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I've been thinking about why some people are terrified of Trump while others, like me, are more indifferent. I mostly tune out Trump news because I assume much of it involves scare tactics or misleading framing by his detractors. When my wife brings up concerns about his supposedly authoritarian actions, my general response is that if what he's doing is illegal, the governmental process will handle it - and if it's legal, then that's how the system is supposed to work. I have faith that our institutions have the checks and balances to deal with any presidential overreach appropriately.
This reminded me of a mirror situation during 2020-2021 with the BLM movement, where our positions were reversed. I was deeply concerned about social media mobs pressuring corporations, governments, and individuals to conform under threat of job loss, boycotts, and riots, while my wife thought these social pressures were justified and would naturally self-correct if they went too far. The key difference I see is that the government has built-in checks and balances designed to prevent abuse of power, while social movements and mob pressure operate without those same institutional restraints. It seems like we each trust different institutional mechanisms, but I can't help but think that formal governmental processes with built-in restraints are more reliable than grassroots social pressure that operates without those same safeguards. Furthermore, the media seems incentivized to amplify fear about Trump but not about grassroots social movements - Trump generates clicks and outrage regardless of which side you're on, while criticizing social movements risks alienating the platforms' own user base and advertiser-friendly demographics.
I don't like trump because he's made my situation materially worse and is likely to continue to do so. I don't like trump because he profits the outgroup at the expense of the ingroup. I don't like trump because I'm ideologically and morally opposed to his positions. I don't like trump because I think he is, personally, a very immoral individual.
In principle, you could convince me that any particular complaint is overblown. There are plenty of immoral, harmful, outgroup people I don't feel nearly the vitriol for. But Trump is the perfect storm; He's not just a villain, he's a villain that gratuitously kicks puppies. Sure, the media environment contributes to what you call "terror", but that's strictly adaptive. Everyone on my "side" would agree, sober-minded, that Trump is the single most important political figure to oppose. Adding a component of emotional motivation increases the time and pleasure in doing so. Consider any ideological cause leftists and liberals are interested in: creedal citizenship, wealth redistribution, climate change, alphabet people, etcetera. Assuming conflict theory, it's obvious that "Depose Donald Trump" is the first step in promoting any of them. The only reason to do anything else is if you believe in mistake theory instead-- but Donald Trump is congenitally incapable of admitting mistakes (except in the "fifty stalins" sense) which means any attempt to find common ground just gets ran over by his conflict theory instead.
This is off topic but: I am very interested in discussing this issue. I've seen the idea floated, I can grok it, but evey conversation where it's brought up seems to gloss over key details, that I'd really like to hear more about. If you could go into your views on the subject and answer some questions, I'd be much obliged.
Alright, here's my contribution: It sure would be nice if one society could manage to agree to one set of core values and live by them and everyone pulls on the same rope, as we say here, and also that creed turns out to be a really good one and there's nothing wrong with it. Others can come in so long as they comply with this creed. People are kicked out when they don't. But the creed is good, and the nation prospers.
Failure modes:
I'm rambling a little. My core point is this: A creedal nation, if poorly thought out, will just be any western country as it exists right now, or a totalitarian nightmare, or something entirely unlike what we (for a given vaue of we) currently envision or desire.
IMO it's all hot air anyways. The future won't give a shit about what people believe or what ethnicity they might be traced back to. Technological totalitarianism that has full control of each and every individual seems more likely than grand social experiments of the feel-good kind.
The Amish? Depending on your definition of 'prosper'.
Actually a good example, thanks.
But would the Amish work if they weren't embedded inside a larger country?
It's complicated. They can't protect from depredations by more advanced neighbours, so in that sense no. But they aren't necessarily competing for the same type of resources. 'Produces food if you leave them alone' isn't the worst civilisation trait to have in a neighbour but it depends on whether you are Nuclear Gandhi.
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Sure. Basically I think the purpose of a state is to be a back-scratching club: designate an ingroup, and then work to benefit them. The question, then, is what makes the ingroup-- and the answer, as with all back-scratching clubs, is people who agree to mutually benefit each other. That shared self-interest creates the first, and deepest, common value, on top of which all others are built on. Nations built on ethnicity, language, region, or skin color, are just Schelling points for applying that self-interest. But while those things can serve as unifying elements, they're not intrinsically helpful for scratching backs. But culture, and religion, are both adaptive-- they're collections of traits that help perpetuate the groups that bear them. Therefore it makes perfect sense to center a nation around them.
