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 -
The United States was not meant to be a "democracy." Benjamin Franklin famously described the government created by the Constitutional Convention as "A republic, if you can keep it."
While there were certainly people in the founding generation who saw a place for a heavy democratic element in the United States, such as Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, I think it is fair to say that most educated gentlemen around the time of the founding were steeped in a tradition going back to Aristotle and Plato where "democracy" was the term for a bad form of government by the many.
Despite Alexander Hamilton advocating for the current Constitution, his original hours-long presentation to the Congress had a much stronger executive, and Hamilton famously told Jefferson, "The greatest man who ever lived was Julius Caesar." There's many ways to interpret this statement, but I think it is obvious that Hamilton hadn't completely shaken off the monarchical thinking of an Englishman, and wanted a strong central authority as the best guarantee of liberty for the people.
Federalist Paper 51, written by Madison, describes how the checks and balances of the United States republic are meant to function. The whole letter is worth a read, but I will focus on one part:
(Emphasis mine.)
Schlessinger's The Imperial Presidency, and Higgs' Crisis and Leviathan both document how this vision failed from different angles. Schlessinger examines the history of the growth of executive power, and the various techniques presidents used to get their way - from operating secret naval wars without congressional approval and oversight, to the use of impoundment to appropriate funds earmarked by congress (which was eventually eliminated after the Nixon presidency, due to his perceived abuse of the power.) Higgs looks at the way that crises created opportunities for the federal government to seize ever greater power, and while it is not limited to the growth in presidential power, it is impossible to ignore all of the emergency powers Congress ceded to the President across the constant cycle of crises.
Higgs was writing in 1987, and Schlessinger in 1973, and the trends they described have only continued.
And so we come to the present day, where Donald Trump became President on January 20th, and began what some are calling an "autocoup." On a diverse forum like this one, I am sure that there are at least a few monarchists that would be thrilled if that was true. I'm sure I can't convince them that an autocoup would be a bad thing, if that is, in fact, what is happening. But for the classical liberals, libertarians, conservatives and centrist institutionalists, I want to make the case that the way things happen matters as much as what is actually happening.
Some are defending actions like Elon Musk's DOGE dismantling the Department of Education without any apparent legal backing, by saying that this is what Trump supporters voted for.
But this simply isn't true. Or more accurately, that's not how this works.
I repeat: America is not a "democracy." America is a republic with checks and balances and a rule of law.
To the extent that we have democratic elements in our republic, then I certainly think that Trump and his supporters should be able to do what they were elected to do. If they want to pass an actual law that gets rid of USAID or the Department of Education, then let them do it. If they want to pass a law to rename The United States Digital Service, and give it unlimited power to control federal funding, then they should pass a law to do so. And if they can't get the Congress they voted in to make it happen, too bad, that is how a Republic works. The same applies if federal judges or the supreme court strike down a law or action as unconstitutional. One person doesn't just get the power to do whatever they want, without any oversight or pushback from the legislative or judicial branches.
I think the United States seems to be heading for a form of democratic tyranny, with few checks and balances. I don't know if there has actually been an "autocoup", but I do think there are shades of it in what has been happening the last few weeks, and I think any lover of American liberty and prosperity should be a little bit worried as well, even if they like the effects of a lot of these unilateral actions by the Executive.
EDIT: Typos.
Where was all this complaining about the forms of the Republic when Obama was using his phone and pen, or everyone from Johnson to Biden was implementing DEI by executive order?
No, the Democrats have knocked every check and balance in the nation flat in their attempt to purge Republicans from power, and now the Republicans have turned tail on them. It's too late to call upon institutional integrity now.
There was plenty of complaining about it. As someone who dislikes both the left and the right, I am not impressed by "the Democrats did bad thing X, so now the Republicans should also get to do bad thing X" arguments. I'd rather that nobody did bad thing X, if X is actually bad.
It's fair that you complain. But, let's be honest, 99% of the complaining is not coming from principled libertarians. It's coming from totalitarian statists who are mad that their toys are being taken away.
Suddenly, when their 300k per year no-show job is under threat, they rediscover the Federalist Papers.
I'm not a libertarian either, and I also didn't like seeing the expansion of executive powers under Obama, or much of anything that Biden did.
Mostly what I see here is arguments over who smashed the Defect button first. If we can't get back to a stable equilibrium where everyone isn't choosing Defect, then whatever America becomes, it will just be wearing labels like "Democracy" and "Republic" as skinsuits. (I'm aware some people believe this is already the case. But if you're an accelerationist who thinks we should just abandon the pretense and make Trump God-Emperor, then I'm not interested in your opinions about executive authority.) There is very little Trump can do that a succeeding Democratic administration can't undo (except perhaps fix it so there can never be another Democratic administration - is that what you are actually hoping for?), and of course, they will continue following precedent and the next Democratic president will act even more like a monarch. Everyone cheering for Trump and Musk now will be outraged - outraged! - at this abuse of power and violation of norms.
