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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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What other standard do you intend to use then?

Why are you acting the 10 years never happened? Why are you acting like you haven't been linked specific examples from which the standard is absolutely clear? Why are you doing so specifically after you explicitly defended firing people for edgy jokes?

I don't mind you defending a different position, but again, who do you think you are fooling?

There's been a minor news story recently after a teacher got well over a million bucks in settlement money, and there's a strong argument she shouldn't have gotten fired originally...

Government.

But what really gets me is the dog that doesn't bark. Nicholas Decker's "When Must We Kill Them" (answer: when he wanted the substack revenue) wasn't accompanied by an involuntary commitment and a warrant; PopeHat's complaining about a Bluesky ban rather than the solitary confinement and involuntary medication after he called for people to kill Musk.

Calls for government to do something.

Damore isn't independently wealthy; he got judges informing people the law required his speech be infringed.

Literally government.

William Kelly probably got his job back, and if he got anything else it was a rounding error, for 25 USD in Rittenhouse donations.

Government.

Notice something in common?

Why are you doing so specifically after you explicitly defended firing people for edgy jokes?

Private organizations are allowed to do that! Free speech is not the right to someone else's home or job offer! For example if someone tells you to leave their property cause you called their mom a whore, you get the fuck off their property. You have not been censored and your rights have not been violated, because you have no right to their property.

The first amendment is about government. If a private organization wants to trespass you for speech, they can. If they want to fire you for speech, they can. You do not have a right to seize and steal from others cause their response makes you feel sad about saying something.

What standard do you want to use that isn't demanding other private actors forfeit their freedoms?

Calls for government to do something.

No, noticing that the government did not do something that it happily did in other contexts.

Literally government.

Not only does California have a law requiring private businesses to recognize the free speech of their employees, and the NLRB require private businesses to recognize free speech rights about working conditions, the agency review held that federal anti-discrimination law instead required businesses be able to fire him.

No, noticing that the government did not do something that it happily did in other contexts.

As Greg Lukianoff, CEO of FIRE said about Larry Bushart

Larry Bushart spent 37 days in jail for posting a meme on Facebook.

I’ve been doing this work for 25 years, and I can honestly say this is the worst First Amendment case I’ve ever seen.

Now, you not only claim people are being put into solitary confinement and forcibly drugged (as you said both "solitary confinement and involuntary medication" and then also "happily did in other contexts") over legal speech in the US, but that this is apparently not that uncommon. And yet the CEO of FIRE one of the largest 1st amendment free speech organizations around, who has actively worked in the field for 25 years doesn't know about that at all.

Do you have any proof for your claim, or are you just making shit up? Because it sure looks like you are lying.

The funny part is that I agree with Lukianoff on the Bushart case. If the central examples of pro-Kirk overstep had involved jail or police presence, I'd understand and empathize with the response.

But it's not, and not just in the sense that Bushart is the most extreme abuse.

Involuntary commitment to political opposition has the easy, uncontroversial, and high-profile example of Adrian Schoolcraft, though it didn't last 37 days, so I'll give Lukianoff points for stamina there.

Involuntary commitment for pure political speech is one of those places where most of the examples you're going to reject as unverified because it wasn't examined by the courts, but for a good example that was and where the courts later found "the petition [was] . . . devoid of any factual allegations", Brandon Raub. To be fair to Virginia, he was pretty nuts! To be less fair, my comparison is to Ken White.

Involuntary medication... the TopHattingson example is noncentral enough that I'm only going to give it so we don't have someone interject, but yes, I'll admit I'm riding heavily on the 'other contexts' bit, there. Lower courts abusing involuntary medication to the point of violating the law because someone is just really annoying happen.

So if you want a mea culpa, yes, I don't have a good, clear, court-reviewed example of involuntary medication motivated solely by conservative-tinged speech.

EDIT: for solitary confinement, I'll just quote that right-wing nutjob Elizabeth Warren. Solitary confinement might have been appropriate for most J6ers that were confined pre-trial, but the blanket policy was clearly motivated by their politics.

Involuntary commitment for pure political speech is one of those places where most of the examples you're going to reject as unverified because it wasn't examined by the courts

Yes I would if it was just complaints by people claiming something without taking it to the court.

Brandon Raub.

