🔨 The Tools We Pass Down

By Dave Otto

This week, Charlie Kirk was assassinated in what appears to be a politically motivated act of violence. In the aftermath, MSNBC contributor Matthew Dowd made the blunt observation that “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.” For that, he was fired.

Dowd’s comment was not an endorsement of the killing—it was a diagnosis. And, whether we’re ready to hear it or not, it was essentially correct.

In his book Cultural Software, legal theorist J.M. Balkin offers a Talmudic story worth remembering: the last thing God created was a pair of tongs. Why? Because tongs can only be made with tongs—so someone had to make the first set. The parable suggests that every tool we use to shape the world is itself shaped by earlier tools. Meaning, intention, narrative, identity—all of it gets passed down, crafted with inherited instruments.

But Balkin goes further with the tong analogy: once a tool exists, its creator no longer controls how it will be used. Even God couldn't stop the blacksmith from forging weapons of destruction.

In that light, ideological memes, political rhetoric, and cultural incantations aren’t fixed ideas floating in the ether—they’re tools. Tools for sorting the world. Tools for naming enemies. Tools that are passed around, repurposed, and eventually acted upon.

And some tools—especially those forged in contempt, dehumanization, and apocalyptic fervor—are dangerously sharp. They don’t just hang on the wall. They get picked up. They get wielded. Sometimes by people you didn’t expect. Sometimes in ways you didn’t intend.

The alleged shooter in Kirk’s case, as more facts emerge, appears not to have been a leftist provocateur, he wasn't the blue-haired, they/them, vegan, liberal arts major of Nancy Mace's nightmares, but a member of the same ideological milieu Kirk himself helped forge. A young man steeped in the dark subcultures of online extremism, where irony and hate blend into violent fantasies. Where memes become manifestos. Where revolutionary play-acting turns real.

This is the moment when the tool-maker loses control.

And here’s the hard truth in a deliberative democracy: you can condemn an act of political violence while still holding its cultural architects accountable.  You can reject violence without ignoring the conditions that made it thinkable. The existence of tongs does not absolve the maker. That’s civic responsibility. MSNBC failed miserably in that regard (full disclosure, I don't watch MSNBC, never have).

If we pretend that violent rhetoric has no relationship to violent outcomes, we’re not protecting free speech—we’re insulating ourselves from consequence. We’re denying the moral feedback loop. And we’re ensuring that these tools will get sharper, faster, and more unstable in the hands of the next person who picks them up.

We are not just the users of cultural tools. We are the passers-on. And whether we like it or not, we will be judged by the sharp tools we allow to proliferate.