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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   25681 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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Ezra Klein in the pages of the NYT on why the Democrats need to Shutdown the government.

TLDR: Trump is an authoritarian.

Back in March, Democrats justified keeping the government open by saying that the courts were restraining Trump, that a shutdown would only accelerate his executive power, and that markets were already punishing his recklessness re tarrifs. But now with Trump firing dissenters, using federal agencies against political enemies, and enriching himself and his allies through foreign investments and unchecked power, Klein says that none of those arguments hold anymore. The Supreme Court is now backing Trump on key issues, DOGE’s chaotic dismantling of the bureaucracy has slowed because Trump loyalists are running it, and the markets have largely adapted to the new normal.

Maybe the markets have normalized, but we shouldn't according to Klein. Democrats are politically and morally failing by continuing to fund a government that has become an instrument of authoritarianism. He outlines how Democrats could frame a compelling message around corruption and abuse of power, citing Senator Jon Ossoff’s July speech as an example of effective messaging that ties everyday struggles (like high medical costs and housing insecurity) to elite corruption. Specific examples the firing of agency heads like those at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Defense Intelligence Agency for political reasons, targeted investigations into critics such as Senator Adam Schiff and Attorney General Tish James, the FBI’s raid on Bolton’s home, masked ICE agents now conducting raids without identification or warrants, and National Guard troops being deployed to cities LA and DC.

Nothing good ever follows when Ezra Klein starts the sentence. The dems lost fair and square, they brought their current predicament on their own. They are so unpopular at this point a good chunk of the population would actually be down for God Emperor Trump and his bloodline lineage.

Who wouldn't want crown prince Baron?

Anyone who is familiar with the Five Good Emperors and why it wasn't six.

Because Marcus Aurelius - the coward that he was - lacked the strenght to at least disinherit his useless son Commodus, or even better to strangle him in his crib? Baron is no Commodus.

The unpopularity of the Democrats is part of Klein's point, though. Their own base is unhappy with them, it seems partly because they are not perceived as doing enough to fight or to interfere with Trump's agenda.

And... they would seem to have a reasonable mandate to do that. Opposition parties are, in fact, supposed to oppose the government party and hold it responsible. The Democratic members of congress have obligations to represent the people who elected them and to make decisions that they perceive as in the interests of the country as a whole. The American constitutional system does not ask representatives to shut up and roll over just because the president is from a different party.

I don't think a government shutdown is a good idea myself, or a good move for Democrats, but Democrats absolutely should use the positions they have to do things that their voters want, or that they think is good for the country, and both those principles mean opposing some of what the government is doing.

I realize hypocrisy is a built-in part of being human, and of politicians in particular, but if the dems do this then all of the crap they said about Republicans being obstructionist, unwilling to compromise, etc. back in the Obama era when they tried similar strategies will make for some very easy (and easy to go viral) soundbites.

Oh, sure. I expect both Democrats and Republicans to make up rules on the spot to justify whatever it is that's in their advantage to do. Neither side is particularly scrupulous or principled.

What I mean is just that, in this context, I don't see any reason why the Democrats shouldn't try to do things that they think their voters might want, or which will obstruct their political opponents. Trump winning the presidency in 2024 does not imply that the other side ought to sit down, shut up, and let him do whatever he wants.

Jonah Goldberg often criticises the concept of a 'mandate', and I think he's broadly correct. If we're going to invest a lot in mandates, every individual member of a congress has a mandate, and in the case of Democrats, that seems a lot like a mandate to oppose the Republicans, or oppose Trump. "You lost fair and square" is a bad objection to Democratic congressmen pursuing their own mandates. Politics is always going on all the time, power is always being renegotiated, and no side is entitled to their enemies laying down arms.

Just reversing partisanship isn't always a good tool, but it is helpful sometimes. If it were a Democratic president and obstructive Republicans in congress, would the same people agree that Republicans lost fair and square and ought to just let the president do what he wants? I don't think so. I think they'd want congressional Republicans to use all the leverage they have to extract concessions or limit what the president can do.

"You lost fair and square" is a bad objection to Democratic congressmen pursuing their own mandates. Politics is always going on all the time, power is always being renegotiated, and no side is entitled to their enemies laying down arms.

In the words of Nancy Pelosi, "elections have consequences."

What does that have to do with the point under discussion?

Jonah Goldberg often criticises the concept of a 'mandate', and I think he's broadly correct.

It has to do with this part.

In what way does Pelosi's comment have any bearing on that?

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Klein is making a cope argument. It may be cope because the Democratic decision is driven by internal politics and he's trying to justify it, but the conclusion does not follow from the premise.

