It Must Be Tiring To Write From the Left
Eric Levitz as Copernicus
Shortly after invention of the printing press, the Catholic Church moved to implement pre-publication censorship. Authors at the time found strategies to evade the censors. Copernicus (who first proposed the idea of a heliocentric solar system), for example, framed his then-heretical position in terms of observational fidelity: "For these hypotheses need not be true or even provable. On the contrary, if they provide a calculus consistent with the observations, that alone is enough."
I suspect Eric Levitz of the left-wing web site Vox can relate: this morning he tackled The comforting fiction that Charlie Kirk’s killer was far-right. I've written before about the Left's deep, even definitional, commitment to the belief that they're the good, the compassionate, the enlightened ones. This has led them to take the news that Charlie Kirk's killer was in a romantic relationship with a man who believed he could become a woman, and an aficionado of furry porn, i.e. a Leftist, rather badly.
Someone named Heather Cox Richardson, with whom I am unfamiliar but is apparently widely-read on the Left, wrote "The alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, is a young white man from a Republican, gun enthusiast family, who appears to have embraced the far right, disliking Kirk for being insufficiently radical. Rather than grappling with reality, right-wing figures are using Kirk’s murder to prop up their fictional world."
This is, of course, insane, as Levitz attempts to illustrate. Regrettably for him, however, he is a man of the Left, writing for the Left. Therefore he cannot simply relay facts, and draw the obvious conclusions. Instead, he has to write delicately; one might even say evasively, lest he transgress Leftist shibboleths. In the end he, like Copernicus, is compelled to frame his conclusions in ways acceptable to his censors.
"The left's embrace of comforting fictions about Kirk's assassination is understandable. But it is also irresponsible and politically self-defeating. To truly inhabit the reality-based community,' progressives must not merely spotlight the right's fantasies, but stand more watchful guard against our own."
The problem, you see, is not that Richardson was wrong, but that her statement was harmful to the Left.
"…liberals must strive to avoid further lapses of epistemic humility in the future. In my view, the broad left is correct to believe that it has more respect for empirical truth – and comfort with moral ambiguity – than the right does." You're still the good ones! he assures his readers, it's just that this little lapse has allowed Trump to say things about the Left… that are true, but inconvenient.
How sad. It must be exhausting to write in this way, always mindful of one's censors. Perhaps Levitz would be happier in the heterodox world, or (gasp) on the right. One might be shot over here, of course, if one attracts a sufficiently large audience, but still: one can seek the truth unencumbered.
09/21/25 16:51