site banner
PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   30587 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

In lieu of the normal SCOTUS Mottezins... wake up, honey, the Culture War went to court again. Arguments for Mahmoud v. Taylor just dropped (PDF). A less oppressive SCOTUSblog write up here.

Obligatory disclaimer that I do not know anything. The gist of the case:

  • In 2022 Montgomery County, a suburb of DC, approved a number of LGBTQ books for the curriculum. They include these books and other materials from ages as early as 3-4 and up.
  • A bunch of parents cite religious reasons to opt-out of this part of the curriculum. This is in line with Montgomery's historical policy and the policy of neighboring counties. Opt-outs for religious reasons are normal for things like sex education and health classes that include it around the country.
  • Depending who you believe, so many parents chose to opt-out that the district had no choice but to change policy, or the district was so ideologically wedded to the material that they changed the policy. Either way, the county says no more opt-outs. Lawsuit commences. It goes up the chain and here we are.

I know we have some skeptics of "woke" curriculum, so for a probably not unbiased overview of the material, BECKET, the religious freedom legal advocacy non-profit backing the plaintiffs, provides examples in an X thread. They also provide a dropbox link to some of the material in question. In one tweet they claim:

For example, one book tasks three- and four-year-olds to search for images from a word list that includes “intersex flag,” “drag queen,” “underwear,” “leather,” and the name of a celebrated LGBTQ activist and sex worker.

Another book advocates a child-knows-best approach to gender transitioning, telling students that a decision to transition doesn’t have to “make sense.”

Teachers are instructed to say doctors only “guess” when identifying a newborn’s sex anyway

The Justices had read the books in question. Kavanaugh acknowledged Schoenfeld, representing Montgomery County, had "a tough case to argue".

The county asserted that mandatory exposure to material, like a teacher reading a book out loud, is not coercion (or a burden?) that violates a free exercise of religion. Sotomayor seemed to support this position. Schoenfeld, arguing for Montgomery County, said these books that are part of a curriculum that preach uncontroversial values like civility and inclusivity. Alito, skeptical, said Uncle Bobby's Wedding had a clear moral message beyond civility or inclusivity.

The liberal justices were interested in clarification on what Baxter, arguing for the parents, thought the limits were to. What limits are placed on parents with regards to religious opt-outs? Kagan was worried about the opening of the floodgates. Sotomayor drew a line to parental objection to 'biographical material about women who have been recognized for achievements outside of their home' and asked if the opt-out should extend to material on stuff like inter-faith marriage. Baxter didn't give well-defined lines, but said nah, we figured this out.

Sincerity of belief is one requirement for compelled opt-outs. The belief can't be "philosophical" or "political" it has to a sincere religious belief. Age was discussed as another consideration. Material that may offend religious belief to (the parents of?) a 16 year old does not apply the same sort of burden as it does to a 5 year old, because a 16 year old is more capable of being "merely exposed" rather than "indoctrinated". A word Eric Baxter, arguing for the parents, used several times and Justice Barrett used twice.

Eric Baxter also stabbed at the district's position that there was ever an administrative issue at all. Chief Justice Roberts agreed and seemed to question whether the school's actions were pretext. Baxter had one exchange (pg. 40-42 pdf) with Kavanaugh who, "mystified as a life-long resident of the county [as to] how it came to this", asked for background.

Baxter: That's right. Hundreds of parents complained. These were mostly according to news articles mostly families from Muslim faith and Ethiopian Orthodox who were objecting.

B: When they-- when they spoke to the Board, the Board accused them of using their religious beliefs as another reason to hate, accused a young Muslim girl of parroting her parents' dogma, and then accused the parents of aligning with racist xenophobes and white supremacists.

B: And so, again, there's no question in this case that there is a burden, that it was imposed with animosity, and that it's discriminating against our clients because of their religious beliefs.

Baxter also pointed at ongoing opt-out polices in neighboring counties and different ones in Montgomery itself. He clarified the relevance of Wisconsin v. Yoder where it was found strict scrutiny should be applied to protect religious freedom. One example of an ongoing opt-out policy in Montgomery allowed parents to opt their children out of material that showed the prophet Mohammed.

ACB: .....What is your take on that and how we think about this, whether this really is just about exposure and civility and learning to function in a multi-cultural and diverse society and how much of it is about influence or as Petitioners would say indoctrination?

Schoenfeld: .....The school the express directive from the school is you don't need to understand your peers, you don't need to agree with them, you don't need to affirm with them, but you do need to treat them with respect.

Thots and Q's:

  • Is it necessary to introduce concepts that include queer and gender ideology to children in public school? Why, why not? At what age would the introduction be appropriate or inappropriate?

The eternal fight over what the state uses to fill children's minds in a land of compulsory attendance is main conflict, even if this legal question is one of what a compromise should look given religious freedoms.

  • A competent school district should account for the addition of new, potentially controversial or sensitive material.

It can do so in a few different ways and avoid a trip to SCOTUS. I support preaching civility and inclusivity to children. There are thousands children's books that preach these things without drag queens or bondage. In an ideal world, knowledge of and tolerance for queer people can also be taught without, what I would call, the excess. Schools can also program curriculum to account for opt-outs when it comes to touchy subjects.

