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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
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MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 896


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The problem, of course, is that the optics of (mostly) young black men being publicly whipped would be intolerable to a plurality of white Americans.




Countries without American racial politics also eschew judicial corporal punishment of adults. Although a number of backward former British colonies still have caning on the books, Singapore appears to be the only non-Islamic country that actually does it on a regular basis. For whatever reason, the taboo against judicial corporal punishment is stronger than the taboo against the death penalty.


If I had to guess, it would be some combination of:


    

  • Over time, it has become common sense that the criminal justice system works by incapacitation more than deterrence or rehabilitation, meaning that caning adults is ineffective.
    • 

  • People are more worried than they used to be that the guy swinging the cane might be getting off on it.
    • 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 27, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


To the extent that more expensive lawyers are actually better at winning cases, it reduces the role of raw monetary advantage in deciding who wins.




Loser pays doesn't prevent lawyers representing poor clients with strong cases working on contingency - in fact loser pays is complementary with contingency fees (called "conditional fees" in England) because the contingency only needs to cover the "uplift" over a regular fee to compensate the lawyer for the risk of not getting paid, whereas US-style contingency fees need to cover (in expectation) both the basic fee and the uplift.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And this is the point of the "First Island Chain" logic.


If the anti-China coalition controls Taiwan, then they can maintain an effective blockade of China using mostly land-based aircraft operating out of bases in Japan (and its islands), Taiwan, the Philippines, and Malaysian Borneo. If China controls Taiwan, then maintaining the blockade means either bringing US carriers within range of Chinese land-based aircraft operating out of Taiwan, or engaging Chinese short-range fighters with American long-range fighters. Both of these are generally believed to be insta-lose conditions against a peer competitor.


China appears to be building a blue-water navy. This only makes strategic sense if they can break out into the Pacific beyond the First Island Chain, which either means they plan to take Taiwan, or that they know something we don't and think they can run a blockade.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


(state governments as proxies for)






general principle of self-governance




This matters - in no Confederate state did the pro-secession majority of whites represent a majority of the whole population. The Confederate states were (in most cases explicitly) seceding in order to prevent self-governance by numerical majorities of their multiracial populations.


You can argue that secession was legal based on respect for actual existing sovereignty, but that gets you into the obscure historico-legal argument about the de jure division of sovereignty between the Feds and the States and whether the 1789 Constitution was intended to be irrevocable.


To justify Southern slavery at all, you need to start with a position of "No Good, only Law" which means you are arguing about what rights the South did have under the Constitution, not what rights they should have had. The only rights the southern slavers should have had under the general principles we believe in in 2025 were the right to a fair trial and the right to execution by long-drop hanging or some other civilised method.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The interaction between historical preservation and disabled accessibility is particularly problematic. There are a lot of buildings where the options boil down to "stay in the lane that allows you to be grandfathered out of disabled accessibility" and "abandon the building and the lot it stands on because it is too historical to refit or demolish".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I wouldn't say the US forced him to abdicate - he was couped in the 1970's by his Prime Minister. But if the question is "why did the US not put Zahir Shah on the throne as part of their policy of building not-the-Taliban?" then per Wikipedia the answer is that Pakistan vetoed it. That the US deep state still (wrongly) considered Pakistan an ally who might have a better sense of Afghan politics than they did was obvious if you were paying attention in the noughties.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Is it? The US spent two trillion dollars trying to spread liberalism to Afghanistan.




That is how they justified it to themselves. But what the US was actually doing in Afghanistan was spending two trillion dollars to (unsuccessfully) spread not-the-Taliban, in order to punish the Taliban for harbouring Osama Bin Laden pre-9/11. The not-the-Taliban the US spread included a bit of liberalism, but rather more drug dealing, bacha bazi, Pashtunwali, and stealing of US aid money. This was not a problem, except for the Afghans, who quite sensibly brought back the Taliban at the first reasonable opportunity.


I remember the pre-9/11 days when the treatment of Afghan women under the Taliban was a big deal (a fake petition against it was the first big viral fake e-mail) among Blue Tribers who wrongly considered themselves to be elites (undergraduates at top universities and suchlike), while the actual Blue Tribe elites of the US Deep State was turning a blind eye because friends of friends of the Taliban were on our side against Iran. Counterfactual (but obviously true) premise: The US would not have bombed Afghanistan without a 9/11-scale Al-Qaeda outrage. Conclusion: The US did not bomb Afghanistan for feminism.