To be clear, as a catholic, I disagree pretty heavily with many liberals and virtually every leftist about what "creed" the nation should be based on, and how the government should contribute to its enforcement. But I think by far the bigger threat is a government that excludes people who indisputably share my creed, versus a government that would try and promote another creed. By the very virtue of me believing the things I believe, I should rationally think they're the best beliefs, and that they're guaranteed to eventually win. The benefits of pulling in allies therefore massively outweighs the risk of allowing in enemies.
Here you imply what is the main issue I have with the western liberal's version of this, and why they are unable to apply it in a way that actually functions; an ingroup implies the existence of outgroups, or at least of people not in the ingroup. If extremely illiberal Muslims are supposed to be in our ingroup, who isn't? If people are denied a coherent definition of their ingroup, they cannot believe it will scratch their back, so they fall back on base individualism and all the civilisational gains that were achieved by nationalism slowly decay.
Honestly, I truly believe that the only thing that could potentially unite humanity in the way globalists dream of is the discovery of alien intelligence advanced enough to exclude from our ingroup. Because there is never an us without a them.
That's not what western progressive leftists believe, though. To them, the Muslims aren't actually illiberal themselves but simply conditioned to illiberal habits by the illiberal societies that oppressed them, and having escaped to the liberal West, they are sure to adopt liberal norms if not swiftly then at least certainly over enough time (and any failure to do so is because our own Western societies have too much residual illiberalism).
The temporarily embarassed liberal muslim is supposed to be our ingroup.
The Nazis.
Obviously.
(Where "The Nazis" is anyone who actively rejects the leftist agenda.)
Hence the lack of coherency, as it doesn't escape the public that the average modern "Nazi" has more in common with them and with good western liberals than an average practicing Muslim, and that the practicing Muslim has more in common with the historical Nazi (including strong hatred of Jews, totalizing politics)
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extremely illiberal muslims shouldn't be in our ingroup (by default; I'd make attempts to convert them and bring them in). I'm very pro-coherent-definition. I'm happy with making an us/them distinction. I just want to make it on the basis of adhering to a particular creed, rather than arbitrarily assigning it via ancestry.
Yes, I am too a civic nationalist, and would like for this to work. But I find few liberals are okay with enforcing the clear us/them distinction, because it doesn't "feel" liberal to do so.
Nah, they're 100% okay with it, they just use a distinction that's largely orthogonal to the conservative civic nationalist one. Look at the hysteria about "gentrifiers", for example.
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And people who lie about it. And people who half-heartedly agree to it just enough to be let in. And people who are born into it and then reject it but there's no mechanism for excluding them or making them comply.
Best as in most beneficial to hold, or best as in most able to propagate in a competitive environment? Because a belief that is the one may not also be the other.
What makes you think I'm against compliance mechanisms? I believe the government has a duty and an interest in enforcing prosocial behavior. That's the entire point of creedal citizenship! You can say that it's a problem that people might defect against shared values and I'd agree with you, but it's crazy talk to identify the shared values as the problem, rather than the defection. A society built on-- for example-- shared ancestry, doesn't even get to the starting line!
For every belief I have, if I thought there was a more beneficial belief to posses, I would believe that instead. Therefore I can rationally conclude that I have the most-beneficial beliefs. My meta-confidence isn't 100%, since I could imagine learning reasons to swap out my beliefs again-- but for that exact reason it makes sense to bring in people with competing beliefs, so that I can either convert them, dominate them, or assimilate their more-adaptive traits.
Nothing. I don't think I said as much, either. I'm taking modern-day pseudo-creedal states and pointing out one of their failure modes as something to consider in this discussion.
If the shared values promote or tolerate continuous large-scale defection or prohibit acting against defection, then yes I certainly identify the shared values as the problem.
A society built on shared ancestry, depending on which ancestry that is, may not have to. I'm not saying it's universally superior to creedal citizenship, but in many cases, especially where the ancestry is an especially good one or the creed an especially bad one, it certainly would be.
