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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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You say this sarcastically, but there are contexts where yes, the full moral responsibility of murder attaches for words. Ordering a minion (or, I suppose, a machine that takes text/voice input) to kill is generally considered murder or something that amounts to it (absent the usual affirmative defences).

And there's a reason why seriously ordering a hit would in fact be illegal in the US, whereas name calling is not. I'm one of the few people left who still taught my kids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticks_and_Stones everyone else thinks mean words are super dangerous murder weapons. Of course they're constantly hypocritical over it too, I've never seen a person say "whoops, I accidently committed stochastic terrorism without intending to by speaking negatively about someone to my large audience". Weird how it's only ever applied to others the speaker doesn't like. Although hypocrisy is par for the course