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OliveTapenade


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My understanding is that Palestinian Christians are so rare as to be irrelevant, save occasionally when used as a propaganda tool, and are generally even worse off than Muslim Palestinians.


By contrast, Arab Christian Israelis are, I believe, the most successful non-Jewish group in Israel? It's not a paradise for them either, but they are doing pretty well by regional standards.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I was thinking particularly of a few people I know in church groups - white people in their 60s who will host viewings of movies about Palestinian issues, or have 'Free Palestine' bumper stickers on their cars, or aggressively recommend books about the issue, and generally seem like they have never gotten past the 90s or early 2000s. I see them get fully behind groups like Kairos Palestine, or boosting people like Munther Isaac.


In my experience these are centre-left voters, think of themselves as multicultural and very sympathetic to Jews and Judaism, and view it as a non-sectarian human rights issue.


I think it is correct that they effectively carry water for real anti-semites (Munther Isaac, for instance, I think is noticeably anti-semitic), but they are largely useful idiots, rather than malicious themselves.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think you might be focusing a little too much on those on the Motte?


My experience is that there are three to five groups of people who are loudly anti-Israel in Western countries.


    

  1. 

    The right-wing anti-semites. This is the most popular group on the Motte, and you describe them pretty accurately. There are plenty of people who hate Jews for reasons that are more-or-less in the ballpark of far-right or neo-Nazi ideas; usually this comes with a racialist theory where Jews are a uniquely malevolent or parasitic group never acting in good faith, who exert disproportionate influence over Western countries. Often this group has a kind of private admiration for Israel, in that the state of Israel behaves towards Jews the way that they would like their country (or countries) to behave towards whites. Outside places like the Motte, and to an extent even here, this group likes to disguise or misrepresent its motives, usually because they realise that their whole platform is very unpopular in the West. Suddenly discovering empathy for poor Palestinians despite otherwise being heedless of Arab lives is an easy tell.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    The left-wing anti-semites. I think you combine these with their right-wing counterparts, but I find it taxonomically useful to distinguish them. These are the ones who go all-in on the idea that Israel isn't really a country and settler-colonial states are inherently illegitimate and chant "from the river to the sea" on campuses. Whether the motive here is technically anti-semitism is debatable, particularly because there is a small but real number of Jews in this group, which the rest like to hold up as symbols, even as they go around loudly demanding that institutions divest themselves from all Jewish groups, or from anything related to Israel, or even just harass ordinary Jews who have failed to clearly denounce Israel. I called these group 'anti-semites' because I think they do associate all Jews (who have not clearly disaffiliated themselves from Israel) with Israel and will attack people just for being publicly Jewish; and because as far as can reasonably be discerned their actual position is that Israel should be destroyed.
    

    3. 

  3. 

    (2a?) Left-wing bleeding hearts who haven't updated their beliefs for decades. I run into a lot of these in real life. It's probably fair to view them as the moderate wing of the anti-Israel left, or perhaps the anti-semites as the extremist wing of the anti-Israel left. But basically take the group I described in 2 but dial it down to people who really care about Palestinian lives, support a two-state solution, would be mortified at any implication that they're hostile to Jews, and generally ignore the existence of their more extreme counterparts.
    

    4. 

  4. 

    The nationalists. This group largely codes right at the moment, but in the past has been more diverse and I think has room for some leftists in it. It's the one that says basically, "Why are we supporting this small, violent country? What's in it for us?" Unlike the first two, I don't think this one is particularly anti-semitic. Undoubtedly it's true that near-unconditional support for Israel has been a pillar of American foreign policy for decades, and it's understandable for parts of the American electorate to ask why, particularly as Israel seems to, whether intentionally or not, keep dragging America into conflicts that it does not seem in America's interests to fight. They stand out among the other groups for being relatively amoral - they do not care who's in the right, they do not care about Palestinian lives or welfare, and they will not litigate the last eighty years of Israel-Palestine conflict with you. They do not care. They will just ask - why are we involved in this mess?
    

    5. 

  5. 