This presupposes that you are indeed a competent judge of how beneficial a given belief is, and able to jettison old ones and replace them with new ones at will. You might be.
It's fair to identify particular values of particular creedal societies as being problematic. But as a trivial proof, an ideal creedal society is always better than an ideal ancestral society because the ideal creedal society can just capture whatever makes an ancestry "good" without the intermediary layer. It's like this: if you want the most law-abiding people in your society, you can admit people based on some proxy for law-abidingness, e.g., good SAT scores-- but that's always going to end up being less effective than just admitting them based on their actual history of abiding by the law. That applies ESPECIALLY if you take a strongly hereditarian position. If your entrance mechanism is looking for common descent, that actually relatively disadvantages the pro-social traits you assume are correlated with the descent.
That theory might work out for a society of completely atomized individuals, but...I dunno, I realize my perspective here is outdated and my even own life increasingly looks unlike it. But isn't a society a rather complex web of relationships? Not just on the level of the individual, but of places, families, institutions, cultural touchstones, language...Just dragging individuals out of one society to drop them into another results not in a society as I understand it but rather in a disjointed mass of people. There's probably a wide inferential gulf between us here. I'm sure that if you throw people into a creedal melting pot and wait for long enough, you do get something that resembles society-as-I-understand-it, but on the other hand I'm also pretty thoroughly convinced that if you keep stirring and throwing in new people that have nothing to do with the ones already in, what you get instead is just atomization again.
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Descent may be harder to fake and easier to test for though, at least at low resolutions.
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This touches on the first question I was planning to ask - how should it contribute to it's enforcement? I would imagine that with a name like "creedal citizenship" it would at a minimum mean disenfranchisement of anyone who doesn't follow the creed. If that's how it is to work, I agree that a coherent nation can be formed this way, but you go on to say that over-exclusion is worse than over-inclusion. This makes it sound rather wishy-washy, and I don't know that a creedal nation can stay coherent, if you can participate without following the creed it's based on.
I think I disagree. If you have a nation that's 98% Catholic, facing the importation of a sizeable population of Muslims, with some Middle-Eastern Christians sprinkled in, that seems like a clear example of excluding people who share your creed being to your benefit.
If you're this optimistic about your ideas winning, I suppose that makes sense, but I think it's far from guaranteed. It's particularly strange to hear it from a Catholic.
Even if you're right, it's not clear it's worth the costs. For example, Communism may be destined to lose to capitalism (or whatever economic system you prefer), that doesn't mean there's any benefit in giving political power to communists.
How many grains of sand does it take to form a heap?
"Coherent" is, ironically, an incoherent target. Rather than create a few hard rules, it makes more sense to define a number of overton windows and accept that they're going to shift over time... but within a self-correcting framework that advantages particular kinds of evolution.
Assuming I had a creedal nation like I wanted, there would be particular mechanisms in place to enforce that creed, which people against that creed would likely be unable to tolerate. but if muslims really want to come to a country where you have to attend church on sundays to be able to vote, then I'll take the win with grace, and welcome all the soon-to-be-converts.
(apply this to your capitalist/communist objection too.)
???
I think God is willing to personally intervene on behalf of my religious community... and you think it's strange that I'm confident? I think it would be stranger if I wasn't! The truth is an asymmetric weapon. If I'm right, then I should be confident that I'll win. Not in the short term, maybe, but in a general, cosmic sense. And if I'm wrong... then I should have no fear of being set right!
How's that relevant to anything I said?
Well, I think that's a recipe for having your creed undermined and completely subverted over time, but that's beside the point. I'd like to know some specifics. What happens to people who stray outside these overton windows? What specific self-correcting mechanisms are you talking about?
That's great, I think it would work as well. However, you said that even though you disagree with leftists and liberals on matters of creed, you "think by far the bigger threat is a government that excludes people who indisputably share my creed, versus a government that would try and promote another creed" and went on to say how you're confident truth will win out in the end. This would imply that you'd be fine with importing a sizable Muslim minority even if you didn't have the ability to force them to go to church, and that the costs of excluding the tiny amount of Christians would outweigh the costs of excluding the Muslims, even under those circumstances.
Have I misunderstood something?
