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FlyingLionWithABook

Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.

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FlyingLionWithABook


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.

				
				
				

				

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


just email the hospital and say “I don’t want to pay $10,000, how about $500?” and then…they just say “yeah sure, you got us,




YesChad.jpg


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As someone who works in medical admin: you definitely have to sign documents like that, but we probably won't enforce them. Like, we could take you to court and say "here's the contract, he signed it, he's responsible" and get a court judgement against you, but nobody has time for that, and I don't know of any medical provider who does it. Besides, the court isn't guaranteed to agree with us: they might reasonably rule that because the client was not informed of the exact prices, he can't be responsible for paying them even if he signed a doc agreeing to be responsible. Since most medical companies get the vast majority of their revenue from insurance company payouts, it's just not worth the manhours to go to court against one guy and get a judgment against him that might not even be practicably enforceable.


The best advice is to call their billing department up, say you can't pay, and negotiate a lower price with them. There is a high probability that they will write most of the bill off if you agree to pay pennies on the dollar while you're on the phone with them, because otherwise they know they'll probably get nothing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I work in medical administration and billing, and have for many years. This is good advice!


If you have a bill you don't think is fair, or simply can't pay, call up their billing department and tell them that. Say you can't pay this, and ask them what they can do. 9 times out of 10 they will negotiate the bill down (often by more than 50% if you keep poking), or if they're a larger hospital they might direct you to their financial relief program. For a lot of the larger hospitals applying for financial assistance can be well worth it: I make well over the median wage, yet in two different situations I applied and they wrote off my bill, accepting what insurance paid as the full amount.


The secret of medical billing is that there is very little we can do to someone who calls us up and says "I'm not going to pay", so it's worth it to negotiate you down to an amount you are willing to pay. Because otherwise we get nothing. Are there things we can do? Technically yes: we could sue you and try to get a court order to repo your stuff or garnish your wages. But that's complicated, and takes a long time, and isn't guaranteed to work: and more importantly, we get over 80% of our revenues from insurance companies anyway. Any bill a patient is getting is a small piece of the pie, and most medical billing man hours are better spent getting insurance companies to pay up. For one thing, the insurance companies actually have the money!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As someone who works in medical admin and billing: this is 100% correct. Anybody who calls me and says they can't pay, I start talking to them about how much they can pay. Because if they decide to just not pay anything there is pretty much nothing practical I can do about that, and we make most of our money from insurance companies anyway so it's not worth the trouble.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Most women aren't having children




56.7% of women between the ages of 15 and 49 in the USA have had at least one child. 71.8% of women aged 30-34 have had a child, and 81.2% of woman aged 35-39 have had a child. Most women who are capable of having children (in the fertile window) are having children.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Because of the fact that the conservative branch of Christianity (even many Protestants, like the extreme Southern Baptists) continued to be staunchly against mysticism, ultimately they acted as a foil to the Protestants who wanted more of this mystical, experiential relationship with God.




This analysis is missing the Charismatic churches. You know, the churches who are all about mystical and experiential relationships with God? Talking in tongues, prophesying, miracle healing, all that? They are pretty conservative! Pat Robertson was a Charismatic, and Charismatics seem pretty hooked into MAGA (Paula White-Caine, Trump's "Senior Advisor to the White House Faith Office" is a Charismatic, for instance).


Meanwhile the mainline churches, who are pretty progressive, have been very hard on people claiming to have had mystical visions, God inspired prophecies, and the whole talking in tongues things!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, you're not wrong about the aesthetics. We Evangelicals famously have bad taste! Fortunately that doesn't seem to have watered down the message too much.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Tell us how you really feel!


If you define a Christian as someone who believes the Nicene Creed, then Evangelicals qualify. And they seem pretty good at following Christian practices: 72% of Evangelicals pray daily, compared to 51% of Catholics, 53% of Orthodox, and 45% of Mainline. 51% of Evangelicals read scripture (outside of religious services) weekly or more, compared to 14% of Catholics, 15% of Orthodox, and 18% of Mainline. 30% of Evangelicals participate in weekly prayer or bible study groups, compared to 8% of Catholics, 6% of Orthodox, and 9% of Mainline. And of course (true to their name) 32% of Evangelicals discuss their religion with nonbelievers monthly or more often, compared to 13% of Catholics, 12% of Orthodox, and 13% of Mainline.


When it comes to Christian beliefs, 93% of Evangelicals agree that "God is a perfect being and cannot make a mistake" compared to 75% of Catholics and 80% of Mainline. 92% of Evangelicals agree that "God is unchanging" compared to 76% of Catholics and 79% of Mainline. 82% of Evangelicals believe in hell, compared to 69% of Catholics, 60% of Orthodox, and 59% of Mainline. 91% of Evangelicals agree that "There will be a time when Jesus Christ returns to judge all the people who have lived" compared to 72% of Catholics and 76% of Mainline. 82% of Evangelicals agree that "Sex outside of traditional marriage is a sin" compared to 49% of Catholics and 55% of Mainline.


