Outside the Beltway

On Ezra Klein, MLK, And Polite Politics

On politics, guns, and people killing people

Matt Bernius · Saturday, September 13, 2025 · 13 comments

[Update – Ezra Klein has addressed some of the general critiques of his essay during the most recent episode of his podcast. I plan on reflecting on those comments soon.]

I woke up this morning thinking about Ezra Klein. This is not something that generally happens to me. Today was different. That Charlie Kirk’s editorial from a few days ago, “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way,” [gift link] was still stuck in my craw.

I checked the New York Times this morning to see if he might have published anything else about the topic. He had not. I visited his Twitter page to see if he tweeted anything; nothing since September 10th.

I’m not surprised, just disappointed.

In my reflection post, I shared what sparked this deep frustration about Klein’s editorial:

I am processing some of the centrists’ writing about Kirk’s legacy. Erza Klein, as usual, seems to be the perfect crystallization:

You can dislike much of what Kirk believed and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion. When the left thought its hold on the hearts and minds of college students was nearly absolute, Kirk showed up again and again to break it. Slowly, then all at once, he did. College-age voters shifted sharply right in the 2024 election.

That was not all Kirk’s doing, but he was central in laying the groundwork for it. I did not know Kirk and I am not the right person to eulogize him. But I envied what he built. A taste for disagreement is a virtue in a democracy. [gift linked source]

I struggle with this vision of “practicing politics.” To me, this reads as a neutral, scientific take on what “practicing politics” means. It avoids grappling with the messy details (perhaps out of desire not to appear biased). We’re all already biased.

I reread Klein’s essay this morning. I’m done processing and struggling (I probably was then, too, but I was trying to be even-handed). My initial reaction was right:

Fuck that article.

And fuck the polite politics impulse behind it.

The core of Klein’s premise in the article is:

You can dislike much of what Kirk believed and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way.

Of course, Klein, the thoughtful centrist-leaning liberal, doesn’t support Kirk’s ideas. He waits to the very end of the article to tut-tut them:

Kirk and I were on different sides of most political arguments.

Thank fucking god for making that clear, Ezra!

Here’s the complete paragraph:

Kirk and I were on different sides of most political arguments. We were on the same side on the continued possibility of American politics. It is supposed to be an argument, not a war; it is supposed to be won with words, not ended with bullets. I wanted Kirk to be safe for his sake, but I also wanted him to be safe for mine and for the sake of our larger shared project.

That Klein sees he and Kirk sharing the same “larger project” is why I am so angry with this article and the naive representation of politics it suggests. After all, what are the marks of doing politics “the right way” according to Klein:

“[1] showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. […] [2] Persuasion […] [3] A taste for disagreement. [4] It is supposed to be an argument, not a war”

This view prioritizes preserving a polite system over seriously considering how said system is used and the potential outcomes.

To expand this point, I need to turn to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Were he alive and writing at the time, I could easily see Klien writing something similar to mark MLK’s assassination. King was also an activist who engaged the political system. One could argue he did so more effectively than Kirk, though King had a few more years (he was murdered at age 39).

I also wonder if that same imagined Klein, four years later in 1972, would have written something similar when George Wallace was almost killed in an assassination attempt. After all, Wallace was doing politics the right way, too. He was the duly and democratically¹ elected Governor of Alabama, who ran on and affirmed the day he was sworn into office:

In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this Earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. [Wallace, Inauguration Speech, 1963]

I’m sure that fictional Klein would have objected to Wallace using a States’ Rights argument to deny Black students access to schools throughout the year of 1963. He might also have seen Wallace’s relenting as the Governor coming around to “doing politics the right way.” When he wrote about the assassination attempt, this fictional Klein might have even noted that the Wallace of 1972 had a change of heart and no longer supported segregation (though Wallace was still running on positions like “no forced busing”).

The point I’m getting to, if it isn’t clear enough, is that applying the thinking of this 2025 article, George Wallace and “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” fit Klein’s model of “doing politics in the right way.”

That should be enough by itself to give us pause.

Now, let’s get to a thornier hypothetical with my imagined Klein writing in the 1960s and 1970s. Imagine as well that in that world, instead of being assassinated in Memphis in 1968, MLK was killed by police in 1963 during one of the early Birmingham protests or in 1975 during the first march to Selma for “refusing to disperse” or “resisting arrest.”

Would that Klein, under those circumstances, write an editorial praising King for “doing politics the right way”?

I’m asking you, the reader, to take a moment to really and seriously reflect on that question. For the moment, set aside thoughts that might have immediately popped into your heads, like: “Matt is being unfair to Klein” or “Matt is building a strawman.” Go back and read that editorial (again, the link is free) and think about that.

My take is this: If, through some magic, the Klein of 2025 were transported back to 1963, he definitely might. However, suppose the imagined Klein was born in 1924 versus 1984. Even if he held the same general political and social views, I think anyone honest with themselves, based on that essay, knows that Klein would never say the King of 1963 was “doing politics the right way.”

