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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
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MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I disagree. Kavanaugh makes a strong argument that given the Nixon tariff, the meaning at the time of the statue would’ve been clearly understood to include tariffs and therefore MQD is not applicable. The fact presidents haven’t used it since is largely irrelevant.




And Jackson makes a stronger argument based on the Congressional Record that the statute was not, in fact, clearly understood to include tariffs at the time it was passed. I am a textualist, and I would prefer to interpret IIEPA according to its text (which makes this an easy MQD case). But if we want to know what Congress thought IIEPA meant, they told us.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Also the bull elephant isn't in a hole of any kind - it is on the face of the statute. The statute grants a number of powers expressly, including to prohibit trade. The Kavanaugh interpretation is that all of these, plus tariffs, are implicit in "regulate".


We can argue about whether it is rational to delegate a power to ban trade without also delegating the lesser power to tariff it. (In wartime, which was the original context of the legislation, it obviously is.) But if you interpret the text of IIEPA as limited to its express words (under the MQD or any other canon of strict construction) then that is what Congress did.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Your argument doesn’t address the empirical evidence of SNAP fraud, like the half of Somali Americans using it or its high rate in Haredi enclaves.




Both of those look more like a cultural norm of having more children that you can afford rather than evidence of widespread fraud. Kiryas Jorel has the highest rate of measured child poverty in America, and they really do go without things like one bedroom per child or one SUV per parent that respectable-working-class American parents increasingly consider essential.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Honestly? More money in politics. If Congressional and Senate seats were actually sold to the highest bidder I think you'd get a higher quality of official than you have now.




If I'm Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan just bought a dozen House seats, I am going to put a star legislator in one of them (who I can then get onto important committees and represent my interests) and 11 donkeys who will vote as instructed in the others.  When seats in the British House of Commons could be bought, people didn't buy them planning to sit in them themselves. Some of the nominated MPs were younger sons from aristocratic families where the Lord owned the seat (and couldn't sit in it because peers were disqualified from the Commons), and some of those were exceptionally able, but most went to uninspired placemen who could be trusted not to think for themselves.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Worse than that - Kavanaugh (definitely) and Alito/Thomas/Sotomayor/Kagan/Jackson (probably) didn't even vote based on their view of the policy merits of the tariffs - they voted based on their partisan attitude to the President who imposed them.


We can't tell whether Roberts/Gorsuch/Barrett votes based on the law or their policy preferences because both their view on the law and their view on the policy are consistent, being downstream of their establishment libertarianish worldview. Their opinion has the advantage of being short and obviously correct - if you think the Major Questions Doctrine exists at all, this is an easy MQD case.


The Kav dissent is right about one thing - given this President and this Congress, the practical consequences of the decision are going to be that the clownshow gets worse.


Gorsuch calling out everyone except himself and Roberts for hypocrisy on the MQD is also obviously correct and great fun to read, but probably bad judicial behaviour. The Barrett (arguing with Gorsuch about whether the MQD comes from the Constitution or is just common sense, with no impact on the case) and Thomas (responding to an argument about nondelegation that the majority didn't make) concurrences are entirely unnecessary bloviations. The Jackson concurrence is making an important point about the legislative history of IIEPA that none of the other justices reach for reasons that are not clear to me.


Since it's the Winter Olympics, here is my skating scores (out of 6.0) for the various opinions:


    

  • Roberts (+Gorsuch/Barrett) majority: Technical merit - 5.9 Artistic impression - 5.7
    • 

  • Gorsuch concurrence: Technical merit - 5.8 Artistic impression - 6.0
    • 

  • Barrett concurrence: Technical merit - 5.5 Artistic impression - 5.5
    • 

  • Kagan (+2 other libs) concurrence: Technical merit - 5.5 Artistic impression - 5.8
    • 

  • Jackson concurrence: Technical merit - 5.9 (if you believe in using legislative history in statutory interpretation, 4.5 if you don't) Artistic impression - 5.6
    • 

  • Thomas dissent: Technical merit - 4.0 Artistic impression - 5.5
    • 

  • Kav (+ 2 cons) dissent: Technical merit - 5.7 Artistic impression - 5.6. Particularly impressive given that their theory of the case (that the MQD is real and important and somehow doesn't apply to tariffs) is indefensible.
    • 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Why do you take "government food assistance" for granted, here?




It's pretty Lindy. Ancient Rome rather notoriously relied on poor relief ("Bread and Circuses") to maintain social stability. In medieval England, poor relief was the responsibility of the Church, which was effectively part of the government and used both spiritual coercion ("pay your tithe or go to hell" is coercive to people who actually believe in hell) and temporal coercion ("pay your tithe or we can legally seize your land") to collect revenue. This system broke down after Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, and was replaced in 1601 with a national Poor Law based on elected local government with the ability to collect revenue coercively after it became clear that the practical consequences of not having a functioning system of poor relief were unacceptable.


The 1601 Poor Law was in force in colonial America, and replaced by broadly similar poor relief schemes (legislated at state level and implemented locally) after independence.


