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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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which implicitly means that there is some amount of premature violent death of children we are collectively willing to tolerate as the price of doing business

I hope it is with you in your social circle as with the anarchist in "The Man Who Was Thursday" 😁

"I preached blood and murder to those women day and night, and—by God!—they would let me wheel their perambulators.”

Though it would be a unique selling point for a creche or daycare: "Some small number of premature violent death may occur on these premises, kindly remember that, should it happen to your children, you are helping preserve our liberties".

Those daycares exist all over the place. They're called Scout camps, of which there are hundreds; rock climbing gyms of which there are nearly one thousand and martial arts gyms of which there are over 40,000 most of which run various kids programs and make their money that way; more than one million kids play tackle football, mostly boys, while more than a million girls compete in horseback riding.

Everyone knows there are risks in those activities, yet place their kids in them anyway. Everyone who participated in them knows someone maimed or killed. But they're wildly popular.

I have absolutely no idea what point you're trying to make.

Just that in the week where there's new stories about the young girls drowned in the Texas floods, a statement about "a certain amount of violent deaths of children happens and we shouldn't get our knickers in a twist over that" sounds a little tone-deaf.

Good thing that's not what I said, so.