Correct. Catholics aren't known for just letting it go, because they're confident the truth will win out in the end. They are known for a highly organized church, a highly formalized dogma, and putting significant resources into their maintenance, and proselytization. It's like that quip from Star Control "peaceful missions through the cosmos rarely require weapons large enough to punch holes through a small moon".
Yes. It's not the only one though, and the other ones might have the advantage depending on the situation. You wouldn't be considering forcing people to go to church otherwise.
Huh? If you're wrong about the truth winning out in the general cosmic sense, you should have no fear of being set right? Wouldn't that be your absolute worst case scenario? If you actually had the truth, but it lost, because you refused to fight for it?
Reference to the sororitas paradox. "Coherent" isn't a well-defined idea. You can come up with a definition to make anything coherent or incoherent. I'd rather speak in terms of degrees-- accepting that any social target is going to have to be fuzzy, and working to keep it useful over trying to define hard boundaries.
The same thing that currently happens. Escalating levels of social sanctions followed by criminal punishments.
That's accurate.
Being confident in God isn't incompatible with working hard toward virtuous ends. "Faith without works..." etcetera etcetera.
It's not about being afraid of muslims, it's about, it's that going to (a proper) church is a strictly good thing, for both the individual and the community. Rather than impose it because I'm afraid of an enemy group, I'd impose it because "getting people to do good things" is one of the main purposes of a community. And yes, as a consequence, it would keep out bad people and bring in good people. My beliefs are the best; that's exactly what I'd expect them to do.
If I'm wrong about having the best (most beneficial) beliefs, then I have no fear of adopting better beliefs. You're missing the point by focusing on "truth" here. Of course, I also believe that my beliefs are true, but that's noncentral.
Fuziness does not imply incoherence, my approach is pretty much identical to yours, and you're just arguing over semantics. What I said was that with "over-exclusion is worse then over-inclusion" approach, you will turn the category of the nation useless.
Well... do you mind providing some details? General rules as to what kind of transgressions would meet with what kind of sanctions? Examples?
You're really not making this easy... What is? My description of your views, or the statement that I misunderstood something? If the latter, could you put some effort into bridging the inferential gap? Where do you think I've gone wrong?
I'm not sure how else I'm suppose to interpret it. If the main contingent pushing the idea of a creedal nation are the liberals / the left, you strongly disagree with their creed and how it should be enforced, but "think by far the bigger threat is a government that excludes people who indisputably share my creed, versus a government that would try and promote another creed", how specifically would you prevent the importation of a sizable Muslim minority if that idea gained traction? This isn't much of a hypothetical, by the way, actually existing 90+% Catholic countries ended up going the "mass migration with no creed enforcement" route because they drank the liberal Kool-Aid.
Yeah, and carrying weapons large enough to punch holes through a small moon is not, strictly speaking, incompatible with a peaceful mission through the cosmos. It does say a lot about what kind of universe you believe you're living in, though.
And if it can be shown that a mosque is a proper church, with similar advantages for individuals and their communities, you'd be ok with that, and you'd enforce your rule by forcing people to go to EITHER a mosque OR a Catholic church?
What was the point of the "truth is an asymmetric weapon" thing then?
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How about second-class or otherwise tiered or modular citizenship?
Yeah... something. I'd like to know what the idea's proponents have in mind.
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Do you think lefties like creedal citizenship? Because that's been the opposite of what I've seen and heard.
They might not conceive of their position as such, but in practice they're in favor of letting in every refugee who claims to be part of the alphabet. Meanwhile, they're mostly in favor of taking away the privileges of citizenship from groups like, for example, nazis. (They might not want to change their citizenship status on paper, but the powers citizenship confers are more important than the actual accounting value.)
Again, I don't believe in their creed, but I agree with them that in principle, someone with the right creed should be allowed the privileges of citizenship (after some time spent proving themselves) regardless of ancestry, and that people granted the privileges of citizenship should be inculcated with particular values.
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JD Vance characterised lefties recently as being believers in creedal citizenship, whereas Vance prefers a citizenship based on ancestral line (with creed actually not being part of it at all). I don't really agree with him as I don't think it is a uniting feature of the left but I guess it's probably true that the right is less likely to believe creed is 'enough'.
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