Greg Lukianoff

There'd be some line drawing exercise in there.

But let's say at once you decide to open up to poetry even.

It's a big difference between saying, okay, now we're open to poetry, but you can't say Dante was bad.

Like, that's a forbidden opinion now, officially, in this otherwise open forum.

That would immediately, at an intuitive level, strike people as a bigger problem than just saying that poetry isn't economics.

Yeah.

I mean, people find it a different thing.

You know, if someone loses their job simply for their political opinion, even if that employer has every right in the world to fire you, I think Americans should still be like, well, it's true.

They have every right in the world.

And I'm not making a legal case that maybe you shouldn't.

Fire someone for their political opinion.

But think that through.

Like what society do we want to – what kind of society do we want to live in?

And it's been funny watching – and I point this out.

Yes, I will defend businesses' First Amendment rights of association to be able to have the legal right to decide who works for them.

But from a moral or philosophical matter, if you think through the implications of if every business in America becomes an expressive association in addition to being a profit-maximizing organization, that would be a disaster for democracy because you would end up in a situation where people would actually be saying to themselves …

I don't think I can actually say what I really think and still believe I can keep my job.

And that's where I was worried.

I felt like we were headed because a lot of the initial response to people getting canceled was very simply, you know, oh, but they have the right to get rid of this person.

And that's the beginning and end of the discussion.