AdTech, Tech Tech, Forward Party, Electoral Reforms (Ranked Choice Voting, Open Primaries) I ❤️ civil discourse, ≠ endorsements.
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Joined March 2009
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Where is the line for the educators we invite into our living rooms?
Ms. Rachel built an empire on parental trust. But you don’t get to monetize the sanctuary of toddler media by day while using that platform to push one-sided geopolitical activism and blood libels and refuse to condemn Hamas by night.
When preschool educators cross into activist campaigns, corporate partners have a responsibility to act.
We are calling on @Netflix @SpinMaster @Target @Walmart @amazon to enforce basic moral guardrails and reconsider their commercial partnerships.
(Petition link in the reply below 👇)
Calling the war in Gaza a "genocide" isn't a human rights critique. It is an ancient, eliminationist blood libel retrofitted in modern legal jargon.
We brought white papers to an unprincipled, demonizing assault. That defensive posture created a permission structure—allowing an existential slander to harden into elite dogma.
Polite debate failed. It’s time to stop explaining and enforce a quarantine.
Shunning genocide accusers must be our last stand.
Full essay link in the replies. 👇
#GenocideBloodLibel #NoDebateOnBloodLibels #HoldingTheLine
Add your name to the petition calling on Ms. Rachel's corporate partners to draw the line against this demonizing blood libel, and then share with your friends: change.org/cut-ties-ms-rache…
Add your name to the petition calling on Ms. Rachel's corporate partners to draw the line, and then share with your friends: change.org/cut-ties-ms-rache…
Read the full essay at @TheWhiteRoseMag :
"The Banality of Blood Libel: Why Shunning Genocide Accusers Must Be Our Last Stand" whiterosemagazine.com/the-ba…
The strategy:
An educational off-ramp for naive peers swept up in social contagion.
Zero grace and total professional quarantine for cultural elites laundering the lie.
Pluralism cannot survive if every political and cultural flashpoint gets filtered through our partisan spin machine—making it nearly impossible to introduce the nuanced, principled terms needed to fairly assess and resolve these issues.
The only way we’re going to get through this mess is if we can put aside our tribal loyalties and commit to non-partisan, self-limiting principles.
I know it feels daunting, but it isn’t impossible. The vast majority of Americans do not think or act like hyper-partisans. They sense what’s fair and what’s BS, and most of them are smart or busy enough to steer clear of the circus.
And more importantly, we don’t have a choice. If we keep letting partisans divide our country on every matter, they won’t just tear each other apart. We will all be their collateral damage.
My latest essay for @TheWhiteRoseMag, "Only Principles, Not Tribalism, Can Save Us," makes this case. Link below.
Yes, the Macklemore fiasco brought more attention to him and his views. But what would it have meant if he was not removed? He and countless others would've seen it as a permission structure to bring one-sided, context-free, double-standard, political advocacy into any and all social spaces.
Society has to draw lines. Sometimes drawing those lines has short-term negative consequences. But let's not ignore the counterfactual of what would probably happen otherwise.
Trying to silence controversial speech can have the opposite effect.
@RobbySoave calls Macklemore’s removal from Ed Sheeran’s tour a prime example of the Streisand effect: Trying to suppress a message can end up drawing even more attention to it.
Illiberalism hurts democracies over the long term and must be resisted at every turn. But immorality—namely tribal, eliminationist hate—can destroy a democracy overnight if it is not promptly contained and shunned out of the mainstream.
Essay in @TheWhiteRoseMag. Link below.
Yes! We must restore a 'moral guilt by association', just like we'd judge anybody who was friends with David Duke. That is how we uphold our universal moral TABOOS against eliminationist hate, ostracizing that hate and all who espouse and launder it out of polite society, so it doesn't normalize and tear apart our social fabric. @jkirchick @nickgillespie
'Piker and Carlson are not the equivalent of your crazy uncle. And El-Sayed and Vance are not regular citizens; they’re political figures whose judgment and choices affect other Americans’ lives. One’s choice of friends is in fact an excellent sign of character, and in this respect, both Vance and El-Sayed have demonstrated a conspicuous lack of it.' @jkirchick theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0…
Erez 🇺🇸 #MakeTaboosTabooAgain 'Holding the Line' retweeted
I back Robert Kraft banning Macklemore from performing at Gillette 1000% and thank him for having a spine when many others in his shoes don’t.
An open society requires two non-negotiable standards:
1. Absolute freedom to investigate any volatile topic.
2. An unyielding refusal to accept and normalize abhorrent moral viewpoints.
My latest essay, "Race, IQ, and a Tale of Two Taboos," explores why public discourse keeps collapsing this distinction—from the @coldxman/@nathancofnas debate to James Damore's Google memo, and why handling intellectual fire requires a duty of care.
If you have no self-limiting principles around a "free speech culture", then you're essentially saying that this situation would be no different if you replaced Macklemore with David Duke or Hasan Piker or Nick Fuentes.
People didn't buy tickets to Macklemore. The venues didn't agree to host him, and certainly not hosting his show to people who didn't buy a ticket to see him, many of whom now wanted their money back.
Is it "a win for a culture of free speech"? No. But that's not the only dynamic we're trying to maximize here. This is probably the correct balanced approach that doesn't let hateful speech normalize unchecked in our culture.
For the same reason we can't be mad at UWash for cancelling Piker's talk which would've basically turned into a hate rally.
Not every social consequence for legal speech is "cancel culture."
When I first saw the situation involving Macklemore being dropped from Ed Sheeran’s concerts, I thought: Well, if the headliner doesn’t want an opening act because the opening act is too political, that’s the headliner’s right.
But if it is the case that Sheeran didn't want him removed at all, and that decision instead resulted from outside pressure due to Macklemore's outspoken political advocacy, I don't think that's something that should really be celebrated. I think we were a lot healthier when people were more comfortable saying, “I hate his opinions, but he's entitled to them, and I'm not buying a ticket to his show.”
Of course, people have every right in the world to protest speakers or performers they dislike — and I would vigorously defend that right. But when the goal of that pressure is to prevent someone from speaking or performing because of their political views, and the campaign succeeds, you can't really say that's a win for a culture of free speech.
This week marks two pivotal anniversaries. Rather than writing about either one, I chose to look at the broader failure they expose: history can teach us lessons, but education alone is powerless if we lack the civic muscle to enforce them.
Teaching the past isn't enough to stop hate. Civil society must enforce moral taboos.
The essay, inspired by some recent lamentations by @nfergus & @JohnClarkLevin, is linked below.
If we started thinking of Carlson, and Piker, like they're modern day David Dukes, we'd clearly see the playbook we must follow. They and anybody who sanitizes their hateful bigotry must be ostracized out of polite society and our mainstream politics.
xitter.cf/i/status/2044758250009…
Condemning political violence is easy. It’s a platitude that costs leaders nothing.
The real test is what we do about its cheerleaders—especially within our own tribes.
When we tolerate figures who build permission structures with dehumanizing and eliminationist rhetoric, we guarantee that extremists will push the line further. 🧵👇
If we want to prevent political violence from cascading into an uncontainable cycle, we have to move past empty condemnations and make eliminationist rhetoric socially taboo again.
My new essay for @TheWhiteRoseMag: whiterosemagazine.com/condem…
I forgot to tag here and give a nod to @NoahCRothman whose excellent and eye-opening book Blood and Progress is referenced in and largely inspired this essay.
Full essay published in @TheWhiteRoseMag: whiterosemagazine.com/condem…