To be clear, I believe that Klein would generally support the civil rights movement. However, I don’t think he would support King’s methodology. The problem with Klein’s editorial is that it mistakes “polite politics” for “good politics.”

As a culture, we smooth over the rough edges of people we elevate to a certain status after they die. Martin Luther King Jr² is one of those folks. In popular media and discussions, he is imagined as a mix of a “happy warrior” and Uncle Remus (both concepts created by conservative³ White men, FWIW). Both are dripping with polite and, more importantly, respectability politics⁴.

As I have engaged with more and more of MLK’s work, one thing that I have come to detect more and more is the underlying righteous anger. It’s almost always there, under the surface. MLK knew it had to be kept there. After all, it quite literally was a matter of survival.

MLK also knew the Ezra Kleins of his day really well. He had talked with them and tried to persuade them not just to “his side” but to his approach. Getting them to his side was easy. And for the most part, King could NOT get them to embrace his method of “direct, nonviolent confrontation.” We also know what he thought of the Kleins of his time because he explicitly addressed them in 1963⁵:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God’s will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity. […]

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. [Letter from Birmingham Jail]

When I read that broader quote (or better yet the whole letter) I see a direct rebuttal of the premise of Klein’s article. In fact, King addresses the issue of “doing politics the right way” earlier on in the letter:

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: “Why didn’t you give the new city administration time to act?” The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals. [Letter from Birmingham Jail]

Klein celebrates Charlie Kirk for being a gentle and polite person.

King reminds us that a gentle segregationist is still a segregationist.

Polite politics still oppress and kill people.

Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.

Politics don’t kill people. People kill people.

I wrote that in my reflections on Kirk’s assassination. In keeping with my writing goal at the time, I didn’t unpack it then. I need to do it now.

I am not a “gun person.” I respect them, have fired them, and know a lot of gun people. I’ve taken gun safety courses. If you haven’t, there are typically three critical things⁶ you are told at the start of a class for beginners. The first two are practical:

1. Treat every gun as if it were loaded.
2. When you are handling a gun, never put your finger on the trigger until you have aimed and are ready to shoot.

The third one is philosophical and practical: (3) Never point the gun at anything you are not willing to destroy.

A gun, sitting by itself, on a table, like any tool, is a neutral object. However, it is also, simultaneously, a tool whose purpose is, generally speaking⁷, to destroy something (even if that something is just a target).⁸

Guns have that unescapable duality. That’s the root of the principle of Chekhov’s gun.

Politics, always already has that duality as well.

The problem with Klein’s view is that it flattens politics to a tool. Worse yet, instead of viewing politics as a neutral tool that can be used for good or ill, he believes that practicing politics “politely” is always a “good thing.”

Klein disapproves of the following statements, but he thinks that, because they are said politely, they are suitable for politics:

Black people
“Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.”

Black pilots
“If I see a Black pilot, I’m gonna be like, ’Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”

Black women
“They’re coming out, and they’re saying, ‘I’m only here because of affirmative action.’ Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”

Civil rights
“We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s.”

Death penalty
“[Death penalties] should be public, should be quick, should be televised… I think at a certain age, it’s an initiation… At what age should you start to see public executions?”

Democrats
“The Democrat Party supports everything that God hates.”

Empathy
“I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made up new age term that does a lot of damage.”

Feminism
“Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.”

Gay people
“You might want to crack open that Bible of yours. In a lesser referenced part of the same part of scripture, is in Leviticus 18 is that, ‘thou shalt lay with another man shall be stoned to death.’ Just sayin’! So Miss Rachel, you quote Leviticus 19… the chapter before affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”

George Floyd
“This guy was a scumbag.”

Great Replacement Theory
“It’s not a Great Replacement Theory, it’s a Great Replacement Reality. Just this year, 3.6 million foreigners will invade America. 10-15 million will enter by the end of Joe Biden’s term. Each will probably have 3-5 kids on average while native born Americans have 1.5 per couple. You are being replaced, by design.” Guns “It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.”

Jews
“Jewish donors have been the number one funding mechanism of radical open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions and nonprofits. This is a beast created by secular Jews and now it’s coming for Jews, and they’re like, ‘What on Earth happened?’ And it’s not just the colleges. It’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it.”

Martin Luther King Jr.
“MLK was awful. He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.”

Muslims
“They aren’t even hiding their intentions. Muslims plan to conquer Europe by demographic replacement. Will Europe wake up in time?”

Palestine
“I don’t think the place exists.”

Transgender people
“You’re an abomination to God.”

[Charlie Kirk Quotes Source via Xitter]

Despite what Klein suggests in this article, politics, even “done right,” are never as neutral or, worse, positive.

Some last thoughts on Klein’s article

As a progressive institutionalist, I appreciate where Klein is coming from. I believe dialogue without the fear of violence is an essential part of a stable political structure. I also think he wasn’t in this moment, ready to account for all of his moves.

