrainian leadership is difficult to take seriously.

One does not have to admire Zelensky to recognize that Putin represents the greater threat.

And that is where I part company with those on both the isolationist right and the Western left who seem determined to reduce the conflict to a morality play in which their preferred villain explains everything.

The world is not that simple.

One of the strangest developments of the current political era has been the willingness of some Western conservatives to look upon Vladimir Putin with something approaching admiration.

Why? Because Putin opposes “wokeness.” and  talks about traditional values.Yes he criticizes progressive social politics and presents himself as a defender of Christianity and Western civilization against cultural decadence.

This is an extraordinary basis upon which to assess a foreign dictator.. Conservatives, of all people, should understand the danger of confusing rhetoric with reality. Putin can condemn transgender ideology, mock Western political correctness and invoke Christianity until the cows come home. None of that makes him a friend of the West.

The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Indeed, sometimes the enemy of my enemy is simply another enemy who has discovered which buttons to push.

This is where the rise of Duginism deserves particular attention. Aleksandr Dugin and the broader ideological currents associated with him represent something fundamentally different from traditional Western conservatism. Dugin's vision is not a defence of classical liberalism, constitutional democracy or the individual rights that underpin Western civilization. It is a rejection of much of that tradition in favour of a civilizational and geopolitical order in which Russia occupies a dominant role.

That should concern Western conservatives enormously.

You cannot defend the West by embracing an ideology whose fundamental assumptions are hostile to the liberal political order that made the West what it is. The irony is almost comical. Some conservatives have spent years warning that progressive activists are attempting to dismantle Western institutions, only to turn around and romanticize a Russian state whose geopolitical project is explicitly aimed at weakening Western unity and influence.

Putin does not have to believe everything his Western admirers believe. He only has to understand what they want to hear.And he does.Stop being seduced by the rhetoric This is the part that I think deserves the greatest emphasis. Words are cheap.

A politician can talk about Christianity without being a Christian democrat. He can talk about traditional values without believing in individual liberty. He can condemn progressive ideology without supporting free institutions. He can criticize Western decadence while simultaneously working to weaken the very civilization he claims to admire.

We should judge governments by what they do, not merely by what they say. Putin's Russia is not the defender of the West simply because Putin dislikes some aspects of contemporary Western culture. Russia is a geopolitical competitor with interests that frequently conflict with those of the United States and its allies. Moscow has spent decades attempting to undermine American influence and Western cohesion in various ways, and the fact that the Soviet Union has been replaced by a different ideological formulation does not mean the strategic competition has disappeared.

The packaging has changed.The objective has not necessarily changed with it. That is why Western conservatives need to be particularly careful. Our political enemies do not always look like our political enemies. Sometimes they discover that the easiest way to influence a political movement is to tell that movement exactly what it wants to hear.

Putin's anti-Woke rhetoric should therefore be treated with the same skepticism we would apply to any other political propaganda.Being pro-West does not mean being blindly pro-American. It does not mean believing that NATO is infallible, that Ukraine is virtuous, that Zelensky is a hero or that every decision made by Washington is wise.

It means recognizing that the Western political tradition, despite its enormous flaws, has produced something worth defending - Individual liberty,representative government. freedom of speech, religious freedom, constitutional restraints on government, the rule of law and the principle that governments derive legitimacy from the consent of the governed.

Those principles are worth defending against progressive excesses. They are also worth defending against authoritarianism masquerading as conservatism.I can condemn Ukrainian nationalism without endorsing Russian imperialism. I can acknowledge that NATO expansion contributed to Russian insecurity without believing that Russia therefore had the right to invade Ukraine. I can criticize Zelensky without becoming a Putin apologist. I can oppose Woke ideology without pretending that Vladimir Putin is some kind of champion of Western civilization.

There is no contradiction in any of that. In fact, I would argue that it is precisely what a genuinely Western perspective should look like.The West does not need to choose between Kyiv and Moscow as competing objects of worship. It needs to decide what principles it is prepared to defend.

