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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   16212 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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My wife started significantly more liberal than me, but is now radically more conservative than I am, she was vehemently anti-religion, and is now an extremely devout Catholic who prays the rosary multiple times a day, wants endless deep conversations about religious philosophy, and would happily go to church with me every day if we could handle it with the number of kids we have.

Much of this problem exists because religious conservatives alienated young women with the abortion issue. At least from my perspective it doesn't look like they've taken any responsibility for that.

This is one reason I'm hesitant on pronatalism. A culture that is excessively pronatal will wind up empowering bad actors among both genders, as they can use it as a "get-out-of-jail-free card." "You prefer to remain single instead of marrying me because of I did X and Y, whadabout the fertility crisis, you wouldn't want to be a genetic dead end would you?"

I would encourage you to take a look at the actual demographics of the prolife movement.

Disproportionately middle-aged and elderly women.

Much of this problem exists because religious conservatives alienated young women with the abortion issue.

If a young woman can be alienated by being told she should not kill her child then that reflects a problem with her own character. No compromise on this is necessary or acceptable.

If a young woman can be alienated by being told she should not kill her child then that reflects a problem with her own character. No compromise on this is necessary or acceptable.

What about the young men struggling to find wives? Do they matter?

If a man is so desperate for female attention that he'll suck up to a child killer or would-be child killer, he demonstrates his own failed moral character as well. He "matters" as any human being matters, but he should feel lucky he isn't being taken before a firing squad.

With this standard, you would need to firing squad a significant portion of society. I believe a majority. Most people support a limited "right" to abortion. You can't easily go against most people that hard.

The resolution of the Slavery issue argues that you can, in fact, go against a lot of people pretty hard.

Yes, the Cambodian genocide and the American Civil War are examples of a significant minority of society getting stamped out. But you can't do that easily. And that was a large majority crushing a relatively small minority.

If you tried to do that to a significant majority (around 70% support for first trimester abortion) maybe it is you that would be taken before a firing squad.

The American Civil War involved a whole lot less "stamping out", and in fact the people on the other side of it formed a cohesive society together, and still resolved the issue at hand quite decisively.

If you tried to do that to a significant majority (around 70% support for first trimester abortion) maybe it is you that would be taken before a firing squad.

Percentages of approval can in fact change over time. And in this case, where I observe that approval being established by overwhelming amounts of propaganda on one side of the issue, deployed by an interlocking social elite that is now teetering on the edge of collapse, I think the odds of a productive conversation are better than you allow.

In any case, opposition to serious, deep-rooted evil always carries risk. Those risks are acceptable. I do not endorse the John Brown method, but you should give some actual thought to what John Brown actually did, and how we regard him today. Likewise, you should consider how small the percentage of Americans were who were actually willing to fight explicitly for abolition, even well into the war.

And in this case, where I observe that approval being established by overwhelming amounts of propaganda on one side of the issue

You've been making your arguments for decades and can't even win referenda in Kansas or Missouri.

More comments

David Cole wrote:

The late German historian Martin Broszat, another highly respected advocate of the “weak dictator” theory, went so far as to say that Hitler’s rhetoric inadvertently (that’s the key word there) caused the Holocaust. As summarized by Mommsen in a 1987 essay, Broszat’s thesis was that “utterances by Hitler that stood in a primarily propagandistic context were taken by the party radicals at face value. What was meant metaphorically thereby became actual policy.”

Think something similar happened here. Rhetoric that was meant to be taken as overheated hyperbole ("abortion is murder!") became taken literally. Now you have the guy above who thinks 63% of women in his country are child killers or would-be child killers and oozes with contempt for young men who commit the crime of wanting to marry that cute girl four doors down. Pro-lifers should ask themselves whether creating such a person was a good idea in retrospect.

To be clear, you're arguing that the side of the political aisle that voices moral disapproval of the industrialized slaughter of infants thereby demonstrates themselves to be Naziesque?

No. It's an analogy. The pattern can be seen in other contexts. Radical feminists who said "gender is a social construct" inspired the transgender movement when people took literally what was supposed to be hyperbolic propaganda, a movement that would later turn on them.

Rhetoric that was meant to be taken as overheated hyperbole ("abortion is murder!") became taken literally.

For many of us, it was never overheated hyperbole. We meant it, and we still mean it.

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