I almost ignored this post because I can't stand this particular war, where examples are cherry picked to prove either answer.

I'm very happy to see the nuanced take in this article, slowly deconstructing the implicit assumptions proposed by the person asking this question, to arrive at the same conclusion that I long have. I hope this post reaches the right people.

A particular language doesn't have a "speed", a particular implementation may have, and the language may have properties that make it difficult to make a fast implementation (of those specific properties/features) given the constraints of our current computer architectures. Even then, there's usually too many variables to make a generalized statement, and the question often presumes that performance is measured as total cpu time.

I will admit the title was a bit of a gamble, but thank you for taking the time to read it and I'm glad that you enjoyed it in the end.