Those  principles should not change simply because an authoritarian leader learns how to say the right words.The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Sometimes he is simply an enemy who has figured out that we are listening.

What Should We Call the Twentieth Century?

 Every age eventually acquires a name.

The names are rarely chosen by the people who lived through the period. They are imposed later, when the immediate passions have faded and historians can look backward with greater distance. We call one period the Renaissance, another the Enlightenment, another the Industrial Revolution. Such names inevitably simplify enormously complicated periods, but they also reveal something about how later generations understand the world that came before them. So what will future historians call the twentieth century?

We tend to think of it as the century of extraordinary progress: the century of science, technology, mass education, longer lives, antibiotics, aviation, space exploration, computing, and unprecedented economic growth. All of that is true. But it is only part of the story.

The twentieth century was also a period of extraordinary violence, social upheaval, ideological conflict, consumerism, mass communication, financial transformation, and an increasingly sophisticated ability to manipulate information. It may therefore acquire a very different collection of names from those we would instinctively choose today.

Here are ten possibilities.

The Age of Greed

The twentieth century witnessed an extraordinary expansion of wealth, but it also saw the increasing elevation of material accumulation as a measure of success. Economic growth became not merely a means of improving human welfare but, increasingly, an objective in itself.

Consumerism transformed societies. Advertising encouraged people to define themselves through what they purchased, while financial systems became increasingly sophisticated at converting almost every aspect of human activity into something that could be bought, sold, or speculated upon.

Future historians may look back and conclude that we became extraordinarily good at creating wealth—and extraordinarily poor at deciding when enough was enough.

The Age of Insanity

The twentieth century produced some of humanity's most remarkable achievements alongside some of its most horrifying acts.

Two world wars, genocide, totalitarian regimes, nuclear weapons, and industrialized mass killing all emerged from societies that simultaneously regarded themselves as increasingly rational and civilized.

Perhaps that contradiction will be one of the century's defining characteristics.

We developed the ability to send humans into space while perfecting ways of destroying millions of people on Earth. We expanded our understanding of psychology while creating political systems capable of manipulating entire populations.

Future generations may reasonably wonder whether the twentieth century was an age of rationality—or an age in which rationality became extraordinarily effective at serving irrational purposes.

The Era of Border Collapse

For much of human history, geography imposed powerful limitations on human interaction. The twentieth century began to dismantle those barriers.

Steamships, railways, aircraft, telephones, radio, television, and eventually digital communications compressed the world. Political borders remained, but their ability to isolate populations weakened.

People, capital, ideas, diseases, technologies, and cultures could cross boundaries at speeds previously unimaginable.

The century therefore began the transformation of humanity from a collection of relatively isolated societies into something resembling a single, interconnected system.

The Age of the Frivolous

Mass production created something historically unusual: enormous numbers of people with access to goods and entertainment that previous generations could scarcely have imagined.

Popular culture became a global force. Music, cinema, sport, fashion, celebrity, advertising, and eventually television occupied an increasing proportion of everyday life.

There is nothing inherently wrong with frivolity. Human beings need entertainment. But future historians may ask whether the twentieth century marked the point at which entertainment ceased to be merely a diversion and became one of the principal organizing forces of society.

The First Media Age

The twentieth century was the first period in which mass media became an unavoidable part of everyday life.

Newspapers reached enormous audiences. Radio brought voices into people's homes. Cinema created shared visual experiences. Television eventually placed moving images into virtually every living room.

For the first time, governments, corporations, political movements, and individuals could communicate simultaneously with millions of people.

This transformed politics and culture—but it also transformed persuasion.

The century may therefore be remembered as the moment when humanity first learned how powerful control over information could become.

The Era of Total War

If one characteristic of the twentieth century stands above almost all others, it may be war.

The First and Second World Wars transformed warfare from conflicts largely fought between armies into struggles in which entire populations became targets and participants. Industrial production, science, transportation, communications, and bureaucratic organization were all harnessed to the machinery of war.