Sex education can be crammed into 1 hour classes for a week of the year. This allows parents to opt-out without placing an unmanageable burden on the administration. A curriculum that requires teachers to read a number of controversial book at least 5 times each a year is a curriculum designed to, intentionally or not, make opt-outs onerous. In this case it was so onerous and so controversial that Montgomery was compelled to change the policy. Which is an administrative failure even if one doesn't believe it to be ideologically motivated.

  • It may be worth pointing out that coverage from outlets like NPR didn't include the name of the case or a description of the plaintiffs that brought it.

I've seen it argued both ways. That outlets notoriously don't link cases or share case names, but in this case the plaintiffs -- a mixture of Muslim, Christian, Jewish parents -- the absence is notable. Were this an evangelical push we could expect some evangelical bashing.

I know I harp on this, but it's yet another one of those cases where everyone explicitly promised we wouldn't end up here. Or rather, relentlessly mocked anyone who suggested this would happen. Like, "leather fetish stuff in kindergarten" was the literal parody of "conservative hysteria" the left made fun of for years.

Forget the legal arguments, because this never should have been allowed to get this far in the first place. What could have been done differently? What can be done differently against the next batch of "nobody's trying to take your X/do X with your kids" tactics? Because all the tactics that everyone tried the last ten times failed miserably.

The left has won for a century pushing things that nobody wanted (even themselves in the beginning!), because they've discovered an entire strategy based around an ideological vanguard pushing insane things on the masses. A strategy which has taken on a life of its own and now exists only to replicate itself like cancer, with no regard to the plans or interests of its creators. Because ultimately, those creators are just a malleable as the proles their "strategies of intervention" were designed to control.

The left has won for a century pushing things that nobody wanted, because they've discovered an entire strategy based around an ideological vanguard pushing insane things on the masses.

Like an end to segregation? The pro-segregationists oft spoke of outside agitators.

This is a very mid-wit argument that is as specious as it is ever present.

"Without the Left women and minorities wouldn't be able to vote!"

Nonsense. This is a view of history as inherently progressive; you have good guys and bad guys and all of the bad guys will eventually lose if we just Resist hard enough. It's the fever dream of sophomore PoliSci students and ACLU lawyers alike.

Segregation and black enfranchisement itself were very non-linear and more a product of reform and reactionary ebbs and flows. People often forget that we had a black senator from Mississippi in the 1970s for instance. And that link shows the plethora of other black elected official holders before 1900.

The failure of Reconstruction was that it was, in fact, so radical as to provoke a counter-reaction that may have been stronger than what would normally occur. You then get Jim Crow and the Solid South for another few generations.

But that doesn't fit into the neat narrative of "Slavery Awful --> Lincoln --> Emancipation --> Oh no, KKK! ---> Rosa Parks, MLK ---> 1964 --> We're equal now! --> Oh wait, George Floyd, let's pretend it's 1964 again"

Do a deep dive into the better conservative (small c) thinkers; James Burnham and Willmoore Kendall. You'll see that one of the tenants of conservative thought is that it's totally fine for people to think whatever they want so long as the political system cannot be co-opted by the Small But Loud to coerce the Many But Disinterested to abandon their beliefs - as "ugly" as they might be. Democracy is a process and a system - never an "outcome" generator.

From, The Conservative Affirmation by Kendall:

Is there anything in the Constitution or in the American political tradition that prevents American government or American society from announcing: We intend to proscribe such and such ‘political’ opinions; to that end we intend to persecute those opinions, that is, to place the price of holding them—not expressing them, but holding them—so high that people will be forced to avoid them or, if they have already adopted them, to abandon them?

I know that, of course, all of us enlightened folk, if we were living in Alabama in 1955, would've definitely been on the "right side of history" and bravely advocated for desegregation. I mean, like, how could you not?

Because you (in Alabama in 1955) didn't really have a passionate attachment to the issue. It was simply the way things are. You're mostly interested in paying your mortgage and raising your kids. But, all of a sudden, your kids' teachers start telling them about their inherited culpability for slavery and you go, "Hey, what the fuck?" and now ... you're involved.

I can think of at least one significant difference between segregation and, for example, the chemical castration of minors. The historical analogy I'd go with instead would be the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.

It is kind of wild what the modern progressive will believe if you frame it as a civil rights issue. The response is almost Pavlovian.

Rootless cosmopolitan globalist outside agitators?

How are things in South Africa since they ended segregation?

At least in Zimbabwe, black Zimbabweans now have fewer political rights and less economic prosperity than they did when it was Rhodesia. A real win for decolonization!

I'm sure black South Africans will soon enough experience these benefits of decolonization too.

How are things in South Africa since they ended segregation?

Better than the counterfactual scenerio for the black residents, worse than the counterfactual scenerio for the white residents?

I'm not even sure the former is true. Being a second class citizen is awful. But it's up in the air if dying of bandit inflicted wounds because your hospital has no electricity is better or worse.

Live free or die I suppose.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats