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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3228 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 9, 2025

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I knew that he would be pro-Israel but it’s a little too much for me. Cutting 500mil funds to a university because their students protest against Israel, not releasing the Epstein files, and now trying to primary Thomas Massie is too much. At this point I’m willing to become a loyal Democrat if they come out strongly against Israel.

Pro-DEI, high taxes, mass immigration, affirmative action but anti-Israel, or the inverse? (If you say ‘we’re getting both anyway’, that wasn’t the question).

My first priority is “White population doesn’t go down + they aren’t discriminated against”. My second priority is that Israel doesn’t exert undue influence on us, and instead we exert it on them. But if Trump continues to be so comically submissive to them I will temporarily flip my priorities around. Also, new information I’ve learned on the Mennonite birth rates in South America make me care a little less about White TFR (eg in this century they will make up most births in Bolivia).

Mennonite birth rates in South America make me care a little less about White TFR (eg in this century they will make up most births in Bolivia).

Too early to tell. It might be that the modern malady is simply taking a little longer to catch up to them. Of course I hope it doesn't.

Not sure if it’s too early to tell, really — it’s consistently high, provided there’s available farmland. What definitely is too early to tell, however, is whether the Amish or Mennonite who leave agriculture will continue to have a high birth rate. Or maybe there’s already a study on that which I need to read.

The not-particularly-strict Mennonites that I know seem to maintain the same sort of lifestyle when they start construction or other businesses -- I'm pretty sure it's mostly the church and community support. Whether they can maintain this is another story -- I don't really know any "urban Mennonites", or if that's even a thing.

Yeah - you obviously aren't going to maintain Western Civilisation with Old Order Amish. Whether or not you can maintain it with car-driving Mennonites is an open question, but the odds don't look good. David Friedmann's account of Amish "law" in Legal Systems Very Different from our Own was that Amish minimise trust-requiring interactions with other Amish under a different Ordnung, let alone the English. If the same is true of Mennonites more broadly, then they aren't going to be building a 5nm fab any time soon.

If the same is true of Mennonites more broadly

I don't think it is -- I've contracted with them before in ways that required mutual trust, and I'm pretty sure that the carpenter ones don't require cash up front before they build you a house or whatever.

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