There are two final things I want to call out about the article.

First is that Klien does a subtle bit of strawmaning and bothsiderism that undercuts everything:

On social media, I’ve seen mostly decent reactions to Kirk’s murder. There is grief and shock from both the left and the right. But I’ve seen two forms of reaction that are misguided, however comprehensible the rage or horror that provoked them. One is a move on the left to wrap Kirk’s death around his views — after all, he defended the Second Amendment, even admitting it meant accepting innocent deaths. Another is on the right, to turn his murder into a justification for an all-out war, a Reichstag fire for our time.

I appreciate that he calls out the “mostly decent reactions.” But then Klein moves into strategic nutpicking and bothsiderism. I was on social media, and without a doubt, I saw both types of posts. However, I don’t think they are the same thing or impulse.

The idea from that section of the left celebrating this as karmic justice is repugnant (for me, YMMV). It’s also different than calling for the revenge murder and suppression of leftists as a category of people. FWIW, other leftists were calling this “a good start,” which feels more like a 1:1.

But let’s accept for a moment that they were the same thing. He’s still taking a small portion of comments (many of which were probably made by foreign bots and agent provocateurs) and essentially saying that the only correct solution is for more people to be like Charlie Kirk and politely espouse abhorrent views.⁹ I appreciate that this is a short editorial, but for someone so interested in “third ways” this seems really reductive to me.

This gets me to my final point about Klein and his essay. Just like politics and political practices, editorials are never neutral. No one forced Klein to write this piece. Nor did anyone force Klein to wrap Kirk’s approach (never how he used that approach) in praise. Martyrs are created by the people who write about them after their deaths. Charlie Kirk should not have been assassinated. Nor should people like Klein turn him into a martyr in the name of “polite politics.”

Opposing political assassination or karmic justice does not require us to celebrate someone just because we liked their methods. Nor should the fact that we like their methods mean we ignore the political goals those methods were being used in the service of.

Klein is undoubtedly smart and thoughtful enough to recognize this. I hope that he’s humble and self-reflective enough to really think his way through it. Only time will tell.

tl;dr

Yes, these usually go at the front, but this xeet (from yesterday) does too good a job of summarizing my point… and this is a reward to you, the reader, for making it to the end:

Note: Ezra Klein most definitely supports the first sentence. Not so much the second one. Regardless, this still gets to the heart of the issue with his essay.

Also read Cathy’s work. It’s really, really, really good.

1. I am using scare quotes because Wallace was “democratically” elected before the passage of Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. On that note, Charlie Kirk “believed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a destructive force in American politics, calling its passage a “mistake” that he said has been turned into “an anti-white weapon.”–from the NYT posthumous summary of Charlie Kirk’s political views. ↩︎
2. Well, except for Charlie Kirk, of course: “He also blamed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the law and was highly critical of the slain civil rights leader, calling him an “awful” person. Mr. Kirk said he desired a colorblind society but blamed the veneration of Dr. King for what he saw as America’s fixation on race.”–from the NYT posthumous summary of Charlie Kirk’s political views. ↩︎
3. In some bit of fairness, Joel Chandler Harris was progressive enough to think humanizing slaves was a good thing. He still seemed to support slavery as a practice after the Civil War. I suspect that Charlie Kirk, the political commentator, would probably have approved of this statement. Of course, he would say, owning slaves was bad, but if you have to do it, at least have the Christian goodwill to humanize what once was your property. ↩︎
4. Respectability politics is the idea that members of a marginalized group must adhere to the cultural norms and mannerisms of the dominant group to receive fair treatment and advance their cause
   . The tactic suggests that if marginalized individuals behave in a “respectable” way, prejudice and systemic injustices will lessen. [Wikipedia] ↩︎
5. I know that many liberals and progressives (including myself) tend to break out that quote–or rather the first twoish sentences a lot. I have come to realize that we do it far too often, often reducing it to a pithy soundbite. In that way, we’re similar to all the conservatives who once a year trot out “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” That famous line was spoken months later in 1963 as well. ↩︎
6. This footnote is for Matt and other commenters who are FAR more knowledgeable about guns and gun safety than I am. Please just go with this. I know I am leaving out details and nuance. For this argument, they don’t matter. Trust me. ↩︎
7. Also narrowcasted to Matt and those commenters. I know the more you know about guns, the easier it is to pick apart this statement. And, as someone who has reached and gone beyond instructor level in a few martial arts, I believe this quote from Bruce Lee applies to gun knowledge as well: “Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.” ↩︎
8. FWIW Charlie Kirk also believed this about guns: “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,” —from the NYT posthumous summary of Charlie Kirk’s political views. ↩︎
9. On that note, I have seen more than a few people claiming to be conservatives and saying Kirk’s views are actually the “moderate” conservative positions. Perhaps even some elected officials. If we except that as truth, then there are much bigger problems with need to address. ↩︎