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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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"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."

So first, this doesn't establish it was based off his speech to begin with, it's a hypothetical. And then it says "Ok but even in the hypothetical where his speech could have played a role, it wasn't a key factor regardless and thus there's little cause to address any 1st amendment claim here to begin with"

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?

No it's not the new standard for true threat, but it is a good showcase of why our currently existing standard is so high. People say edgy things all the time without doing violence.

You're still turning a hypothetical into a clear conclusion that it "didn't seem to based meaningfully off of his speech", which is pretty clearly untrue given that he wouldn't have gotten a visit but for his speech.

And maybe that's still a strict scrutiny-passed tots-reasonable thing for police to do. Or at least close enough that everyone involved gets qualified immunity, and the courts never get around to deciding whether it's 'clearly established' one way or the other. But then we have Ken "violence against not just the government doing it and the private people joining the violence but the soft-target think-tank, media, and academic aparatus that empowered it becomes morally and philosophically justified" White, who already has a history of past mental health episodes, past gun advocacy, and who has promoted the belief that he's being personally targeted by the current administration.

No it's not the new standard for true threat, but it is a good showcase of why our currently existing standard is so high. People say edgy things all the time without doing violence.

I'm asking whether it's your standard of evidence. Because I can find a lot of people who were involuntarily committed and then, after release, didn't do anything violent; that's a far more common case than serious judicial review.

My point is that people say edgy things all the time without doing violence, and find either the feds or cops at their door with a fancy piece of paper signed by a judge. Not all the time! But again, Ken White isn't some random preteen being edgy on a Fortnite voice chat; trying to reason from the median case is pretty misleading.

And it's not just that he didn't get that noncon overnight stay with the fancy extra-long jacket sleeves, but that no one seems to be acting like they were even worried about it being a risk.

You're still turning a hypothetical into a clear conclusion that it "didn't seem to based meaningfully off of his speech",

The hypothetical is "Even if the decision was based partly off his speech it would not have mattered", because of the *non hypothetical observation" that it was not dispositive anyway.

Which is pretty clearly untrue given that he wouldn't have gotten a visit but for his speech.

Is that the case? I assume he got a visit not because a police officer saw his speech and got angry, but because other citizens were reporting him as a threat and it is their job to follow-up on said reports.

Again, they might have made a bad decision. But given the decision was not dispositive off of the speech, it is like saying that a streamer killed in a swat raid is a first amendment violation because the swatter called in a fake hostage situation over speech disagreement. Should the police have an itchy trigger finger and shot in that scenario? No. But it wasn't because of the disagreement between streamer and swatter. Their bad decision was not in violation of the streamer's first amendment right.

In the same way, the cops here might have made a bad decision. But there is little to no good evidence that the bad decision was an intentional one based off the contents of his speech, as the courts had found and is why they dismissed the claims against Campbell.

We don't even really have to debate this! A bunch of very serious experts looked over the case already and said "nope, it's not a first amendment violation". Maybe they're wrong, but the bar is set ridiculously high now to prove otherwise.

I'm asking whether it's your standard of evidence. Because I can find a lot of people who were involuntarily committed and then, after release, didn't do anything violent; that's a far more common case than serious judicial review.

I'm sure there's a lot of BS involuntary commitments. I'm not so sure there's many that are first amendment violations.

My point is that people say edgy things all the time without doing violence, and find either the feds or cops at their door with a fancy piece of paper signed by a judge. Not all the time! But again, Ken White isn't some random preteen being edgy on a Fortnite voice chat; trying to reason from the median case is pretty misleading.

Decker did have the feds show up! https://x.com/captgouda24/status/1913249744551367030?lang=en which I think is fine within boundaries. Pure investigations into potentially vague meaning is understandable while something like this which is federal officials trying to chill speech and not just a pure investigation is not at all ok.

I don't know if Ken White did (unlikely it would be feds anyway given that his speech was not at a public official), but it would not be particularly strange if they didn't. People say stuff like that all the time without cops at the door.