Which leads to an interesting thing here, since looking it up Raub did try to litigate, and failed since the decision to detain Raub didn't seem to based meaningfully off of his speech, even if it was a bad decision.

The court next evaluated Mr. Raub's claim that Mr. Campbell violated his First Amendment rights by detaining Mr. Raub for his “unorthodox political statements” (Raub, p 885), namely, his beliefs concerning 9/11 conspiracies and impending revolution. The court determined that, even if Mr. Raub's statements were protected speech and a contributing factor to Mr. Campbell's determination that Mr. Raub must be detained, it was not dispositive. The court reasoned that in addition to considering these statements, Mr. Campbell based his recommendation for detainment on personal observations of Mr. Raub's demeanor, the observations of law enforcement, and information provided by the reporting third party. The court agreed with the district court that there was no First Amendment violation and Mr. Campbell was entitled to qualified immunity.

https://jaapl.org/custom-print/66099

Given the first and main example does not appear to be accurate, the overarching idea falls apart.

Lower courts abusing involuntary medication to the point of violating the law because someone is just really annoying happen.

To be clear here, that low level officials will abuse the legal process on rare occasions doesn't refute my overall claims, because I'm not claiming it's never happened that some angry police officer wrote a false write up or report or something. Of course it probably has. But those are extremely rare exceptions, so rare that even the (also rare) allegations about it tend to be not be true as we saw above with Raub. And even those are relegated pretty much entirely to small lower level official abuse in personal disputes.

Ken White and Nicholas Decker got the typical response that 99.9% or whatever of edgypushingthebar posting gets, nothing. Maybe a preliminary investigation (Decker mentioned having feds visit him) but nothing else.

Did you just respond to a post where I linked to an actual opinion by linking to a summary of that opinion, in direct-to-print format, which you yourself further misleadingly summarize (from "Even if Mr. Raub's statements were protected speech and a contributing factor to Mr. Campbell's determination that Mr. Raub must be detained, it was not dispositive." to your "didn't seem to based meaningfully off of his speech")? And all to counter an argument I didn't make, since I don't think any human reader would expect me to think Ken White or Nicholas Decker to be harmless or non-paranoid schizophrenic.

It's also not a 'first' example given that it's after Schoolcraft.

You're not doing a great job denying the "powered by a laptop-grade LLM" allegations.

you just respond to a post where I linked to an actual opinion by linking to a summary of that opinion, in direct-to-print format, which you yourself further misleadingly summarize (from "Even if Mr. Raub's statements were protected speech and a contributing factor to Mr. Campbell's determination that Mr. Raub must be detained, it was not dispositive" to your "didn't seem to based meaningfully off of his speech")

Yes because it's far more efficient to go find a writeup than the whole opinion to find out if the claim is true or not. It is also not misleading, as Campbell's determination was made off of several factors. It was a poorly made decision, but the content of his speech doesn't seem to have been a deciding key element as I highlighted above.

And all to counter an argument I didn't make, since I don't think any human reader would expect me to think Ken White or Nicholas Decker to be harmless or non-paranoid schizophrenic.

Given that to the best of my knowledge they haven't committed any violence despite the length of time that has gone by, it definitely suggests their statements did not indicate serious intent to harm ala a true threat. Edgy words are not an automatic indicator someone isn't harmless, thus why we have such a high standard to begin with.

It's also not a 'first' example given that it's after Schoolcraft.

Schoolcraft was revenge on him for "betraying" the blue line, not just because they didn't like his opinions. He's not some random guy saying the police suck or something, they saw him as a traitor. It is not an example of speech being targeted, or at least a very atypical one.

Your first and main example of targeted speech was wrong.

but the content of his speech doesn't seem to have been a deciding key element as I highlighted above.

"Even if Mr. Raub's statements were protected speech and a contributing factor to Mr. Campbell's determination that Mr. Raub must be detained, it was not dispositive."

[Emphasis added.]

"didn't seem to based meaningfully off of his speech"

Hm.

Given that to the best of my knowledge they haven't committed any violence despite the length of time that has gone by, it definitely suggests their statements did not indicate serious intent to harm ala a true threat.

Oh, is that the new standard? Or is it just the defense you're going to jump to before insisting that only the clearest and most unilateral court ruling counts for anyone else?