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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

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I mean, as I said

Depends on your diagnosis of the problem. If you believe, as I increasingly do, that most of our societal ills with corruption and collapse of state capacity revolve around the mass importation of high time preference demographics incapable at a genetic level of pursuing generational projects, deporting them is not only a solution, but the only solution. Because with that anchor tied to your feet, no state project, be it reinvigorating capitalism, monopoly busting or state run grocery stores can possibly succeed. If the labor market is flooded with lazy scammers who shameless loot the till, it's not going to matter if the grocery store is a coop, state run, unionized or anything.

I can nearly promise you, with that much state money being dumped into the project and with that little food on shelves, there is a "community organizer" driving around in a brand new BMW involved somewhere.

I mean, as I said

Interesting comment...

From my perspective, America has outperformed its economic peers in Europe and Asia over the last forty years despite this supposed "anchor". It's not that I'm completely allergic to your argument, but I do think more evidence is required before, um, deporting everyone you think is genetically incapable of "pursuing generational projects".

I will admit to a bias here. I live in Northern Virginia in a HCOL area where I'm surrounded by immigrants. I grew up here and stayed to raise my family. My eldest is going to enter the same public high school I went to. The children of the first generation immigrants I went to school with now have their own families and, like me, have stayed in the same county to raise their children. They're indistinguishable from my family in the ways that matter to me. The neighborhoods are immaculate and the people are friendly, like they were when I was a kid. The generational project seems to be working pretty well from my perspective! You may have had much more negative experiences with immigrants.

As I said in my first post, I found this forum in a roundabout kind of way through via Alexander Turok's Twitter account. I see he's banned now lol. But now that I'm here, I'm curious to know if your perspective is the prevailing opinion here. That would be fine, of course! I need some ideological diversity in my media diet.

I see he's banned now lol. But now that I'm here, I'm curious to know if your perspective is the prevailing opinion here.

WhiningCoil is flirting with a permanent ban himself, actually.

"Deport them all" is certainly an opinion some people have here, but as loudly as it is sometimes expressed I would not bet that it is prevailing. It's not uncommon for people to make the libertarian argument for open borders, for example--Bryan Caplan has some cachet in the rationalsphere.

I think your circumstances are not unusual. But there is a potential rejoinder you might want to consider--

My eldest is going to enter the same public high school I went to. The children of the first generation immigrants I went to school with now have their own families and, like me, have stayed in the same county to raise their children. They're indistinguishable from my family in the ways that matter to me.

That's great--my classical liberal heart is warmed--but it would be interesting to know for certain whether you are indistinguishable from their family in the ways that matter to them. If one demographic says "we love everyone, we help everyone equally, this is how we all work together to make the world a better place," but the other demographic responds "thanks for the help, we're going to take everything that is given to us to help our ingroup and, if possible, to become the dominant power, at which point we will then suppress our outgroup." The quote from Frank Herbert's Dune books is--

When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.

I am not saying this is how your neighbors think! I hope it is not how they think. But that is the angle and the concern that tends to arise when people make arguments like the one you have made here.

WhiningCoil is flirting with a permanent ban himself, actually.

Yeah, about that, I sent a modmail about this accusation that I'm running alts, because it's bullshit, and I'd appreciate a response.

Hopefully you see my response. I am not aware of any accusations of you running alts. In the past year you have accumulated AAQCs, warnings, and bans in approximately equal proportion. These are always hard cases for us, because we can see that you're smart enough to understand and follow the rules, and you create excellent content for the community on a regular basis. So we actively resist banning you, but you blatantly violate the rules way too often for us to simply ignore. Your current balance is such that you really are flirting with a perma, or at least a very long term (90+ days) ban.

I see. Yeah, no, as far as I know that's just a reference to his reddit username, which is/was not "WhiningCoil." The mod team was discussing WhiningCoil's status just yesterday and no one made any mention of alt accounts at that time.

Yeah, no, as far as I know that's just a reference to his reddit username

I don't think so.

I know what your original account was on reddit (1). You switched to a new one (2), came here with yet another one (3), and I am pretty sure you went through a couple others (4+) along the way-I will admit I might be misremembering those (though I think I could name them). I do know you have been modded and banned pretty regularly under whichever alt you're using.

Numbering is mine. Amadan seems to think I've had at least 4 accounts and is holding this against me in his moderation decisions.

Numbering is mine. Amadan seems to think I've had at least 4 accounts and is holding this against me in his moderation decisions.

I did believe you have gone through at least four accounts between reddit and here. I did not hold that against you in my moderation decisions.

You have told me (in modmail) that this is incorrect, you never had any other accounts. As I told you in the response you apparently won't read, I will take your word for that and apologize for my error. But it doesn't matter, because as @naraburns and I said, "running alts" was never one of the issues with you. (I never claimed nor thought you were using alts for ban evasion.)