    Migrants. This group is fairly obvious. Some are Palestinians themselves, many are Muslims, many are from countries like Syria, Lebanon, or Egypt, and therefore have very explicable reasons for hating Israel. There's a very common belief in the Islamic world that Palestine is a 'nation of martyrs', and though this sometimes annoys other Muslims who feel that their persecution is downplayed or ignored (Kashmiri, Chechens, Rohingya, Uighurs, etc.), but nonetheless it is pretty universally accepted. I posted about one of these in Australia last year. This group is often significant among their own communities but are trapped in those bubbles and often ignored in the wider discourse, though sometimes one makes it into politics and becomes more widely known.
    

    6. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Israelis at present seem to have proven dramatically more militarily competent than the Iranians, though. What reason is there to think that the Israelis envy Iranian military skill? Or for that matter Iranian civilisation in general, for which I do not consider military competence a general proxy for anyway.


(I grant that military competence and civilisational worthiness, however defined, probably correlate positively. However, I would be willing to point to plenty examples of enviable civilisations that underperformed militarily - my respect for China as one of the world's great civilisations persists despite the Century of Humiliation.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Wait, since when were you a Christian? This is new.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That is not an answer to the question he asked.


There might be many things to envy about Persian civilisation, which certainly has a storied and impressive history, but Hezbollah's resilience seems more like a strategic observation. You posited that Israelis are envious of Persian or Iranian civilisation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
'Fortnight' is a normal, everyday word in Australia. In America I was shocked that people responded as if it was quaint. I hear it's in A Game of Thrones, so to some people it sounds archaic or medieval?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'd say there is a meaningful difference between two quarter-pound patties and one half-pound patty.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I still do a double-take everyone time Americans say 'biweekly'.


Biweekly means twice a week, you silly people! We have a perfectly good word, fortnightly, that means 'every two weeks'.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My impression of Rogan has always been a variant of that old joke about D&D: "twenty minutes of fun packed into four hours".


Every time Rogan has ever been recommended to me, my impression has been that it's 15-20 minutes of interesting conversation spread throughout hours of dull, meandering small-talk. I do not think that Rogan respects my time as a potential listener, and so I do not give it to him.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Dutton was certainly kneecapped, like most right-wing leaders in 2025, by the extreme unpopularity of Trump, but I would emphasise also that Dutton's personal brand was always awful. He just puts people off, and while some of that is not his fault (it's unfair to point out the alopecia, but I think it was a factor), some of it was to do with the way he'd spent a long time building a reputation as this hardline police officer.


Albanese is quite good at projecting an image of himself as a boring moderate, and this is a time for boring moderates. Trump created a vision of chaos overseas, while Albanese looks like stability. As a rule, when Albanese tries to gesture towards big, large-scale or symbolic reforms he fails (most famously with the Voice), but I think he has learned from that. He beat Scott Morrison with a small target strategy, and even with Dutton, it was mostly a matter of projecting competence, not walking into any landmines, and trusting that the political winds were blowing his way. Albanese is not an ambitious politician by any means, and is obviously a party man at his core, but that was what the Australian people wanted. No chaos, please, no big reforms, just keep working on trying to fix cost-of-living.


The Coalition is absolutely in crisis at the moment. Both partners are having troubles with leadership, they've threatened splitting up twice and got back together at the last minute, and as you say, One Nation are crushing them. As of last month, on their signature issue, immigration, One Nation poll better than both major parties combined:




A recent Redbridge survey in the Australian Financial Review found 34 per cent of voters preferred One Nation's approach to migration over other parties. The poll found 17 per cent of voters preferred the Coalition's migration policies and just 16 per cent liked Labor's approach.




Does this mean the One Nation will replace the Coalition as the Opposition in Australian politics? I doubt that myself. Much of the reported polling surge for One Nation is disaffected Coalition voters. I expect the Coalition to eventually pivot in enough of an anti-immigration direction to win most of that back. But it will probably be a long and difficult path back to power for them, because the older, Howard-style Liberal fusion is not going to work any more.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
'Vice versa' is not a Caesar quotation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That would be the pronunciation in classical Latin, but ecclesiastical Latin would be different. I believe there it would be more like 'vee-chay ver-sa', the way you pronounce ce in Italian.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I read a note a few weeks ago that pointed out that describing something as "late stage" only really makes sense retrospectively, or for a phenomenon which has a predictable end state (e.g. the last few weeks of pregnancy are "late stage pregnancy"). Describing our current economic condition as "late stage capitalism" carries more than a whiff of wishful thinking. Indeed, I predict that capitalism will survive all of the people currently using the phrase.