Yes, a lot of the people outraged today are hypocrites who thought it was just fine when Obama and Biden were abusing their authority. So what? Do you think it's actually bad for presidents to do this, or do you think it's only bad when it's not the president you voted for? If the former, then what do you expect to be the outcome of each president being encouraged by his supporters to expand his powers? That your party will be in power forever so it's okay?
I guess I should say here that I am very much in a "Wait and see" mood right now. As I said before the election, I don't think Trump is going to be a good president, but I'm willing to be proven wrong, and I am enjoying the leftist convulsions. However, the President can't just abrogate the powers of Congress and decide (or delegate to Elon Musk to decide) which pieces of the federal government he'd like to keep and which pieces he'd like to do away with. (And if you are saying "Yes he can!" and triumphantly quoting Andrew Jackson, well, see above. Better lube up for when the Democrats return to power. And Andrew Jackson also ran a notoriously corrupt spoils system, in which federal employment was explicitly conditioned on party loyalty and when your party lost an election, you lost your job. This obviously created undesirable incentives, and led to the civil service reforms some are so eager to dismantle.)
On a slightly more pedantic point, I see a lot of people talking about "$300K laptop jobs." No government worker makes $300K - even the top of the SES pay scale is capped at around $250K, and the GS workers (with or without laptops) are making far less. If you mean NGO workers, maybe some of their executives make that much, but the peons who are mostly the ones losing their jobs don't. Lobbyists, lawyers, and contractors, though? Sure, and oddly enough, I don't see many of them losing their jobs yet.
If you can ask "so what?" when it comes to Bush and Obama, why can't you do it regarding Trump?
Anyway, forget the talk about hypocrisy, and let's just focus on the outcomes. Yes, if Trump keeps ruling by decree, the next Dem administration can just undo everything by decree. What you're leaving out is that if Trump doesn't do that, the Dems can still just rule by decree (and have the advantage of not having their institutions disrupted). Show me a path to sustainably reducing abuses of power in the future, and you'll have a compelling argument, but right now you're asking for unilateral disarmament.
That's what I'm doing - I don't really care much about the hypocrisy on either side. I expect both sides to be hypocritical. "We are upset when their side does it, but when our side does it it's good" is practically a default in politics.
I don't know that there is one, but it would require people to actually value bipartisanship again, because you'd have to have people in both parties actually negotiating with each other, instead of treating a political victory as the opportunity to sack and pillage until the party's over.
Look, I understand (and expected) your "You're just asking for unilateral disarmament" argument. I can tell you with lots of Dems (and very liberal ones) on my Facebook feed, that they absolutely feel the same way every time they were asked not to get carried away under Biden, or when they were gloating about all the things Harris was going to do to own the conservatives, and now, when they are being asked to reflect on where it brought them. You are, after all, evil, and norms and rule and law don't really apply when you're trying to fight Nazis. Wow, you say, how terrible and unreasonable! This just proves we should crush them harder. Yup, and so we get exactly the same argument from the right - Democrats are so evil, so unreasonable, so unhinged, that norms and rules of law don't really apply.
So it goes. I'm not quite a doomer yet, but there's no way out unless at least some people want a way out that isn't "unilateral disarmament."
Well then, it's going to be hard for your charges of hypocrisy to mean something. You detail the thought process behind it yourself, and how it's so tragic that both sides see each other as evil and refuse to talk to each other, but if I offer to out my monkey-brain urge to get even on hold, let bygones be bygones, an all I want in return is some plan to ensure this won't happen again, and you've got nothing... then I'm sorry, fighting with gloves off is not hypocrisy. You need to offer a clear and actionable alternative if you want to criticize others.
There's many ways to address this, from "who started it" to disputing whether or not what is happening now is even approaching what they did in the past, but in the end you can always say "they see you in the same way", so I'll give you an argument where I think this does not hold true.
Again, let's forget about the past, and focus on the future. Ultimately, I wish your liberal friends all the best. I want that they are able to live their lives according to their values, free from the interference of evil chuds like me. When I'm in a good mood, I even wish that it brings them all the happiness they expect, rather than what I think are the likely consequences of their ideas. Even though by now they came up with things that warrant a holy crusade, and a declaration that the child sacrifices will stop (and this is more literal than some might expect), I'm willing to accept a cease fire where they their thing in peace, as long as I'm allowed the same. Would you say your liberal friends would find those terms acceptable? If not, than I'm sorry, but we are not the same, and any implication that we are equivalent is false.
I think some of them would, and some of them would not. Just as you personally might be willing to live and let live, but many (most) of your fellow rightists would not. So yes, I think you are equivalent, and the way out is either war or the "moderates" among us persuading the majority to curb the extremists. I do what little I can (I have had relationships suffer as a result); do you ever tell your side "Hey, maybe dial it down a bit"?
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link