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 -
Abortion is in my mind due to the debate last night which has led me to this article:
https://thedispatch.com/article/claims-about-children-born-alive-after-abortion-attempts-in-minnesota-are-true/
The gist is: in Minnesota, if a baby was born you were required to care for it to keep it alive. Sometimes an abortion would result in a living baby being born, and doctors were required to give that baby supportive care (they were likely premature, so wouldn’t necessarily survive, although premature babies born wrong 23 weeks survive frequently, that said none of the cited instances of this led to a baby surviving).
In 2019 this was changed to allow doctors to let a baby sit there until it just dies on its own.
Here’s some thoughts about this:
At the point where this is even a question, you’re clearly talking about a living human being.
Simply ignoring a baby until they die is the way that infanticide (usually killing baby girls) is done all over the world
This is another instance of “conservative politician says something that gets immediately ‘fact checked’, but it turns out is at least directionally and likely just literally true.
We should be caring for living human babies whether the mother wants to kill them or not. “Oops I meant to kill it before I could see it out here in the world” is not a valid excuse.
If anything the fact that there were so many cases of this in a single state in such a small period of time moves my needle even further towards being aggressively anti abortion, up to jailing the doctors doing this and charging them with murder.
Abortion is probably the major break between the "dissident" right and the traditional mainstream socially conservative/fundamentalist right. Despite considerable overlap on most other policy positions, abortion is a serious wedge issue. My take is that abortion is almost universally eugenic: even outside obvious cases like screened-for genetic diseases, you can just look at abortion rates by race. (From Vox: Out of 629,898 abortions reported to the CDC for 2019, Black women accounted for 38.4 percent of them. By comparison, white women made up 33.4 percent of those abortions.) What percent of aborted children would ever become net taxpayers, had they not been aborted? Given that abortions are correlated with low socioeconomic status, promiscuity, high time preference, and a whole slate of other negative things, many of which are heritable, my suspicion is the number is quite low.
When your political enemies are sacrificing their children to Baal, I don't know that trying to stop them is a winning long-term strategy. Ironically this particular savior complex pattern matches well to the self-destructive white guilt that characterizes much of the left. Any moral system that insists you have some obligation to black crack babies across the country is trivially extendible to cover unfortunates all across the world and I suspect there's cognitive dissonance in not doing so.
Traditionally Christianity has taught an order of charity, expounded most famously by St. Aquinas, formulated by synthesizing the teachings of the epistles. To cut through the scholasticism talk, it went something like: immediate family, immediate neighbors, extended family, coreligionists and countrymen, distant neighbors (eg people in Malawi), and then enemies.
The modern progressive version of "all biomass is equally loved by God, buy mosquito nets for Ndugu rather than a toy for Johnny" is not eternally the Christian moral system, but something that appeared rather recently.
If a progressive Christian comes at you with the Good Samaritan, ask them why Jesus sent out the twelve telling them to not to go among the Gentiles or enter Samaritan towns.
Modernist entryists or Nietzschean reactionaries have an equal tendency to quote scripture out of context and not holistically. Let me suggest gently that you do not know scripture as well as Thomas Aquinas, other doctors of the church, or the great theologians of the middle ages. I am sure that if radical self-mutilation becomes a trend in the year 2500, similar people will be quoting Matthew 5:30 and saying Christians are being inconsistent for not cutting their hands off.
As for these specific errors, the meaning of Matthew 8:21-22 is that God comes before family in the order of charity (this is a part of Christian virtue theology I did not mention because it was irrelevant to the point at hand).
Luke 18:18-23 was a rich young man called to a vocation in the priesthood, but he rejected the call because of earthly attachment. Jesus does not demand self-penury of many other people who ask for salvation in the gospels; it was particular to the rich young man's circumstances. Every soul has need of its own mortifications. Some of Jesus's closest friends feast, drink wine, and anoint with three hundred denarii oils. To address your specific point, the "poor" in this instance that the rich young man would give to are members of his tribal ingroup; his family is ostensibly already well taken care of, thus obeying the order of charity.
Yes, this is exactly my point. He went first to his in-group, and then to all nations. When a member of the out-group appeared in need before him (immediate neighbor), he ministered to them. But he observed the order of charity. In parable, first the Lord invites his family and friends to the wedding banquet, and when they refuse, he goes into the streets to summon others.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link