This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Bryan Caplan complaining on X that Mason U is introducing mandatory Just Society courses; https://twitter.com/bryan_caplan/status/1760048714847064146
It looks Conquest's Second Law is still strong as ever. And I guess Caplan's libertarianism will ask for some intervention against it that will never work.
I went to George Mason Econ, still live nearby, and had lots of interactions with various parts of the university over the years.
The common online reputation of George Mason is basically totally wrong. People see it as a libertarian bastion of economic and legal research. That is basically just a portion of the economics college and the graduate law department. Its a tiny minority of the university. A very online and very prominent minority that most people know about, but if you are actually on campus or working there its very different. The density of libertarian students was pretty awesome when I went there, but it is still only like 5-10% of them. The Campus Democrats and even Campus Republican organizations were still much larger.
Most of the university is your traditional state school. If anything, its a little more diverse than most state schools, because of where it is located. The Language department is still mostly as crazy as any other school. But instead of having to go anywhere to protest things, they just step next door and make trouble for conservative or libertarian econ speakers that they don't like.
The Econ department and Law departments mostly survive because they have semi-independent funding form the rest of the university. There have been multiple attempts by other departments and the university in general to impose certain hiring restrictions, or to cut off those parts of the university. Those attempts have all failed, but they were still made. The "UnKoch my campus" organization has been in an ongoing battle with GMU Econ for over a decade at this point.
So basically it is entirely unsurprising that GMU would introduce some kind of woke required course. Or it is as surprising as any random State School introducing this sort of thing.
Considering your pro open borders ideas, you see a microcosm of how that would work demographically! Dominated by non libertarians imposing their woke ideals.
Interesting.
I sympathize with actual conservatives or Ron Paul style libertarians there but you kind of are asking to be dominated by the more authoritarian left due to what you prioritize.
For that to be true, wouldn’t the arriving demographics have to be less libertarian and more woke? The latter doesn’t seem to be the case so far. The former, maybe, but I also wouldn’t describe our immigrants as particularly authoritarian.
Polling data clearly show that migrants are less libertarian and more left wing and that they are more supportive of the woke agenda than white demographic.
The current Democrat party and some republicans go along and greater share fail to oppose it, are very much authoritarian cultural far left/woke party. So even just voting for the current Democrats helps transform society in very radical ways.
We live also in an age of mass migration and illegal migrant. The bulk of the migrants are also poorer and greatly benefiting from subsidies from the goverment.
They are also incentivized to become even more so, since for the primarilly non white migrants this ideology plays into their tribalism against white americans. if you benefit from discrimination against another group and it treats your identity as a foreigner, migrant and descendands as special, then you are more likely to support it.
Same with restricting their speech to be critical and negative and opposing to identity groups the migrants come from.
Even successful groups within the USA like Indian Americans are shown through their responses in polls to very very culturally far to the left.
However the problem is even worse because mass migration aids the faction already in a country that has those politics and helps transform those who are closer to that, to become themselves more far left and authoritarian. Why? Because replacement is a key part of the agenda and its supporters are promoting it due to the logic of the replaced deserving it, being historical oppressors. Very directly connected with demonization, replacement in institutions and discrimination.
So the people supporting this thing either doing it overtly, or more subtly and especially in the past the more dominant form was of downplaying. While now we see more cellebration paralax and also being hateful directly. In any case, one idea crosses over the other. It is inherent within the idea of supporting what leads to the destruction of one group and replacement by other groups, that the replaced are less worthy/undeserving (of even their own inheritance) and the replacers more worthy of (gaining what was originally the inheritance of the replaced).
It is also the case that those supporting such mass migration are going to find themselves very directly racist/hateful allies which they are incentivized to downplay, because it will reflect poorly on them.
Cultural marxism is going to lead to more redistribution obviously with redistribution towards the poorer global south flooding in richer countries.
Additionally, it helps promote the idea of permanent left wing/uniparty transformation which makes the left more arrogant, authoritarian and more willing to trample over their outgroup's rights.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I get that many people want to make race the way to distinguish between in-group and out-group. But that just isn't how it is for me.
My closest group of friends in college consisted of an Indian Guy 2nd Gen immigrant (libertarian), Spanish guy 2nd Gen immigrant (libertarian), Jewish guy with one grandparent that escaped the holocaust (libertarian), Danish Guy 2nd Gen immigrant (liberal/prog), and a Brazilian guy of European descent 1st Gen immigrant (libertarian). I might have been the token WASP of the group.
Its not clear to me how demographic controls would have "saved" me.
This really feels like it needs more elaboration.
I am not making a comment about whether you have friends of multiple races/ethnic background but that more movement of people without selection and of more diverse people in particular too results in woke people dominating. That good fences and borders make for good neighbors and helps protect existing groups from the influence of other groups. Which requires to be realistic about group behavior and to realize that others will see ethnic groups and other groups.
In practice your ideology can not survive under what it preaches that society should move closer towards. Also applies in regards to atomized ideological group which is in favor of atomized identity versus identitarian groups.