The ultimate expression of this development was the atomic bomb.

Humanity acquired, for the first time, the technological ability to destroy civilization on a global scale.

The twentieth century therefore became the century in which war ceased to be merely a contest between nations and became a potential threat to the survival of humanity itself.

The Era of Protest

The twentieth century was also an age of protest.

Workers, women, racial minorities, students, colonial populations, political dissidents, and countless other groups challenged established authorities and social structures. Civil rights movements, anti-war demonstrations, independence movements, feminism, environmentalism, and student rebellions all contributed to a growing rejection of inherited authority.

The century did not simply change because governments decided to change it.

It changed because ordinary people increasingly demanded that it change.

The Age of Virtual Gold

Money itself underwent a remarkable transformation.

For centuries, wealth had been closely associated with physical things: land, livestock, precious metals, buildings, and tangible goods. During the twentieth century, however, an increasing proportion of wealth became abstract.

Money increasingly became numbers recorded in ledgers rather than objects that could be physically possessed. Credit, stocks, bonds, derivatives, electronic transfers, and increasingly complex financial instruments created enormous quantities of what might be called virtual wealth.

The twenty-first century would take this process even further, but its foundations were laid during the twentieth.

Future historians may therefore see the period as the beginning of the age in which wealth became increasingly detached from anything tangible.

The Era of Growth Obsession

The twentieth century developed an extraordinary faith in economic growth.

Governments measured progress through production, income, consumption, employment, and gross domestic product. Growth became synonymous with prosperity, and prosperity became one of the principal measures of successful government.

But the planet has physical limits.

The century dramatically expanded humanity's ability to extract resources, transform landscapes, consume energy, and produce goods. It also began to reveal the environmental consequences of doing so.

Future historians may therefore see the twentieth century as the period when humanity became obsessed with the idea that tomorrow must always be larger than today.

The Age of Disinformation

Finally, the twentieth century may be remembered as the period in which humanity became extraordinarily sophisticated at manufacturing belief.

Propaganda was nothing new. Governments had always attempted to influence populations. What changed was the scale and technological sophistication of the enterprise.

Radio, film, television, advertising, public relations, political messaging, and eventually the internet created an environment in which information could be manufactured and distributed to enormous populations almost instantaneously.

The distinction between information and persuasion became increasingly blurred.

By the end of the century, humanity possessed more information than any previous generation—and simultaneously faced greater difficulty determining what information could be trusted.

Perhaps that is the ultimate irony of the twentieth century.

We developed unprecedented means of discovering the truth while simultaneously developing unprecedented means of obscuring it.

So, What Should We Call It?

It could be that no single name will ever adequately describe the twentieth century.

It was the Age of Greed and the Age of Insanity. It was the Era of Total War and the Era of Protest. It was the beginning of mass media, global interconnectedness, virtual wealth, economic obsession, and industrial-scale information manipulation.

It was also a century of extraordinary human achievement.

Perhaps that contradiction is what future historians will find most fascinating. The twentieth century was a period in which humanity simultaneously became more powerful, more knowledgeable, more interconnected, and more dangerous.

We learned how to split the atom, leave the planet, communicate across oceans, manipulate genes, and build machines capable of extraordinary computation.

But we never quite solved the older problem: What should we do with all this power?

In the end, that is what the twentieth century was really about—the century in which humanity acquired extraordinary power without acquiring an equally extraordinary understanding of how to use it.

What annoys me about the Climate Change Debate? Let me count the ways.

There are few subjects that seem capable of generating as much heat—pun entirely intended—as the climate change debate. What should be a discussion grounded in science, evidence and reasonable disagreement has too often become a political and ideological battlefield. I find myself frustrated not necessarily by the subject itself, but by the way in which the debate is conducted.

So, in no particular order, here are twelve things that annoy me about the climate change debate.