The US power elite remains entirely comfortable with the treatment of women, gays, and journalists in Saudi Arabia for crissake. Because the al-Saud keep the oil flowing and hand out the DC largesse on a grand scale.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The United Kingdom failed to blow their top in response to the Litvinenko and Skripal poisonings, which under international norms are worse than a cyberattack on power networks (because they involved WMD) although less directly destructive.


There is admittedly an interesting counterfactual question about how many marginal rockets got delivered to Ukraine because of Salisbury.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How likely is it that the original target was France and Spain and Portugal were collateral damage?


Macron has been the de facto leader of the anti-Putin coalition in Europe for a while now.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
AI-generated (male-orientated, visual) porn isn't itself intelligent and doesn't need to be.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


(Alternatively, for colour, you could even imagine an offer: kill yourself in a relatively comfortable way now, or get a slow agonising death from some particularly nasty poison we will slip you later.)




You don't even need the threat. The fate of a high-profile sex offender with no gang protection in the general population of an American prison is likely to be far more painful than anything the Deep State could engineer.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Both international and US law say that children subject to active custody disputes should not be removed from the jurisdiction of the child's habitual residence without the permission of the (family) court having jurisdiction, and should be returned quickly if they are removed - the big difference with the Eilan Gonzales case is that Eilan was habitually resident in Cuba (so the claim to keep him in the US was on best interest grounds) whereas the child here is habitually resident in the US (and the reason for removing them is to conveniently deport the mother). It isn't obvious how this interacts with immigration law if the child is an illegal immigrant (although I suspect an English or American domestic court would rule, contra the international law textbooks, that a child could not be habitually resident in a country where their presence was illegal), but this is a case where the child is a citizen.


Even if you disagree with the policy, the amount of process that is due before deporting a US citizen child with relatives in the US who claim to be able and willing to care for them is greater than zero.  Based on both the press coverage and the general direction of Trump administration immigration process, it looks like ICE made no attempt to understand the family law position before deporting the mother and child - it looks like they went further and deliberately frustrated the parents' attempt to do so in order to get mum out of the country before a court could intervene.


Agreed that the most likely fact pattern is that the whole family (except for the US-born kid) including Dad were in the country with permission under one of the various Biden-era programmes, and can be legally deported now that Trump has revoked that permission.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Thanks, I did not realize that Moscow was that close.




To the point where the Prigozhin mutiny was able to get from the Ukrainian border to the outskirts of Moscow in force in about 12 hours. Admittedly they were not opposed in the way NATO would be.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I am inclined to agree - the Ukrainian border is slightly closer to Moscow than the Finnish or Latvian borders, but not by much. And obviously St Petersburg is closer to NATO now than it would be if Ukraine had been allowed to join. But the question isn't what we think - it is what Moscow thinks. And Putin has repeatedly said that he sees NATO troops in Ukraine as a Soviet-nukes-in-Cuba tier security threat. (While saying, out of the other side of his mouth, that he wants to conquer Ukraine because it is in some sense supposed to be Russian).


I don't think the Mearsheimer realist explanation of Russia's behaviour is correct - I think Putin wants to invade and conquer Ukraine and forcibly Russianise the Ukrainian people because he is a Russian nationalist and that is where his Russian nationalism takes him. But a lot of people (including, importantly, key people in the Trump administration) do buy it. And in any case Putin negotiates in the same way whether Ukrainian "neutrality" is about honestly held security concerns or whether it is a bad-faith move to isolate Ukraine in preparation for a repeat invasion.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But, of course, humans are not made to be virgins until 25; we reach sexual maturity in our teens. That is when we are meant to start having sex and becoming independent of our parents. Instead, we rot in classrooms memorizing random trivia and practicing useless skills, enforced by a legal and social regime that views teen marriage and teen labor as barbaric abuse.




Young men and women in cisHajnal cultures did not get married as teens. The average age of first marriage for the working and middle class was mid-twenties with small age gaps being the norm. The 1950's model of marrying your high school sweetheart at 19 was an artifact of the extraordinary wealth (relative to expectations formed during the Great Depression and WW2) of 1950's America enabling early marriage.


