Charlie Kirk was right on liberty’s cost, America needs more arguments and other commentary

Libertarian: Kirk Was Right on Liberty’s Cost

After Charlie Kirk’s assassination “came a spate of malicious chuckling over” the fact that “he’d once called shooting deaths the price of keeping the Second Amendment,” notes Reason’s J.D. Tuccille, “except that’s really not what Kirk said.” Rather, “he emphasized that you can’t have the good parts of being free without also suffering the negative consequences.” And he was right: “Yes, freedom can be abused by bad people. But if we can’t trust everybody to use freedom wisely, why would we trust people in government” with the power “to disarm the public, censor speech, invade homes at will, and more?” Fact is, “there are tradeoffs not just in liberty, but in restricting liberty,” and the risks of liberty are “far less perilous than granting governments enhanced powers that they’ll inevitably abuse.”

Conservative: America Needs More Arguments

“Even most politically engaged people don’t actually spend much time in active disagreement with people who have different views,” warns Yuval Levin at The Free Press. Yet: “Our Constitution is premised on the assumption that our neighbors aren’t always going to share our views, and that dealing with each other through those differences is what politics is for.” Insisting “the other party is the country’s biggest problem” is “just a way to avoid dealing with the country’s actual problems, and that dealing with those will require negotiation, accommodation, and a lot of patience for opinions that aren’t our own.” In fact: “Our political adversaries will still be here tomorrow; they will be part of any future we build. Any politics not premised in that reality will be dangerously delusional and can only point us down.”

Education beat: All Tech Rots Kids’ Brains

Though “a rare consensus” has emerged to combat “the dangers that smartphones pose to student learning and well-being,” Harry Seton explains at the Fordham Institute, “simply banning cellphones” isn’t enough: Lots of tech feeds the “distraction economy,” connecting to “the same social media platforms, as well as potent, addictive games.” Yet “screens are less effective than paper” for “deep reading and long-term retention”; that’s why the best schools have “minimal tech.” Critical thinking and analysis “rely on deep foundations of subject-specific content knowledge that build slowly over time” and are powered by “only a notebook, pencil, and text.”

Free-marketeer: Why Trump Remains Popular

“Liberal and conservative elites” still don’t understand President Trump’s “appeal,” contends John Tillman at USA Today. Fact is, the greatest share of the country is “moderate,” and Trump is similarly “more or less in the middle”: “Two thirds of Americans don’t identify” with either partisan extreme. So “my free-market” conservatism is “largely outside” the mainstream, though that’s “equally, if not more, true for the left.” Their “energy” is “with full-blown socialists,” like Zohran Mamdani, but only “in the bluest parts of the country, like the Big Apple.” Trump, by contrast, “doesn’t hew to the free-market right or the socialist left.” And “conservatives should recognize that his pragmatic approach gets results” — before the left does: “If liberal elites” embrace “pragmatism,” they’ll “move America in a dangerous direction fast.”

Democrat: We Must Deliver Commonsense

“Democratic socialists aren’t Democrats — they’re socialists with a set of beliefs and priorities that are fundamentally at odds with Democratic Party values,” warns Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ). The Democratic Socialists of America’s radical platform is “not a vision for strengthening the middle class” — “it’s a blueprint for electoral disaster.” NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s “socialist policies are both impractical and out of step with what the majority of voters are looking for.” “We can’t allow democratic socialists to redefine what it means to be a Democrat” because it won’t “win back swing voters or help us regain a majority.” Delivering on “commonsense ideas — rooted in our core Democratic values” will “unite and energize our Party, and win elections.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board