The diversity you describe in your friend group and the diversity that is happening are not exactly the same. Libertarian and conservative demographics are skewed in a certain direction and so the increasing diversity fuels authoritarian leftism. But the demographics of college it self is also an issue, it isn't just about ethnic/racial demographics.
You basically are continuing to be repeating the same fallacy of your ideology which is to ignore the systemic effects of your ideology/perspective in practice and focusing on whether you like your somewhat diverse friends, or a perceived benefit of choosing your friends.
Woke people are a recent phenomenon, I don't think you can make any sweeping generalizations about what leads them to dominate. For a long time there have been port cities that end up being a conglomeration of everyone in the trade network. If you want some existing examples of multi-ethnic cultures, look at them. Shanghai, Singapore, Alexandria, Rome, Mogadishu, Carthage, Athens, New York, Mumbai, etc. Many of these places were wildly rich and successful relative to other locations during the height of their trading.
I don't think there have been perfect libertarian societies out there, but I don't want to "no true scotsmen" fallacy myself. I do believe that going in a libertarianish direction is generally better. And I think port cities are generally in more of that libertarian direction, so I'm going to vaguely gesture to them and say I think they are better (especially compared to alternatives available at the time of their existence).
You just seem to have this idea that racial and ethnic tension has to occur, and because libertarianism mostly ignores race and ethnicity they are allowing this fight to simmer and brew until it explodes. But I'm rejecting your base assumption about race wars. There are certainly people that I think are willing to egg on such wars, but those people are generally a minority of the populace. Sometimes a minority of the populace can have an outsized effect on politics. But its not a given by any means that their pet issue will win out and take control. Historically, religion has been a more common divider among people than race.
Your claims are contradicted by polling data.
Wokeness is not a recent phenomenon but a continuation and part of the new left which it self is a continuation of older agendas of groups like the frankfurt school and migrants are woke aligned, because part of this agenda is to support migrant groups at expense of natives and to see the others negatively as oppressors. An important part of this is also about specifically antiwhite racism and institutional discrimination. Which is part of public policy.
By denying this aspect of reality, you are aiding it. You can't oppose institutional discrimination in favor of nonwhite groups as it applies in the USA, which also relates to a preference for said groups, and from those groups taking more positions, if you downplay the issue.
Ethnic tension is part and parcel of the current liberal establishment which is about pandering to certain ethnic groups, and much of history before that and policies followed which are racially discriminatoy and oikophobic in nature.
Look, pretending that there aren't negative consequences and trade offs arising from your philosophy is a case in blind faith and denial here.
Secondly, what you are yourself promoting is itself an example of ethnic and racial tension. I am not sure how clearer I can be but the globalist who very arrogantly and fanatically supports the destruction of nations, denies the racist extremism that this faction has been promoting in policy is promoting ethnic conflict and has a racist position at the expense of native nations due to their disrespect of their rights. They take a side, they aren't neutral not participants. And they take a destructive side that steps overs others.
Especially if like you do, you are defending the collectivist tendencies of migrants and denying the issue and even downplaying the problem of collectivist racist sentiment and policies of the liberal establishment, pretending it is a smaller recent issue. You are rather close with the behavior of that establishment.
Not only is what you are promoting a source of ethnic conflict that you help do against certain ethnic groups in favor of migrants. But your faction's position would been even weaker and the liberal establishment would have been even more hostile to you if your libertarianism was of a different nature.
precisely because of how useful what you are doing is, to the far left where culturally it seems you agree with them that
a) migrants haven't done nothing wrong b) immoral natives resisting cosmopolitanism have no valid point and the disrespect towards them is easilly linked with collectivist coersive measures that have been happening of both hatred and discrimination and you have an incentive not to care about and underplay.
The reality is a pure libertarianism is rare, and what we see in practice is two bigger tendencies.
A) Neocons/regime aligned whose libertarianism is undermined by compromising with that and fusing with this ideology. This kind of faction is ironically aid to the system and helps bring greater authoritarianism but also helps by not only justifying and underplaying, or even promoting as dogma, the necessity of ignorance, but also by being silent about issues like private public partnership, the and attacking nativists.
B) A faction that has retained some compromise with some conservative moral aspects which I do think works better in promoting and conserving a freer society when one considers the trade offs with realistic options.
This faction most importantly, is willing to speak truth to power on the war machine, and also is more skeptical of mass migration, even some ancaps.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/02/doug-casey/migrant-crisis-and-the-states-increasingly-defying-the-feds/
This website for example: https://www.lewrockwell.com/
Overall, I would say they do a better job of being pragmatic and prioritising the biggest threats to an orderly, free society, and even the greater sources of tyranical collectivism. While the neocon aligned libertarianism has compromised and allied with them and enables them
I still disagree with libertarianism but I am not anti libertarian in that I favor the opposite extreme. I just don't agree with the purity spiral that libertarians take on certain directions. Both the idea of doing that and how it works in practice on various issues. The reality is that the hardcore libertarianism it can't work that well, and it also has problems with factions that actually try to use power, either through impotence it will enable them, or it will side with them by what it prioritises and what it acts.