If Trump is an authoritarian because he is using largely established executive powers to reshape (and reduce) the executive branch and remove Democratic-favored official from the executive branch, it becomes more, not less, important to pass a budget. This is because the spending laws are where Congress gives the legal stipulations for what Trump can, and cannot, do with money from Congress, and can/cannot do to the agencies receiving money from Congress. Most of what DOGE was able to do with regards to agencies like, say, USAID, was precisely because Congress had never passed a bill inserting language stipulating a size / appointment process / etc. Because there was no Congressionally-dictated form of the created-by-the-executive-not-by-law agencies, what was made by the executive could be unmade by the executive. In turn, when Congress has given stricter stipulations for things in its power to, this has been the legal basis by which the more enduring court orders have managed to be upheld by.

If / when Klein's shutdown argument comes to pass, Trump gains, more power over removing select officials and ending disfavored programs, not less, because the government shutdown is- by definition- a result of Congress not authorizing the government to spend as much money on people, places, and things not already covered in other legislation. Moreover, Congress has already legislated who has the legal authority to prioritize closures, dismissals, cancellations, and so on in case of a shutdown... and that person is the executive. DOGE showed its limits relatively early in how much authority it had over direct employee terminations (which is to say- basically none in legally-structured agencies), but the Executive has a lot more freedom in choosing which parts of the government to turn off first, and longest, during a shutdown.

Where this time is different- and where the Democrats are setting up for an own-goal as far as preserving the institutions they want preserved goes- is that Trump can basically use a government shutdown as a legal basis for broader scale agency suspensions of contracts / efforts / etc. in ways he couldn't/didn't during the supplementary period. DOGE showed its limits on direct manning by having basically no actual authority over other departments or legally-obligated programs. In a shutdown, the executive gets to formally categorize members of departments by their judged level of essentialness. Non-essential people go home, and don't get paychecks, and keep not getting paychecks until either the shutdown is over, or they quit and get another job.

The parts of the US government most resilient to the effects of a shutdown due to how the legislations are structured are also the parts the Republicans are most comfortable with. The parts of the US government most affected by a shutdown are the parts the Democrat party cares most about.

The main way the Democrats have to keep those programs around is to make their continuation a matter of law. Legally obligating the government to shut it down is the same vibes-based thinking that droves most of the list of the last paragraph of alleged abuses that are largely not.

Yeah I dunno. I held my nose and voted for Harris. That said, If Trump has any disciplining force against him, it's the judgement of equities markets. We continually rack up all time highs during his terms and he shamelessly chickens out if the markets are spooked even slightly. That's actually incredibly reassuring?

This isn't just a rich people concern. Most Americans are unwitting capitalists, their retirement funds hold public companies and public companies are majority owned by retirement funds. The health of equities markets are the wealth of Americans.

I know markets aren't a complete moral compass but they're also not best friends with tyrants either. The authoritarian framing just doesn't hold up.

Ideally Trump would also be guided by, like, a moral framework but in the grand scheme of things this is still pretty good. It'd be pretty miserable to have a morally upright social justice hero that was completely indifferent to declining markets, for example.

Would shutting the government actually get the democrats what they want? Or would Trump just continue to govern by executive order and campaign on democrats shutting the government down?

Yes, but really no.

The democrats want to fight, and if shutting down the government counts then it's getting what they want by definition. However, a lot of the democratic party has reversed the causality on the nature of the government programs they want to keep open. Those programs are not preserved if the government shuts down; rather, a government shut down obligates those programs being closed. Moreover, existing law gives the executive significant leeway in determing who is deemed an essential person and who is not, with non-essential persons basically being sent home and thus unabled to execute any desired programs. These may be what you'll think of as executive orders, but Congress is the root of those authorities.

At best, the democrats can try to take enough other programs that the Republicans care about hostage to coerce the Republicans to protecting / restoring the programs the democrats care about. However, this is a relative pain tolerance issue, and, well...

Well, at least the Democrats can claim to be fighting if the Republican trifecta passes stopgap bills.

History has shown the executive has some flexibility on what stays open and closes in government shutdowns --- see Obama fencing off normally-unstaffed NPS facilities like the National Mall or Mt. Rushmore.

I would at least be slightly concerned about Trump running with it as a massive expansion of the DOGE cuts without accountability for the failures. Something like "Oops, this means we have to cut all [nonessential] grants to universities. Guess who gets to decide what is essential? Would be a shame if we couldn't catch up on budgeted spending within the fiscal year."

