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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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It’s unlikely that illiberality is genetic, because its modern instantiation is new (1960s onward), the ancestors of the liberals were all at one point monarchists, and it’s correlated to where you are born.

If you believe that aggression and selfishness are partially influenced by genetics, as I do, there are more humane ways to guide the breeding of humans. In Europe’s past, they executed criminals for murder and theft over a certain amount, and the “social reinforcement propaganda” led to kind/sharing people having many children. Any breeding program would have to solve the border crisis though, or develop insular endogamy practices.

I agree. Outwardly signaled Political Illiberality being genetic in any reliable, context free way strikes me as absurd because it would require that George Washington and Harry Washington had completely different underlying genetic motivations, though both perceived themselves as fighting for their own freedom.