First, misinformation. Both sides are guilty of it. Advocates and skeptics alike have, at times, presented selective facts, exaggerated claims or outright misinformation in support of their preferred position. If the argument depends upon distorting the evidence, it isn't a very good argument to begin with.

Second, the insistence that the science is "100% settled." Science doesn't work that way. Scientific knowledge is built on evidence, testing, observation, revision and, above all, a willingness to question existing conclusions. There may be broad scientific agreement on particular aspects of climate change, but declaring an entire field of inquiry permanently and absolutely settled is fundamentally contrary to the scientific process.

Third, selective interpretation of data. Data are remarkably useful things, but they can also be remarkably easy to cherry-pick. A particular temperature record, time period, computer model or collection of observations can be highlighted while inconvenient information is ignored. If we're going to have a serious debate, we need to look at the whole body of evidence rather than simply the pieces that happen to support our preferred conclusion.

Fourth, extrapolations of convenience. This is where today's trends are projected indefinitely into the future, often with a level of certainty that the underlying evidence simply doesn't justify. Climate systems are enormously complex, and predicting precisely what will happen decades or centuries from now is hardly comparable to forecasting tomorrow's weather.

Fifth, the army of so-called experts. Expertise matters, but credentials alone do not settle an argument. There seems to be no shortage of people presented as climate authorities despite having limited scientific backgrounds outside their particular field. Expertise should be respected, but it shouldn't become a substitute for examining evidence and questioning assumptions.

Sixth, politics dictating science. This may be my biggest concern. Once scientific conclusions become politically useful, there is an enormous temptation to work backward from the desired policy and then assemble the science necessary to justify it. Science should inform politics; politics should not determine scientific conclusions.

Seventh, fear mongering as a form of reasoning. "Act now or catastrophe awaits" may be an effective political slogan, but it isn't a scientific argument. Predictions of disaster can certainly be appropriate when the evidence warrants them, but fear should never be used as a substitute for evidence.

Eighth, decisions based solely on emotion. Climate change raises legitimate concerns about the environment and the future, but emotional appeals cannot substitute for rational analysis. Good intentions do not automatically produce good policies, and policies with enormous economic and social consequences deserve something more substantial than an emotional response.

Ninth, the muzzling of debate. This is particularly troubling. If the evidence is overwhelming, then opposing arguments should be easy to defeat through evidence and reason. Attempts to silence dissent, marginalize skeptics or declare certain questions off-limits do precisely the opposite of what science requires. Debate is not an obstacle to scientific progress; it is part of the process.

Tenth, the name-calling. "Warmists," "climate deniers," "alarmists," and whatever other labels happen to be fashionable add almost nothing to the discussion. They are rhetorical shortcuts that allow people to dismiss an opponent without actually addressing the opponent's argument. If the goal is to understand the climate, perhaps we could start by talking to one another rather than assigning each other insulting labels.

Eleventh, the overuse of the "think of the children" argument. Of course we should think about future generations. But invoking children does not magically transform a debatable proposition into an established fact. In fact, decisions made today in the name of protecting future generations could themselves have enormous unintended consequences. We owe our children more than good intentions—we owe them sound reasoning.

And finally, irrationalism. There is an astonishing amount of it on all sides. The climate debate can sometimes resemble a religious argument more than a scientific one, with competing camps defending their respective orthodoxies and treating dissent as heresy. Facts become political weapons, uncertainty becomes evidence of bad faith, and anyone who questions the prevailing narrative is immediately assigned to the opposing camp.

That, ultimately, is what annoys me most.Climate science is important. Climate change may pose serious challenges, and those challenges deserve to be examined carefully. But precisely because the subject is important, we should demand better from the debate surrounding it.

We should be able to acknowledge uncertainty without being accused of ignorance, examine inconvenient data without being accused of conspiracy, and disagree without resorting to name-calling.

Science isn't a popularity contest, a political campaign or a religious faith.

It's supposed to be a method for figuring out what we actually know—and, equally importantly, what we don't.