However, a lot of the democratic party has reversed the causality on the nature of the government programs they want to keep open. Those programs are not preserved if the government shuts down; rather, a government shut down obligates those programs being closed

I think the other way to read this that isn't confused is that Democrats think Trump being visibly responsible for closing down those programs will generate sufficient public backlash to preserve them or at least force Trump into paying a larger price than letting him walk to his goals slowly would extract.

Trump is not really super ideologically driven on most things and has shown himself willing to bend on things that are unpopular.

I wanna see the shitstorm that will unfold if the dems actually do try to shut down the government but trump aligned sectors within it just continue operations as normal.

Remember when Joe Biden deliberately let in and imported 10 million people for no other reason than he wanted to? Yeah and the republican house just sat there and funded it all over and over.

The house did try to negotiate a "deal" and got somewhere but unfortunately Biden wouldn't budge on the "inport millions of people" part so the deal dieded.

If the democrats shut down the government without even a list of concrete demands that they want, they're going to look like absolute clowns and take all the blame. The only way to win a shutdown or win threatening a shutdown is to makde demands so reasonable and commonsense that the other party will look bad not giving in.

imported 10 million people for no other reason than he wanted to

I'm annoyed by the "imported" framing. Biden didn't wake up one day and go out of his way to coax ten million people into coming to the US. These ten million people wanted to come, and Biden's government elected to not use violence to stop them. This is how any pro-immigration Left-winger thinks of the issue, and you are asking the wrong question at a very deep level if you wonder why they "want" to bring in millions of people. It's simply liberalism taken to its furthest extreme. These people want to come, therefore what right have we to infringe on their freedom by stopping them? How could any amount of missing paperwork justify bringing lethal force to bear against a human being? That's the impulse, and it is a fundamentally moral, compassionate one.

Let this not be mistaken for a pro-open-borders argument on my part. I obviously think America can't afford to let in literally everyone who wants in, for the same reason a private person can't afford to let all the homeless people in town crash on their couch. It's just not reasonable. But it is obvious why someone would "want" to do it - would feel a moral impetus to do it - and the "imported for no clear reason" framing obscures this, which is at once uncharitable to the decision-makers, and obscures the underlying issue of naivete which needs to be confronted head-on if anyone's minds are going to be changed.

Maybe this is a nitpick, but isn't this exactly what people generally mean by "imported?" In 2021, the US imported an average of around 2.39 million metric tons of steel a month. All of that steel had international sellers that wanted it sold and all of it had US buyers that wanted to buy it. I wouldn't say that Biden imported it (if your annoyance with the framing is merely the centering of Biden's role in the process, I don't have a firm position on that subject) but he certainly 'elected to not use violence to stop them.' Conversely, he did forbid the importation of Chinese cars, knowing that order would be enforced through violence if necessary. Those manufacturers want to sell us their cars, what right had he to infringe on their freedom by stopping them?

Illegal immigrants, with few exceptions, wish to come to America to sell their labor; sell fractions of their own lives. It seems entirely appropriate to describe that as 'importation.'

How could any amount of missing paperwork justify bringing lethal force to bear against a human being?

In many instances this is uncontroversial. A pardon is paperwork, after all, so everyone executed by the state or killed in an altercation with the police dies for lack of (certain) paperwork. I don't think this is an especially tortured analogy; pardons and visas are both official endorsements granted to specific individuals the authorities deem worthy that stay punishment for otherwise illegal behavior.

As a matter of fact, I suspect that the vast majority of otherwise justified lethal force could be prevented (or at least rendered unjustified) via appropriate paperwork, given that by the numbers almost all of it is military in nature. (Crime, obviously, is not otherwise justified. Self defense is, but self defense kills a negligible number of people per year compared to war. Police actions are a bigger slice of the pie, but still far, far less. And while some force exercised in war is not justified, surely defense against an unjustified war is.) And any military action could have been countermanded and it is for the lack of that paperwork that the lethal force is brought to bear.

People accept this because paperwork actually means something. The paper doesn't matter at all -- doesn't even exist in a lot of cases in the digital age, I'd imagine -- and trying to reduce official judgments to paper is just ignoring their actual significance; the oft-repeated observation that 'money is just paper, man' comes to mind. Somehow this realization never actually leads to us throwing off the chains of capitalist oppression.

I'm annoyed by the "imported" framing. Biden didn't wake up one day and go out of his way to coax ten million people into coming to the US.

My understanding is that Biden's administration expended significant effort, resources and taxpayer dollars to directly facilitate the entry of foreigners into America in very large quantities. This included far more than passively declining to enforce our numerous laws against illegal entry, and included flying planeloads of such people into the American interior on the Government's dime, and then releasing them into our communities, possibly while directly subsidizing their material needs. It also involved things like expending government resources to remove and to attempt to remove border obstacles, with the goal of directly facilitating illegal border crossings by foreigners.