The balance between poor relief in the form of support for the deserving poor and poor relief in the form of coercive institutions to punish the workshy (while feeding and housing them) shifts over the following centuries in broadly similar ways in the UK and the US, with the same issues cropping up, including the eternal truth that people who are too old and/or infirm for coercing them into work to be worthwhile are the largest group of paupers, and widows/orphans/babymamas/bastards are the second largest, and the unfortunate truth that trying to "improve" the workshy costs more than just giving them a dole, while almost always failing.


In the US, the New Deal federalises the problem of the elderly poor and LBJ's Fair Deal federalises the problem of families with children but no male earner. But neither created a system of poor relief where none previously existed.


The cost of poor relief has increased a lot faster than the economy in the last century or so. The main reason is that we decided that aged paupers should be able to enjoy a middle-class lifestyle.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Or to give a tl;dr, normal rules about e.g. historical cycles don't apply to Genghis Khan because he is just that badass. As far as I can see, the only other leaders who came close to unifying that many steppe nomads for that long were Atilla the Hun and Osman the founder of the Ottoman Empire.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


tended to melt




Or form a pike square, which has its own cohesive logic that empirically seems well-suited to urban skilled workers fighting alongside their literal neighbours. The most famous example is Courtrai in 1302 which is particularly pivotal because it convinced Pope Boniface VIII that Philip the Fair was a spent force, leading to Boniface overreaching, Philip arresting him, the Papacy being removed to Avignon, the new French-influenced Pope allowing Philip to suppress the Templars, and Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay being publicly burned at the stake based on obviously false charges of heresy he confessed to under torture. The resulting Templar curse on Philip the Fair and his posterity led to the rapid extinction of the senior Capetian line, and the ensuing succession crisis was the official cause of the Hundred Years' War.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Also the ubiquity of business books claiming inspiration from Sun Tzu.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If anyone can demonstrate examples of militaries that somehow don't have harsh bootcamps but do well,




It doesn't refute the argument because the myth of Ghurkas is that they are forged by their harsh mountain enviroment before they reach bootcamp, and the reality is that they go through a tough selection process (particularly British Ghurkas given how few we now recruit and how much of a standard-of-living bump it is compared to rural Nepal), but Ghurka bootcamp notoriously involves no striking of recruits by instructors and minimal yelling.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not sure about skinny nerds, but "Chubby nerds are the kind of weak men we don't want in the military, even if they can design weapons" isn't a strawman - the Secretary of Defense (d/b/a Secretary of War) publicly espouses it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I remember when the EU donated the butter mountain to charity in the 1990s. (I don't know why we made the surplus milk into butter rather than cheese) There were a few perverse results, such as private school canteens getting free butter (because they were charities) when state school canteens couldn't. When you organised catered events at university, you had to sign a form saying that no for-profit business was involved - because there was free butter in the food.  At least one Cambridge College maintained dual kitchen supply chains so they could host events associated with Silicon Fen while still giving free butter to the students and academics.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
25 year old women can also have dependent children. In fact most of the ones with EBT cards will do, given the design of SNAP. Poor kids are precisely the group US welfare programmes (including SNAP) were meant for.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Everyone who has thought about the policy design says that you should just give people money. Money is fungible, so if you restrict EBT to actual necessities (i.e. things someone paid cash would need to buy anyway) then you are not modifying their budget constraint. There is no policy design behind eligibility lists for this kind of benefit, and nobody has suggested one (as opposed to grandstanding particular examples of upmarket food being bought with an EBT card). In particular, products are eligible for WIC because the industries that make them bribe politicians and/or employ a lot of people in swing states.


Going back to @tomottoe's OP, the practical effect of making fancy mushrooms EBT-ineligible was that someone who had enough cash-plus-EBT income to afford them had to split one transaction into two, delaying @tomottoe and everyone else in the queue behind them. If you phase out SNAP rather than cliff-edging it (which as a matter of creating correct incentives, you should), then there will exist people with jobs and EBT cards who have cash-plus-EBT income sufficient to afford an occasional small luxury, which will sometimes be food. Making said small luxury EBT-ineligible achieves nothing.


The people who think it is worth modifying SNAP so you can't buy luxuries with EBT cards are mostly people who think the programme shouldn't exist at all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You ultimately have to draw the line between "eligible for accommodations" and "ineligible" somewhere, and there will always be people just to the left and just to the right of that line, and there will be very little absolute difference separating them.




Part of the design of government benefits is to, where possible, avoid drawing that line and instead phase benefits out. It adds complexity, but avoids perverse incentives.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Populist politics, very much including MAGA, is driven by the perception that the middle 19% (or 19.99% in your formulation) are gaining power at the expense of the bottom 80%. [The 19% is personified here by HR professionals, corporate middle managers, teachers, doctors etc.] The elite that modern right-populists are attacking pretty explicitly includes anyone with a degree from a selective university, and doesn't appear to include hereditary billionaire real estate magnates.


