Teachers Suspended or Fired for Disparaging Charlie Kirk Remarks

In the wake of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, social media has been flooded with negative comments from educators across the country, spurring suspensions and in some cases firings.

Multiple sources indicate that at least 15 educators have been disciplined in states including Texas, Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The content of the posts has varied, but many have been criticized for appearing to celebrate or mock Kirk’s death, or for suggesting that his demise was a result of his own rhetoric.

For example, an assistant dean at Middle Tennessee State University was fired for a social media post that stated she had “ZERO sympathy” for Kirk’s death and that he had “spoke his fate into existence.” Similarly, a high school social studies teacher in Greenville County, South Carolina, was dismissed for a Facebook post that stated, “America became better today. There, I said it.”

In Texas, the state’s Education Agency is reviewing around 180 complaints against teachers, with Governor Greg Abbott stating that over 100 teachers had “crossed the line” by “endorsing assassination or inciting violence.” A teacher in the Klein Independent School District was terminated for what the district called “senseless and completely unacceptable remarks.” In Florida’s Clay County, a teacher was suspended for posting, “This may not be the obituary we were all hoping to wake up to, but this is a close second for me.”

At East Tennessee State University, two faculty members have been placed on administrative leave pending further review, for Facebook comments that marked Kirk’s death by writing you reap what you sow,”and “This isn’t a tragedy. It’s a victory.”

The New York Post reported that Patrick Freivald, a physics teacher with the Naples Central School District in New York, also appeared to mock Kirk’s death on Facebook.

“The aspiring Goebbels was interrupted by a bullet to the neck which quickly cured him of HVLD*, and shortly thereafter he became a good Nazi**. Good riddance to bad garbage.”

His post also said, “Charlie Kirk, who said that gun violence is a price worth paying for his version of the 2nd Amendment, spent his last coherent moments baselessly blaming transgender people for gun violence and arguing for stripping them of exactly those rights.”

The Kirk comment on the 2^nd Amendment has been widely circulated by liberals but has been taken out of context.

This is what Kirk said in defending the 2^nd Amendment:

“The Second Amendment is not about hunting. I love hunting. The Second Amendment is not even about personal defense. That is important. The Second Amendment is there, God forbid, so that you can defend yourself against a tyrannical government….Now, we must also be real. We must be honest with the population. Having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty. Driving comes with a price—50,000, 50,000, 50,000 people die on the road every year. That’s a price. You get rid of driving, you’d have 50,000 less auto fatalities. But we have decided that the benefit of driving—speed, accessibility, mobility, having products, services—is worth the cost of 50,000 people dying on the road.”

“You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry, and you won’t have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It’s drivel. But I am—I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal,” he added.

As usual, the liberals twisted his words along with the help of the liberal media.

The First Amendment protects free speech-even speech we may disagree with. But with the shocking assassination of Kirk, it is time for all of us to rise above the rhetoric and work to prevent future tragedies.