Perhaps this is unfairly charitable of me, but I prefer to read the phrase as "capitalism of late", that is to say, it means "recent capitalism" rather than "capitalism near the end of its life".


Probably most people who use it are indulging in wishful thinking, and have hopes of some sort of imminent economic reorganisation, not to say revolution, but the word 'late' by itself can be read in a less ridiculous way.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for February 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ah, I have just had people mistake me for Catholic before - my guess is because they're the biggest player in the 'conservative Christian intellectual' space. Mainline Protestants can be intellectual but not conservative. Evangelical Protestants can be conservative but not intellectual. So people tend to assume I'm Catholic, or automatically take Catholicism as the framework for this kind of reflection.


I actually think the rise of Catholicism in this context is overstated and mostly illusionary. In practice American Catholicism is much more like mainline Protestantism, demographically and intellectually.


At any rate, the Catholics would not create a new term - or in a sense, they already have, in the way they talk about sacramental marriage. But theologically, as it were, the Catholic position is that marriage is marriage is marriage, full stop, and there is no reason for the church to change its language just because secular law has gotten things wrong.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for February 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not Catholic.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for February 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not sure I understand the relevance of the bottom part? I think part of the point of marriage is to guide people towards successful family formation - not just sexual pleasure, not just emotional fulfilment, but forming a genuine family unit, which is among other things capable of bringing forth and nurturing new life, but also supporting the whole rest of the society in which it exists.


It seems to me that any attempt to reduce marriage to the crudely sexual, whether that be people obsessed with gay sex or people who think it's just about guys having sex with women, are missing the point. In that sense the successful push for gay marriage was and is the outgrowth of an error going back decades.


I genuinely don't care, for instance, if a guy does not want to have sex with women. There are long and honourable traditions of both male and female virginity, and there is no shame in either. I'm interested in families, in the relational health of men and women as part of an overall vision of not only the human person but the human community also.


Now the place where the gay marriage advocate will press me is why such a vision must exclude same-sex couples, and my answer to that I think they're putting the cart before the horse. If your position is that same-sex couples ought to be able to participate in the same cultural institution that opposite-sex couples do today, then my position is that they should not do that, because opposite-sex couples shouldn't do that either. What we legally recognise as 'marriage' is not particularly worthy of the name. The problem I have with gay marriage, from a traditional/conservative position, is that it is trying to gain access to what is already a distortion of what marriage is supposed to be, and that the process by which it tries to do this is by doubling down on that distortion. Gay marriage whose core claim is "we live together, we love each other, we have sex, we want to be recognised as the same kind of thing as opposite-sex couples who do all those things" is all well and good but it is only an extension of the fundamental problem.


This is not to say that I think that if we just wound back the Sexual Revolution everything would be great, because it is clearly not that simple, and pre-Sexual-Revolution marriage was obviously also distorted in various ways. In a sense my position is that marriage must be fought for and re-created in every successive generation, from the very roots. Marriage is what you do when you and your partner set out to create something larger than yourself.


The legal regimes we have around marriage are one thing, and they may encourage the growth of real and good marriages, or they may hinder that growth, and the public policy debate is important, but they are not the foundational issue, I think. In a sense I 'support same-sex marriage' in the sense that, given the actual practice of marriage in the modern day, and what couples actually do, incorporating same-sex couples (insofar as their relational structures are imitative of opposite-sex households, which is I think pretty clearly what the big gay marriage push was claiming) into the same legal regime is just good policy. But that policy is froth on top of the ocean.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it's intuitively true that Jewish people care about issues that exclusively or disproportionately affect Jewish people, like anti-semitism or the welfare of the state of Israel, and therefore that, all absent intentional coordination or conspiracy, engage in actions to discourage anti-semitism or support Israel. It's also true that there are some organisations explicitly dedicated to those causes, which explicitly wave a flag for Jews. The ADL fights anti-semitism. AIPAC fights for Israel.


And in the absence of any other evidence, "X is Jewish" strongly raises my probability that X cares about fighting anti-semitism, or that X supports Israel. This much is obvious.


