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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   28750 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025

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Plenty of states tested exactly that until very recently and failed. Now some states are performing a replication test in the other direction and also failing. What more do you want out of a laboratory? It's enough to test"shooting people is bad for them" and "getting shot by people is bad for you" in separate studies, you don't need to check both hypothesis at the exact same time.

Plenty of states tested exactly that until very recently and failed.

What exactly are you referring to? I don't recall any test followed by failure, I only recall a test that was stopped by the federal government through force.

What more do you want out of a laboratory?

I want it to work as advertised. We don't have some states doing one thing, and some doing the opposite. We have some states doing one thing, and the opposite being explicitly illegal.

What exactly are you referring to? I don't recall any test followed by failure, I only recall a test that was stopped by the federal government through force.

Jim crow laws lead to massive out-migration and a loss of economic and therefore political power. Exactly the same as what's happening to california now. The fact that the feds stopped them by force is exactly the point-- it's the tangible proof that those states lost the ability to contest outside control over their cultures. Now the feds are targeting california discrimination with anti-DEI measures. Seeing the parallels yet?

The fact that the feds stopped them by force is exactly the point-- it's the tangible proof that those states lost the ability to contest outside control over their cultures

Can you give an example of a system that's not a "laboratory of democracy" then? By that logic Soviet tanks rolling into Prague just shows how the Eastern Block was a "laboratory of democracy".

Seeing the parallels yet?

Not until they send in the 101st Airborne. But even that will only show the same rules are applied equally to both sides, not that the US is a laboratory of democracy. It will clearly disprove the latter point, in fact.

Can you give an example of a system that's not a "laboratory of democracy" then? By that logic Soviet tanks rolling into Prague just shows how the Eastern Block was a "laboratory of democracy".

A laboratory allows for safety equipment and controlled experiments. An external force coming in and wrecking your shit, in contrast, is the law of the jungle. Both lab experiments and warfare let you discover interesting new things about governance, but there's a big difference between your PI coming in and telling you to quit being an incompetent waste of grant funding vs. getting invaded by soviet tanks.

So to be clear, since the deployment of the 101st Airborne wasn't just about a cut in federal funding, it clearly crossed the line into proving that the US is not a laboratory of democracy, right?

The 101st is an internal force relative to the united states. So long as its application is democratic, the united states remains a laboratory of democracy.

Remember: everything the state does is backed by acts of violence. Whether or not the 101st is an actual, literal presence within a state, the existence of the power to deploy units like the 101st backstops every federal declaration to the states. Demanding "no violence whatsoever" is just the end of the american experiment period.

So the Soviet Union was not a laboratory of democracy relative to Czechoslovakia, but was one relative to itself, correct?

Aside from that, your definition of a "labiratory of democracy" sems to have clearly changed. Originally you said one state try one thing and the other can try the opposite. You are now telling me that preventing the opposite from being tried through the use of the military is completely fine. You can hold that view, but your original description of the concept does bot fit your current one.

Depending on one's view of the soviet union, it could be categorized as either a hostile jungle or a laboratory, but in any case it is not a laboratory of democracy. America's special status, and special success, comes from the fact that both the experiments and the laboratory at large are managed under democratic principles.

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