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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

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Devils Advocate:

Can't we apply this to other killings? Charlie Kirk was engaging in calls to coordinate state violence against his out group (ie running on political issues that would negatively effect the alphabet folks). He was destroying the fabric of our society for profit and fame. He technically is allowed to do that by the first amendment, but it is rules-lawyering. We as a nation should "just play dumb" when his outgroup coordinates violence directly against him in response, because influencers profiting on division and tribal polarization of our society is bad. Let the adult children face the consequences of their rhetoric.

One was gunned down in completely cold blood whilst the other was deliberately trying to make an already hectic and confusing environment yet more stressful essentially entirely for the purpose of generating videos of bad activities by making them more likely.

"One was killed advocating and coordinating political action to remove the individual liberty and bodily autonomy of minorities while the other was executed in cold blood trying save a woman who was pepper sprayed and protect his neighbors from a violent authoritarian regime"

The inability to exercise some cognitive empathy or minimally some epistemic humility is a sign of being a tribal partisan.

There is no possible argument for the Charlie Kirk killing being in anything but cold blood with an abundance of forethought. Even if you are maximally pushing the 'he was doing harm through espousing his ideology', you have to acknowledge that it was a planned assassination from somebody who sat down and rationally thought through the plan. I don't think the Pretti killing was necessarily good or justified, but it was a spur of the moment decision from somebody in an inherently stressful and chaotic situation.

I'm not disputing the details of a premeditated assassination vs a spur of the moment decision.

I'm arguing the meta level lens of the metaphor around turning a blind eye to immature child-like behavior in adults when it has deadly consequences and how it applies to both sides evenly in ways that gore both sides sacred cows/martyrs.

So Charlie Kirk is not entitled to his beliefs due to them potentially being against the absolute maximum freedoms for other people, or is simply not allowed to advocate for his beliefs in public if it may result in any modification of society that resembles that?

He can advocate for what ever he wants. If his beliefs are around restricting the negative rights of others then he can also face the consequences of what happens when people don't want their rights restricted.

The government should not be in the business of restricting speech, but people are allowed to respond to coordination of violence with violence. To do otherwise is just letting the fantasy of rabbinically-inclined and wordcells to replace reality

Yes but any elaboration at all of your concept means that essentially any speech that could be considered objectionable and/or catalyzing a group could be responded to via assassination.

Would you be equally comfortable with pro-choice advocates being assassinated due to directly advocating for something that could be equivocated to murder?

I'll admit its still cooking as a concept. I used to be much more of a free speech maximalist. I need to work on defining the boundaries a bit better. But to me this is a concept that I think is more accepted that people give credit for.

If you are at a bar and start mouthing off towards someone, they might enforce reality on you, through a punch to the face. I think people have gotten too used to the idea of words as a sacred inviolable medium and naturally that allows the verbally intelligent to exploit that to get away with things. Sometime you need to punch that person so they understand there is consequences to their rhetoric. Seems pretty basic. People have seem to have forgotten that and it has escalated to a point it is no longer just a punch.