“We must help people understand how unacceptable the violent suppression of speech is,” Alice Dreger wrote the day after Charlie Kirk’s assassination — stating that for Kirk, the heckler’s veto became the “shooter’s veto.”

In my view, to call murder “unacceptable” still trivializes the taking of a human life. Cultural acceptability is no sure moral guide: honor killings , slavery and caste systems are still acceptable and culturally potent among some groups, but they are morally wrong.

Using acceptability as an evaluative tool is a poor substitute for what J. Budziszewski calls “foundational moral principles” that are both right for everyone, and at some level are known by everyone — even those who violate them. “Our common moral knowledge is as real as arithmetic, and probab

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