Twitter user MJG59 had this to say about recent events: "Score so far: Punching nazis: nazis afraid to talk. Protesting Milo: Milo not talking. I'm just really not clear on how this isn't working?"

I'm breaking my long tradition of posting nothing on Facebook for this because it's fucking important. And at this point I really don't care what people think about what I've got to say.

This isn't how you should be advancing your positions. You have two options for how to deal with people who're saying things you don't like. You have words, and you have bricks.

You have peaceful dialogue and exchange of ideas, and you have trashing UC Berkeley because Milo Yiannopoulis gets you in a mood.

Bricks are wrong. Trashing a university campus is wrong. These fucks destroyed a university campus, somewhere meant for the free and open exchange of ideas (and yes, even ideas that you don't like) because they hate that they're now on the losing side of the culture war.

You have words, and you have bricks. And one kind of displaces the other. Sooner or later (and at this point I think it's more 'sooner' than 'later'), the time for words will pass and all we'll be left with are bricks.

Physical violence and intimidation are becoming accepted tools for those on the left to shut down speech they don't like so they don't have to hear it, and there's not going to be any walking back from this once we reach some critical point, and I think that point is when we actually start racking up a body count.

Once we reach criticality, the political divide in this nation will be complete and irreversible and there will be no talking across the aisle, at least out on the street. There will be no reconciliation for those on the left, and there won't be too much left OF the left.

You see them assaulting reporters, assaulting citizens in the street who were coming to hear Milo. Mace, metal poles, shovels, dragging people out of their cars and beating them. This is NOT how you should fight whatever ideology you happen to hate on this particular day.

Milo Yiannopoulis may not be talking, but more people are listening now than ever before. Richard Spencer may not be talking, but more people are listening now than ever before.

These people trashed a university building, racked up eight figures of property damage, and then descended on Berkeley proper like a fucking swarm of locusts, smashing up ATMs and storefronts for no clearly identifiable reason other than they were angry that people wanted to disseminate, and listen to, a point of view that contradicted their own.

This isn't working because this is not how civilization deals with competing ideas. This isn't working because this is driving thinking people away from whatever cause they had.

This is why the left has been losing ground recently. Because when they get angry, they reach for the brick instead of the word. Instead of dealing with competing ideas with words and debates and showing the audience why the competing idea is wrong, they shut down the idea, and the person delivering it, and the people coming to listen to it with bricks, and bats, and poles, and hammers.

The left is attempting to shut down the free exchange of ideas and information coming from sides they dislike. I shouldn't have to say why that should be terrifying.

There will be a critical point beyond which there is no recovery. I don't pretend to know what that point is, but make no mistake: it is coming, and it will be the death knell of the left at the least and possibly more.

I quote Stefan Molyneux:

"If we give up the argument, we give up civilization. If we lose the words, we get the extra "s" and the words turn into swords. That's how it goes. We speak, or we beat. We reason with each other, or we dash rocks against buildings and people. We either stay human or devolve to simian savagery. ... I know that the argument is civilization; the argument is life. The argument is civility; the argument is humanity. The argument is peace. We lose the argument, we lose the debate, we lose the ideas, we lose the free speech...we lose everything. EVERYTHING vanishes. Free speech underpins everything else that we hold dear; we lose that, there is NOTHING left to defend. ... People have been telling me this for a long time...and maybe you're right. ... Maybe the time for arguments has passed. Maybe this battle has moved beyond words. ... Tonight, perhaps it has been made clear there are no more arguments to be made."

When the fire burns itself out and the ashes clear away, I don't know what might be left, but it won't be something pretty.

Stop this. Before it's too late.