And as far as "surrendering to secularism", 61% of Evangelicals say that homosexuality should be discouraged in society, compared to 23% of Catholics, 39% of Orthodox, and 25% of Mainline. 64% of Evangelicals believe that greater social acceptance of transgender people has been a change for the worse, compared to 26% of Catholics, 20% of Orthodox, and 22% of Mainline. 65% of Evangelicals believe that abortion should be illegal in most cases, compared to 39% of Catholics, 37% of Orthodox, and 29% of Mainline. 84% of Evangelicals are in favor of allowing prayer in public schools, compared to 63% of Catholics, 63% of Orthodox, and 57% of Mainline.


Overall, despite your dislike of Evangelical worship aesthetics, Evangelicals seem to be doing a better job of keeping to Christian practice and beliefs than anyone else in the USA.


And as someone who has been in Evangelical churches my entire life, I was completely taken aback by your claim that Evangelicals believe Christ was crucified, but never experience the spirt of that.  I mean...I feel like it got pounded into us quite a bit! I've heard a lot of sermons trying to drive home how much pain and suffering Jesus went through on the cross. Usually they went a bit overboard, in my opinion, but that's the better side to err on I suppose. And while the lack of centralization leaves individual churches more vulnerable to bad actors, it also prevents bad actors from taking over the whole movement. We're too decentralized to all agree to follow a single flim-flam man!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You're right to label "lets actually win the fight" as the Evangelical option: so far, Evangelicals have done the best job of fighting and surviving secularism. Ryan Burge over at Graphs About Religion has a post with some good graphs about this, but Evangelicals have gone from 18% of all Americans in 1972, to a height of 29% in 1991, to 19.5% today. In contrast Catholics have gone from 27% in 1972 to a height of 28% in 1994 to 22% today, with a long slow decline from 2010 to the present. Over the same time period Mainliners went from 30% of the population in 1972 and has been in steady decline ever since, now standing at 8.7% of the population. Of course Eastern Orthodox has remained at ~1% from 1972 to today.


In other words, from the 1970s (when 90% of the USA was Christian) to today (when 62% are) Evangelicals have treaded water while all the other major Christian traditions have declined. And according to Pew Research, the overall decline of Christian identification in the US seems like it has leveled off in the low to mid 60s since 2019. Pew also found that the number of Americans who pray daily has stabilized at around 45% since 2021, and the number who attend religious services at least monthly has stabilized in the low 30s since 2020. If Evangelicals could hold steady over the course of decades of decline in Christianity, who knows what they might do  now that the decline has stopped? Perhaps the long siege is coming to an end and the Winged Hussars are coming, though this time they're bearing grape juice in communion cups and copies of The Purpose Driven Church while charging to the sound of CCM.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Based on him comparing the Evangelicals to the Catholic integralists, I think he is meaning "liberal" as in "liberal democracy": all citizens having a vote, freedom of speech and religion, that sort of thing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Perhaps, but what you fear may happen in Israel is actively happening in just about every other country in the Middle East. Islam has long agreed that the presence of Dhimmi in the House of Submission must be a transient state.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Israel has a long history of oppressing Christians




Worse than the rest of the middle east? Last I checked Christians were allowed to prostelytize in Israel, while it's illegal in Turkey, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, the West Bank, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the UAE, Yemen, and Afghanistan. Open Doors is a nonprofit that tracks persecution of Christians: Israel did not break the top 50 globally, compared to Saudi Arabia at 12th, Yemen at 3rd, Iraq at 17th, Syria at 18th, Oman at 32nd, Iran at 9th, Egypt at 40th, Turkey at 45th, and Jordan at the #50 spot.


My point being, the Middle East is very hostile to the West in general, and Israel is by far the most pro-Western country in the region and the safest place in the Middle East to be a practicing Christian.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 27, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Rooting-out infidels might be a good strategy if Christ is King,




Not even then. Generally speaking Christianity has looked down in that sort of thing.


Bloody Verdict of Verdun: widely condemned by the Church at the time, contemporary historians considered it a black mark on Charlemagne’s record.


Various Pogroms: not looked on fondly today, often bishops and priests would take on Jews to try to protect them from mobs.


Spanish Inquisition: Widely considered a mistake that didn’t work.


And honestly Jews make good allies against the Muslims, which are the real threat to Christendom. A quarter of the planet is Muslim, Jews are single digit percentage.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
We had a $1,000 bill, it had Grover Cleveland's face on it. We also used to have a $5,000 bill (James Madison) and a $10,000 bill (Salmon P. Chase, the Treasury Secretary that introduced the modern day banknote). They were all made to be used by big banks to facilitate interbank transactions, and in the 1960s they were discontinued because we didn't need to move bills around to move money between banks anymore. I wonder how difficult it would be to bring them back?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
“Disappeared” is what the NKVD did, what ICE is doing is called “arresting”. If you say people are being disappeared, you’re saying it has gotten to the point of being as bad as the NKVD!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If a federal judge can order ICE to release you, you have not been disappeared. You are very much in the system, documented, and his lawyers and the judge know his name even if the hospital does not, that's for sure.


