Pam Bondi Goes Woke Right, Spits on Charlie Kirk's Grave
There is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment.
In 1977, federal courts famously upheld the right of American Nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois, a town full of Holocaust survivors.
In 2011, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the same principle in Snyder v. Phelps, ruling 8–1 in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church, whose members carried signs reading “God Hates Fags” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” outside a Marine’s funeral. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the Constitution protects even their cruelty because “speech on public issues occupies the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values.”
In 2017, the Court ruled unanimously in Matal v. Tam, siding with an Asian-American rock band called “The Slants” after the government tried to deny them a trademark on the grounds that the name was offensive. Justice Samuel Alito’s words could not have been clearer:
[The idea that the government may restrict] speech expressing ideas that offend … strikes at the heart of the First Amendment. The proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express “the thought that we hate.”
—Justice Samuel Alito, Matal v. Tam (2017)
That is the law of the land. Hate speech is protected speech.
Always has been.
Always will be.
And that makes what Attorney General Pam Bondi said last night all the more disgusting, because she knows better. On a podcast, she declared that “hate speech” was to blame for Charlie Kirk’s death, then promised to prosecute it.
Bondi: “There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place — especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie — in our society. … We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything.”
But Charlie Kirk himself could not have been clearer. Since at least 2017, he was unflinching: “MORE SPEECH is the answer to hate speech. Don’t arrest the people spewing [hate speech], show up in numbers and speak truth.”
In 2024, he reiterated: “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech, gross speech, evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America Free.”
Pam Bondi’s position is not only unconstitutional; it is a betrayal of Kirk’s legacy. He spent his career defending free expression as the cornerstone of American conservatism. She is now standing on his grave to argue the opposite.
And worse — she is doing it in the language of the Left. “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech” could have been lifted word-for-word from a DEI training manual or a Berkeley student handbook. This is not originalism, it’s not conservatism, it’s the Woke Right, parroting the authoritarian instincts of the progressive Left while pretending to defend conservatives.
That’s the essence of the Woke Right: it borrows the Left’s authoritarian logic, swaps out the favored victim group, and then sells censorship back to the base as a kind of tough-on-crime conservatism. Instead of gender pronouns or “safe spaces,” it’s “protecting conservatives from harassment.” Instead of “equity,” it’s “anti-semitism.” But the substance is the same: the state decides which words you’re allowed to say.
Bondi wants to censor in Kirk’s name. The Left wants to dance on his grave. At the same time, here on Substack, the Left is busy proving why Kirk’s principles mattered in the first place: writers are churning out 4,000-word thinkpieces with titles like Charlie Kirk Probably Deserved to Die.
To say that a man “deserved to die” is a cruelty darker and more dangerous than anything Charlie Kirk ever said. And yet, vile as that essay is, it should remain online, because Charlie Kirk of all people would have defended its right to exist. If he were here, he would remind us that everyone can be redeemed, especially the author of that piece,
, and that our duty is to pray for her soul and forgive her. But Pam Bondi? She should be fired.
Thank you for writing this accurate article.
Pam Bondi seems not to know the first thing about constitutional law, particularly the First Amendment.
Clearly she needs a refresher course. The Florida Bar should demand it.
There is, however, incitement to murder which is a crime. Calls for Trump, Musk, Kennedy and even Nigel Farage to be killed is definitely worth prosecuting.