"You can't expect people to go without sex for a decade from puberty to marriage" had been refuted by 1600. (Premarital sex was common, but only among people who were ready and willing to be shotgun-married if necessary).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


and offer Ukraine vague European security guarantees




This is the rub. Russia has always cared more about Ukrainian "neutrality" than they do about the exact position of the border - the demands immediately before the invasion related to "neutrality" and not territory, and the Istanbul negotiations broke down over the issue. Russia has said that troops from NATO countries in Ukraine is a red line - and if you accept the Mearsheimer realist view of Russian goals then it should be one. If they are willing to accept peacekeepers from European NATO countries then that is a major move. And the vagueness from the Trump administration on this point suggests that they are not.  And on the flip side, Ukraine has no incentive to accept a deal that doesn't leave them more defensible than they are now, given the risk of Russia reneging and restarting the war in the future.


The hard part of negotiating a Russia-Ukraine deal is the security arrangements. By default any arrangement which makes it easier for NATO to defend Ukraine from a Russian attack in future is something that could, in theory, make it easier for NATO to attack Russia from Ukrainian territory. If the security arrangements are TBD (as they have to be if the countries that will actually be guaranteeing Ukraine's security were excluded from the negotiations) then there isn't a deal.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ukraine as a people definitely can't survive Russian victory - Putin has made clear that he considers Ukrainians to be misguided Russians who need to be forcibly shown which country they actually belong to, and is implementing this policy in Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 20, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Racialized was also relative: my only personal contact with a KKK victim was a family friend whose house was vandalized after coming to the USA as refugees when his father died fighting the soviets on the eastern front.




I would say the second Klan was more anti-Catholic than anti-Black. By the time the second Klan was founded in 1915 the racial issue had basically been won by the racists, Jim Crow was firmly in place, and there was no need for an extralegal anti-Black organisation similar to the first Klan. The strongest second Klan state organisation was in Indiana, where there were no Blacks to oppress.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Tariffs are a tool, not a policy. The policy that was being implemented by the Trump tariffs was not a policy to reindustrialise the US and isolate China.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Excessive rents in tier-1 metro areas (even for poor-quality accommodation in less-good neighbourhoods) is a near-universal problem and near-universally recognised as a problem. So I don't think this is a "doomed because not following my preferred policy" issue - it is a "doomed because universally recognised problem is not being solved" issue  (although the simplest solution would be to adopt my preferred policy and increase housing supply). Certainly my intent when stating the proviso to exclude issues like "taxes too high" or "you can't own a gun" where the question of whether there is a problem at all is controversial.


The problem is worse in the UK and Ireland than in Continental Europe, but Barcelona, Paris, and Frankfurt all show the classic pattern, with the same retarded political response as London or San Francisco.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ignoring the "Europe is doomed because they are not following my preferred policy" style of arguments, the big ones are:


    

  • The fertility crisis among the productive classes in Europe is worse than the US (but not as bad as first-world Asia)
    • 

  • Europe is not self-sufficient in food or energy
    • 

  • The places in Europe you can go to escape the NIMBY cities are much less attractive than Texas.
    • 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Agreeing with @Skibboleth - I don't think the exact nature of the Danegeld being requested is the point - the question is whether paying the Danegeld delivers any relief from the Dane or not.


If Harvard's read of what happened to Columbia (I don't understand the detail of the deal, but I assume Harvard do) is that they caved and the Trump admin immediately came back for more then they the only demands they should concede are to do things they wanted to do anyway but couldn't for internal politics reasons.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


and the lack of the soon-to-boil-over extreme ethnoreligious tensions present in the UK/France/Germany/Benelux




It remains the case that ADOS blacks are more numerous and more troublesome than any of the troublesome minorities in western European countries. The nearest thing to an exception is North African Arabs in France - differential fertility means that they are 16% and rising of French babies (vs 12% and falling of the US being ADOS blacks) - so this statement will not be true of France in 20 years' time unless there is signifiant assimilation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I've long thought it would be amusing to portray (as farce) an Inquisition within the Math Department to root out heretics that accept the Axiom of Choice. Probably as a musical.




Sokal rather famously published a paper discussing (among other aspects of the Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity) the inadequacy of the Axiom of Choice to solve the problems caused by females being the ones who gestate and breastfeed as part of a more general example of the inadequacy of liberal solutions to solve the problems of kyriarchy. It got published in a formerly respectable journal, too.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Court doesn't need to decide hypothetical cases (and, indeed, is prohibited from doing so by Article III of the Constitution). The Court has to decide the instant case, where the prisoners are being held by El Salvador on the instructions and at the expense of the United States.