In this case it looks like he got badly hurt during arrest and was taken to a hospital where he was admitted under a pseudonym and kept under guard. ICE says they were waiting for him to be released from the hospital and taken to their LA processing center before charging him. The judge said they had to release him from custody because they hadn't charged him yet. ICE did, and basically said they'd arrest him again after he gets out of the hospital and then charge him properly.


If your lawyer can talk to you and file court motions on your behalf, you have not been disappeared. When the NKVD showed up at your apartment in the dead of night and took you away, nobody saw or heard you again. That was proper disappearing! A lot of them were taken to the basement of the Lubyanka and shot in the back of the head.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don't believe you when you say "but we have to disappear people, it's the only strategy that could possibly work".




Nobody is getting disappeared. Everyone apprehended can be looked up on a public website. https://locator.ice.gov/odls/#/search


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 22, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s demons man. They’re laughing all the way to the bank. “I got him to kill six kids and then off himself! Top that!”


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 22, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I agree. As a conservative and a parent I had a lot of genuine fear about things like severe autism, chromosomal abnormalities, and birth defects. You roll the dice each time you have a kid, and if it’s possible to fix those dice and prevent the worst outcomes…well, parents are a very motivated audience.


This is compounded by the fact that conservatives are more likely to be pro-life. This doesn’t matter for autism, since there’s no way to detect it in utero, but if a pro-lifer finds out he’s having a Down Syndrome kid he knows that is going to change the rest of his life. There’s no “abort” option.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


the man seems really cranky and confrontational lately.




No, he's like this all the time in the comments. The posts he writes are often quite good and reasonable, but when the man is replying and commenting  he is always cranked up to 11. He's been like this for years.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, I can’t blame you: after all, I don’t believe the UN or Hamas. This war is one of those situations where we won’t really know the truth of what’s going on until it’s a decade or so later and people have had time to investigate. Maybe three decades later, wait for enough people to die who would otherwise be embarrassed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean I can give you links, but they're all going to add up to "Israeli official says they're not stopping the UN" so I don't think that will do much for you, since you are unwilling to believe anything an Israeli official says.


The AP:




Israel says it doesn’t limit the truckloads of aid coming into Gaza and that assessments of roads in Gaza are conducted weekly where it looks for the best ways to provide access for the international community.


Col. Abdullah Halaby, a top official in COGAT, the Israeli military agency in charge of transferring aid to the territory, said there are several crossings open.


“We encourage our friends and our colleagues from the international community to do the collection, and to distribute the humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza,” he said.


An Israeli security official who was not allowed to be named in line with military procedures told reporters this week that the U.N. wanted to use roads that were not approved.


He said the army offered to escort the aid groups but they refused.


The U.N. says being escorted by Israel’s army could bring harm to civilians, citing shootings and killings by Israeli troops surrounding aid operations.




MSN:




Former Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy ultimately accused the UN of “unforgivable negligence” in its actions preventing food from reaching Gaza.


“The failure of the UN aid mechanism in Gaza is truly catastrophic. 600 trucks’ worth of food the IDF is urging the UN to pick up. I saw mountains of pasta, lentils, hummus, cooking oil, sugar, and flour,” he wrote on X, accompanying a video of him walking among aid supplies.


For its part, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said trucks traversing Gaza have to contend with traveling through an active war zone, along with hoards of desperate people rushing to get the supplies, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).


Criminal gangs have also previously attempted to ransack the vehicles as they enter the Strip.


“Taken together, these factors have put people and humanitarian staff at grave risk and forced aid agencies on many occasions to pause the collection of cargo from crossings controlled by the Israeli authorities,” OCHA said in a statement last week.




Interesting that the AP claims the UN doesn't want military escorts because it could bring harm to civilians, while MSN gives us the UN claiming they can't send their aid in because their trucks might be ransacked by gangs. So which is it: do they not want an escort because of potential civilian harms, or are they saying they can't do it without an escort because they'll get robbed? It seems to me that they just want the new Israeli aid organization to fail so that they will let UNRWA back in, and any excuse to keep aid out of Gaza is good enough to blame on the Israelis.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Israel has been asking the UN to send the trucks in, it is the UN who has been refusing to do so as long as the Israelis are the ones distributing it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I bet you write in books too.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Why would you expect Israel, a liberal democracy, to become an impoverished totalitarian dictatorship solely because we stopped providing them military aid? How would that make them safer from invasion?