Yes, Fire the People Calling for Conservatives to Die

That’s not “cancel culture” at all.

Conservatives have long been upset over cancel culture and with good reason. Over the last few years, lots of people have been fired solely for having mainstream conservative opinions or for supporting run-of-the-mill conservative causes. There are an awful lot of examples of this that we could use, but here are some from a thread on X by Ian Miles Cheong that gets the idea across: 

In other words, this is cancel culture. It’s getting people – particularly ordinary people – fired for mainstream political opinions. Conservatives have repeatedly, consistently, and enthusiastically condemned the practice. 

So, does that make conservatives hypocrites for wanting ordinary liberals fired for endorsing Trump’s assassination attempt? In particular, Libs of TikTok has made a number of these people famous and some of them are out of jobs over it: 

Is this good? Well, not according to a number of conservatives who’ve taken to weeping that people who PUBLICLY CALLED FOR THE DEATHS OF PEOPLE LIKE THEM are having to face some consequences for it. To them, that’s just more cancel culture and these people aren’t big deals, so they should get a pass. 

All that reminds me of a famous quote whose true author has been lost to history:

There are several reasons that conservatives specifically and society in general should absolutely, unconditionally want these people fired for making these comments. 

The first seems pretty obvious and that is, do you want to live in a society where endorsing assassinations of people in the other political party is not considered beyond the pale? Are you cool with people openly advocating murder for purely political reasons? I would hope that if a Republican said, “Every good person should firebomb the house of a liberal tonight to cook them and their families alive” you’d be appalled, wouldn’t want to work with them, and wouldn’t want to be associated with them. Incidentally, this doesn’t just go for calls of violence. As I’ve written previously about cancel culture, having free speech doesn’t mean there should never be any consequences to that free speech:

In America, we have long believed that everyone has a right to free speech, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be consequences for using that free speech. Traditionally, this has equated to things like, “Yes, you can call your boss a jackass, but he may fire you for it,” or “You can join NAMBLA, but most people are going to find it gross and you’re certainly not getting hired to work in a daycare,” or even, “You can tell everyone at the party that they’re all losers and you hope that they go to Hell, but you’re probably not getting invited back to the next party.”

Yes, we shouldn’t fire people for their political views, but there are SOME limits. I wouldn’t hire a Nazi, pedo, or someone who advocated bestiality. If you’re someone who likes to drop the N-word in conversation or you’re an anti-Semite, we’re not going to be pals. You can (and some people have) bad-mouthed me behind closed doors after I’ve helped them out, but if it gets back to me, you better not need anything else from me because you’re unlikely to get it. Some things people say have real consequences. That’s life.

Talking about “free speech absolutism” sounds nice in principle, because there really is no such thing in the real world or online. Yes, Elon Musk calls himself a free speech absolutist and objectively is a champion of free speech who has put his money where his mouth is. Yet and still, X isn’t really “anything goes” either. Even they have limits:

Similarly, it’s worth adding that part of the job of the Secret Service is investigating death threats against people under its protection, even ones that aren’t particularly realistic. Just as an example, this story broke this week:

A potential registered sex offender in Florida was arrested and charged with three criminal counts related to threatening President Joe Biden and other federal officials, the U.S. Justice Department announced on Wednesday, just days after former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

...According to the affidavit, the presidential protection agency was first alerted to Alday on June 25, when Joann Noel, an intake coordinator at the Apalachee Center, reported that Alday had checked himself into the mental health facility and said: “I don’t like President Biden. I want to kill him, slit his throat.”

...On July 11, the Secret Service’s Open Source Intelligence Branch (OSB) flagged that an X account linked to Alday posted “i’ll kill joe biden today!!”

The OSB also flagged four other posts from the account, which operated under the handle Jason Alderman/@Jman86628004 and has since been suspended:

“sources: Joe biden’s health is declining rapidly. Not doing too good at all. Should I finish him off?” reads a post from June 30. 

“The secret service sent a special agent n----- to my house with gadsden county officers. I’ll still slit joe biden’s throat,” a post from July 1 said, using a racial slur.

“I want special agent matthews dead, too. stupid n----- has gotta go!” was posted on July 5.

And later on July 11: “Where you at special agent matthews ? come arrest me n-----!! this is Jason Alday!!”

...In an order of detention, U.S. magistrate judge Charles A. Stampelos ordered Alday to be committed to the custody of the attorney general’s office for confinement in a corrections facility.

Stampelos acknowledged defense counsel’s arguments that Alday “does not have the apparent ability to carry out any threat and he has not taken any steps to carry out his threats” and that “he was just venting on the internet because he has mental health issues.”

How many liberals did the equivalent of that after Trump was shot? Maybe 20,000? If they just lost their jobs, they got off light. 

Of course, what’s really happening here is something more akin to this new Stonetoss cartoon:

As a practical matter, if you don’t want these liberals to face any consequences for celebrating and encouraging an assassination attempt against a Republican candidate (and the DEATH of a conservative attending the rally), what you’re de facto endorsing is a world where conservatives can be fired for having mainstream political views while liberals can say almost ANYTHING without consequences.

Why would any conservative with a brain endorse a double standard that makes it risky for many people who agree with them to even express their views at all while allowing liberals to literally call for your death without penalty? Maybe they think they’re going to get some kind of gold star for advocating free speech even if it makes no sense, but that goes beyond foolish all the way to masochistic. 

At the end of the day, none of the people who were fired would feel bad about YOU getting fired for donating to Donald Trump or say, being in favor of deporting illegal aliens. You might say, “That’s true, but I’m proving that I’m better than them by defending them when they wouldn’t defend me” -- but you’re already better than them if you’re not advocating murdering liberals because of their ideological beliefs.

We are not a society that needs more hatred, more incitement to violence, and less consequences for horrible behavior. Having these people go this far over the line and suffer consequences for it is a GOOD AND HEALTHY thing for society. Maybe it will make liberals think twice about supporting cancel culture if it can happen to them too and it may also make them a little more cautious about calling for violence against people they don’t like.

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