The authoritarian system has used the logic of libertarianism and regime alligned libertarianish types not to make society libertarian but as a loophole and excuse. Also because there is probably an insectuous relationship between NGOs, including ethnic activist NGOs, CIA, MIC, biggest corporations and the goverment.
So we see private/public partnerships being used to enforce an agenda in a manner that leaves very little room for dissent and transforms the world in a more totalitarian direction. One of anarchotyranny to be more precise where the logic of freedom and rights is promoted in excess for some, in a manner that is tyranical for others.
Where the regime aligned neocons or in part libertarians who have compromised with this, are transforming the world in this direction. Still, it wouldn't be surprising to see their footholds in any university to be removed by the authoritarian left wing faction that has been enabled.
There are still some differences on some issues.
You refuse to even entertain that the idea that open borders will result in less libertarian direction is correct. You have shown that your ideology is motivated by prejudice and blind faith which is a great reason for the world to discard it, so it is ruled by what represents reality and not the prejudices of people who are being fanatical about their dogma.
Singapore is NOT following your policies but the opposite by a long shot since they have demographic controls so their society continues to retain demographic balance. Their immigration policy is about taking specific kind of migrants.
Athens didn't follow your policies neither. Being a port city doesn't fit that. Rome had cosmopolitan elements in certain periods but also was a different thing in different periods and its cosmopolitanism was of a different nature.
You have extremely radical politics here. Open borders is actually not going to lead to multi ethnic societies retaining an ethnic balance.
This idea that societies with some cosmopolitan elements, or port cities have had some success and therefore far more radical policies, or trying to make the entire world that, which lead to no limits on migration, is a case of you promoting something without adequate justification and not actually engaging, as in taking seriously the negative of that. Nor did multiethnic follow oikophobic policies while allowing migrants to have stronger tribal identities and tolerate ethnic identitarian organizations for them, and even as an establishment in a widespread manner as it is now, respected ethnic communitarianism for migrant groups.
Historically, assimilation is problematic and often didn't happen. But to the extend it did, it was greatly helpful for the foreign group being similiar, in small numbers over majority and having a dominant ideology which is pro assimiliation which is for them to abadon and not cling to their collective traditions and identities and adopt the traditions and identities and interest of the native group. Multiethnic societies often involved plenty of force and imposition from one group against other groups. There were also often in the process of transforming in one or another cultural direction due to these tendnecies.
Our order today is one that promotes and respects and tolerates tribalism for foreign groups, and favors a replacement, while promoting atomization for the native groups. This agenda looks more like a coalition invading other countries and conquering them. Like for example even the most archetypical example of nationalist boogieman the historical nazis, what you saw in certain cases where homogeneous regions invaded by a coalition of nations invading it, and different nations commiting themselves attrocities. This differs from a consistent promoting of lack of ethnic identity for any group which it self is very radical and would come with authoritarianism and such agenda is not unrelated to some of the horrors and excesses of the Soviet Union.
The point is preserving one's group's and its rights over the hostile outsiders and also the threat of foreign hostile groups over the rights of native groups. But it is also a point about the idea that for a group to govern itself as it wants in peace, outsiders must respect that and keep their influence out. And vice versa. If there is say a department in a university that is of more a conservative/libertarian nature and demographics, that is related to precisely respecting that exclusion. Ironically, it is a part of pluralistic society too, to know to respect other peoples own thing.
You bringing this point up isn't really undermining this as religion can be a sort of ethnic identity or a part of it. But you refuse to even engage with the evidence of how agency problems and foreign oikophobia against a native people is an important component to tyranny.
Well, this tendency to not engage with the problem and such ideological rigidity is also a source of tyranny. For fanaticism for the cause of collective individualism and unwillingness to respect the problems with it, is going to lead to an attempt to impose this with force and to persecute dissenters.
Which isn't theoretical, a key element of our current authoritarianism is about imposing atomization on certain ethnic groups which isn't about opposing collectivism, but about them not opposing, or even identifying with the collectivism of other groups that the same system tolerates and promotes at their expense.
And of course good governance and not tyrannical governance should be wise and willing to reflect reality, not act based on following blindly an ideologically extreme dogma which is assumed to be correct by default.
A source of tyranny also has to do with going against the interests and rights of the majority of the people because you think your intellectually vanguard minority knows better. Hence, inviting foreigners is also related to getting people who are going to share such hostility and help impose such policies, including political correctness that sidelines and downplays problems. Which is highly consequential. The child trafficking crimes in the UK by Islamic gangs of mainly south asian descent was aided by a culture of cover up and downplaying, related to the politically correct racist sympathies of the oikophobic establishment.
The pro mass migration far leftists are being strategic. In the case of certain pro mass migration libertarians, they might get mass migration, but the end result will be a transformation of society in a less libertarian direction and more hostile to libertarian ideas. But the fact that regime aligned libertarians who are rather outspoken about agendas that are like the liberal establishment antinativist radical are actually people who have compromised with the regime, helps us understand them better than just an analysis that views these people as just quokas. But their usefulness to the regime comes with an expiration date.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link