I suppose the problem I have here is that there's a kind of motte-and-bailey. I think your position here is mostly reasonable. Jews tend to support Jewish causes; Jews are a relatively influential and wealthy demographic in the US, and relatively politically mobilised; therefore the US tends to relatively sympathetic to or supportive of Jewish causes. This does mean that not all causes are equal. Anti-semitism really does get treated much more harshly than other similar forms of hatred. This is also indeed frustrating when you have legitimate criticisms of Israel.


The bailey, on the other hand, is the SecureSignals position. Jews being concerned about anti-semitism and enthusiastic in fighting it by no means constitutes a reason to be anti-semitic! You don't have to skip from the motte of "Jews care a lot about Jewish issues and tend to advocate for them" to the bailey of "Jews are a malign parasitic group controlling the US for their own purposes, wake up sheeple".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for February 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


After SSM became acknowledged as a legal right, in few years any moral teaching that disapproves of SSM was no longer a conservative position but reactionary one, one opposed to a right enshrined in law.




That's been my experience. When this was a live debate, prior to 2015, there were at least fig leaf attempts to say things like, "We understand the sincerely-held convictions of people on both sides", or "You are free to believe whatever you like about marriage", or some minor concession to the idea that the issue is complicated and that people of good faith might hold to a traditional view. It wasn't always the case, and a great deal of public debate was the inevitable dumpster fire of people screaming at each other, but you did find it to an extent.


Today, the position has become that if you have reservations, you are are unforgivably bigoted, and there is no possibility of a sympathetic motive on your part.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for February 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Even if it were overturned, I don't think it would mean anything - there is a large bipartisan majority in congress for gay marriage. I would just like to overturn it on the grounds that I think it's an indefensible reading of the Fourteenth Amendment. But then, I think that about most decisions based on the Fourteenth, which in general I think is an incredibly badly-worded amendment that has been used to justify excessive judicial overreach. It's not so much that Obergefell allows the court to declare anything it wants as that the Fourteenth Amendment itself has licensed that, even for questions which ought properly to belong to the legislature.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for February 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It is a continuing source of interest to me just how much gay issues have won completely. I still have plenty of reservations, and you can still find a handful of cranky religious conservatives saying "now it's time to overturn Obergefell", but the right as a whole just seem to have stopped caring, and in fact "trans is bad because it endangers gays" has become a sometimes run into there.


The defining social issue of the time when I was growing up has been completely abandoned.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for February 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Was this gender month on the Motte? Trans month? Maybe it's just what I was looking at, but it feels like there was a lot of that recently.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What strikes me looking back at the whole series, actually, is how much every film except Terminator 2 feels profoundly of its time. The Terminator is a 1980s action horror. I watch it and I am back there in the 80s. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is definitely a film of the 2000s, with a lot of early CG effects, trotting out a film star who is just starting to look too old for this, and a lot of military-industrial complex, War-on-Terror paranoia. I have not seen any of the films past 3 (I hear I'm not missing much), but I'd be shocked if anybody remembers Genisys or Dark Fate as anything other than interchangeable, forgettable action films.


Terminator 2, by contrast, feels fresh and timeless every time. Maybe it's because it was one of those seminal films that created the modern action film? It marks the end of the genre I think of as 80s action, creates the 'modern', 90s-and-onwards genre, and because we've spend the last thirty years or so in cultural stagnation, that still feels new?


Maybe it's just that Terminator 2 is really good, but I'm not sure that's it - if nothing else, I like the first film more! But notwithstanding, I think Terminator 2 transcends its origin in a way that The Terminator does not.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"The future is not set" was part of Reese's message in The Terminator, and the villain's entire plan hinged on the idea that changing the future is possible. I don't think Terminator 2 invented the idea that maybe we can screw destiny, or that The Terminator required an unchangeable timeline.


I nonetheless find The Terminator probably a better movie overall, or at least, one that has a more powerful, emotionally resonant ending that Terminator 2's turn toward the saccharine, but there was at least a little groundwork.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What's missing here is any reason to think that 'the Jews' are an operative factor. I know that you think they're behind everything, but if all you have to say is "it's clear as day and if you disagree you're irrational", I don't think that's much of a contribution.