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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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outsiders enlisting (or hiring) locals to help the outsiders take over.

Re immigration, you are positing something completely different: Locals enlisting outsiders to allow those ** locals **to gain political advantage.

I understand now.

Assumption: non-whites lack agency.

When the Nizam of Hyderabad allies with the British for mutual advantage, this is outsiders enlisting locals since Indians lack agency.

When white American Democrats enlist Mexican immigrants to ally with them for mutual advantage, this is locals enlisting outsiders since Mexicans lack agency.

I don't know what you mean by "taking over". In terms of control over daily life that is demanded, certainly American Democrats and their Mexican allies want far more control over my life than the British ever did. All the British wanted was for my local ruler to send them some tax money, and maybe they'd build roads and schools.

Assumption: non-whites lack agency.

Nope. Please read more carefully.

I don't know what you mean by "taking over".

Yes, you do. You said so yourself: "So basically, the theory is that an alliance between colonialists and domestic factions will result in political domination."

In terms of control over daily life that is demanded, certainly American Democrats and their Mexican allies want far more control over my life than the British ever did.

And American Republicans and their allies also want more control over your life, just different aspects. They want to say who you can marry, or who you can sleep with, or whether you can have an abortion, etc, etc. The only group who want less control in principle are libertarians, but then they are also pro-immigration.

Nope. Please read more carefully.

tl;dr; you refuse to provide a clear principle by which I can determine whether it's locals enlisting outsiders or outsiders enlisting locals. This makes me question your good faith.

You said so yourself: "So basically, the theory is that an alliance between colonialists and domestic factions will result in political domination."

If colonialism is political domination at a level as low as that of the Nizam of Hyderabad or British Bengal, then Democrats and their Mexican allies are far past that point. I note you again refuse to state a clear principle. Odd.

I do agree that American Republicans want more control over my life than the British did, they are irrelevant to this conversation since they don't plan to make it happen by bringing in foreigners to help them.

You are also grossly misrepresenting their positions.

They want to say who you can marry,

No Republican has ever proposed a law saying I can't declare a man to be my husband, put him in my will and make him my medical proxy. They just said he can't get my social security benefits when I die.

or who you can sleep with,

This is not a mainstream Republican position and has not been for many years.

or whether you can have an abortion, etc, etc.

This last bit is true. The British also wanted control over whether I could burn a widow or keep slaves.

Well, if you claim that you can't determine whether it's locals enlisting outsiders or outsiders enlisting locals, then I question your good faith, so we are even.

I literally gave a principle a few comments up that lets me determine whether it's locals enlisting outsiders. I can't think of any cases where that principle fails to reproduce leftist views, though I can think of one edge case (and a fix, simply using the term "adjacent" as modern leftists do).

https://www.themotte.org/post/221/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/40194?context=8#context

Why do you feel the need to misrepresent what I said?