Attempts by the 19.99% to enlist the 80% in solidarity against the 0.01% are the least effective political appeals going. Although the 80% include a lot of idiots, I expect they are accurately recognising the boot on their necks.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is part of why I object to Hegesthism - modern warfare requires a lot of competent people, only a few of which need to be high-testosterone "lethality"-focussed "warfighters". When Hegseth gave that speech, you could see the admirals and Air Force generals thinking "will I have to get into a ship/plane where critical maintenance has been done by a sailor/airman who skipped sleep to do the extra PT and range time this clown has just called for"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The linked article said that a history of ethnic conflict made more effectively warlike societies, not material poverty. So it doesn't advance the simplistic version of "hard times make strong men" that Devereaux claims to refute and which both sides of the Motte debate agreed was wrong.


The open question is to what extent "material poverty makes strong men" is a strawman, or whether it is a problematic false belief held by large numbers of dumber decadence theorists (including online Sparta bros like Roman Helmet Guy) even if Motteposting decadence theorists are too smart for it.


I don't think anyone disagrees with "extensive experience of battle makes strong men" - we can see it happening in real time in Ukraine.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My read is that Pushtunwali was a warrior ethos and the OG Taliban were soldiers (they were recruited from seminaries, and 1990's-era Taliban propaganda claimed they were theology students first and fighters second) beating on warriors when they conquered Afghanistan the first time. But a good candidate answer - clearly the Taliban had become less soldierly and more warrioresque by 2021.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes. The point I am making is that it is hard to find the point at which the British become "weak men" until after the Empire collapses. Indeed, the Falklands War demonstrates (to the surprise of the American elite at the time) that the British could still field enough strong men to achieve spectacular military success as late as 1982.


When we French out of Helmand province in 2014 (seven years before the Americans French out of the rest of Afghanistan) you can make a decent case that it is the first war the British lost in a century (the previous defeats being the post-WW1 interventions in Russia and Turkey).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It doesn't figure in the "material prosperity makes men soft" version of the decadence critique because that is specifically about a loss of martial virtue and not commercial virtue. But in the pro-D model of "decadence" - i.e. progressive institutional rot masked by the rewards of past success - both commercial and martial virtues decline in parallel and government deficits financed by money-printing and the resulting rapid inflation are often among the symptoms.


The cynical reason why people who understand economics don't include this on a list of symptoms of civilisational decline is that it turns out that the optimum inflation rate in economies where most people are wage-earners living in mortgaged houses is slightly greater than zero, and we don't want to give ammunition to the goldbugs who insist that 2-5% annual inflation compounded over 50+ years is a civilisational catastrophe.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Good point. The logic only stands up if X is something vague that is only identified in the rear view mirror, like "weak men" or "decadence". The post has been up for long enough that I won't correct it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I very much agree with you - see Brett Devereaux and the Angry Staff Officer on why modern America, or basically any civilised society (going back to Athens and Rome) needs soldiers and not warriors.


Interesting military history question - who were the last warriors not to get their arses kicked by soldiers?


People who talk about "warriors" either aren't aware of the warrior/soldier distinction, or are hinting at the cluster of wrong ideas that come when you think of yourself as a Spartiate and your political opponents as upjumped women and/or helots. Devereaux calls this cluster the "cult of the badass" which is why I have occasionally used the term "badass" snarkily in the thread.




Can anyone charitably explain this "warrior" obsession?




I expect that in the US context it began with not wanting to use "soldier" to describe someone who fights land battles for pay in the organised service of the state of which they are a citizen because it annoyed the Marine Corps.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


both very much in their decadence phases




Lolwut? The first Opium war was 1839-1842. Decadence critiques of the British Empire don't really get going until the Crimean War in the 1850's, and are not particularly convincing until much later. As late as 1897, Kipling writes Recessional as a warning against future decadence, not a critique of present decadence.


The decline and fall of the British Empire is not one where the Roman-style decadence theory makes sense. The British Empire is still vigorous and expanding up to and through World War One*, and is militarily effective in a way decadent empires are not during World War Two. The Empire is abandoned, mostly voluntarily, before the classic signs of decadence appear at home.


* Getting into a stalemate when fighting a peer competitor is not a sign of decadence or military incompetence. Gallipoli was a mistake, but not the kind of mistake a decadent empire would make. WW1 Britain invented tanks and anti-submarine warfare, and General Allenby and Lawrence of Arabia's operations against the Ottomans were dashing British imperialism of the old school.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Sparta bros are implicitly disagreeing and saying that the virtuous society is one (like Sparta) where there is no limit on the ability of warrior elites to extract the resources they need from their inferiors. Given the overlap between Sparta bros and lost causers in American right-wing politics, and the overlap between Sparta bros and manosphere guys advocating an extractive model of male-female relationships in Zoomer Twitter, I think they might mean this.


I think the idea that a virtuous society is one which supports a warrior elite is old, and the innovation of Christian chivalry is that elite class women and priests are now explicitly protected from warrior elite predation in a way peasants are not.  Whether "virtue = share of resources commanded by the warrior elite" or "virtue = egalitarian culture capable of arming and feeding a large militia" depends on whether the military technology in a given society favours a few expensive units or a lot of cheap ones.