My understanding is that positive actions like this resulted in millions of foreigners settling in America, in addition to millions more who were able to cross because of Biden's additional, "passive" refusal to enforce immigration laws and the border generally. Am I mistaken?

Let this not be mistaken for a pro-open-borders argument on my part.

Okay. What's your view on the proper way to enforce immigration and the border? If we are not letting literally anyone who comes in, who should we let in? What's your understanding of how many people have come in during Biden's administration? Was that number about right, too high, or too low? What should it have been, and what should have changed to prevent immigration past that amount?

I'm annoyed by the "imported" framing. Biden didn't wake up one day and go out of his way to coax ten million people into coming to the US.

He rather did, and then continued doing it for years.

The Biden administration conducted a number of policy changes upon taking over from the trump administration, changes intended to increase the retention rate of migrants and well communicated to migration-related interolutors. These were changes to a status quo, done deliberately and systemically, with predictable and openly desired results by involved elements of the Biden administration. Biden made multiple domestic legal efforts to broaden the inflow potential, spending non-trivial political capital, to shift the status quo into a more publicly receptive position.

These ten million people wanted to come, and Biden's government elected to not use violence to stop them.

Unless one wants to redefine the term violence, enforcement of migration laws is not violence.

These people want to come, therefore what right have we to infringe on their freedom by stopping them? How could any amount of missing paperwork justify bringing lethal force to bear against a human being? That's the impulse, and it is a fundamentally moral, compassionate one.

Compassion without consideration of the consequence and harms imposed onto others is not compassion.

Rather than compassion, the Democratic stance on migration is much more accurately characterized as a luxury belief, a performative display undertaken only so long as it does not become onus. This was most notably when the Texas migrant bussing began, and then Democrats began panicking at the fiscal burdens of accepting and housing a fraction of the migrants that they'd been in Texas and elsewhere for years.

Self-righteousness and punting the costs onto the outgroup may be a fundamental impulse, but it is not particularly moral.

enforcement of migration laws is not violence

Yes, it definitely is. Legitimate violence is still violence. I don’t mean that as an aspersion, and I’m not convinced @WandererintheWilderness did either. I was surprised to see you take it as such. Would you have objected if he said “elected not to use force” instead?

compassion without consideration…is not compassion.

Yes, it is…sometimes. The obvious example would be charitable giving, or other acts where the cost is presumed to fall mostly on the giver. I would extend this to a number of general social courtesies. If I forgive someone for a mistake, it’s not because I amortized the social cost of not deterring another offense.

More to the point, I think pro-immigration advocates have considered the costs to others, and insist they’re small. Since the migrant busses were subsidized by Texas and Florida Republicans, the recipients could assign blame without reconsidering that belief.

Compassion without consideration of the consequence and harms imposed onto others is not compassion.

Isn't it still compassion, by definition, even if it is harmful? Not sure if the comparison is altogether valid, but violence used to prevent greater violence is still violence.

Unless one wants to redefine the term violence, enforcement of migration laws is not violence.

Sure it is. I mean the term purely descriptively; it's how the business of government happens. The authorities acquire a monopoly on legitimate violence, and use that terrible but awe-some power to enforce laws and regulations for the public good. Enforcing migration laws entails preventing people from crossing the border if they're not allowed to do so, and expelling them if you catch them post hoc. This involves a threat, either explicit or implicit, of physical violence if they don't comply. That's just how it works.

I regard runaway pro-immigration sentiment as a case of people getting irrationally squeamish about one particular area of enforcement, even though they are not consistent anarchists.

I mean the term purely descriptively; it's how the business of government happens.

You used the word pejoratively; it would not make sense as a moral argument justification if it were used in the purely descriptive sense that you now claim.

This involves a threat, either explicit or implicit, of physical violence if they don't comply. That's just how it works.

This line of argument has no limiting factor, and can apply as much to any interaction.

This internet interaction has an implicit possiblity of violence if certain boundaries are not obliged, since you could always turn to internet sleuths or hackers and seek to harm me if I annoyed you enough, or vice versa. Anyone weaker than you could infer an implicit threat of physical violence if they disagreed with you. Even people not weaker than you, but less interested in a topic, could take the firmness of your position as an implicit threat.

Fortunately, actual violence does not work that way, and neither do sound moral arguments resort to categorical pejorative redefinitions.

You used the word pejoratively; it would not make sense as a moral argument justification if it were used in the purely descriptive sense that you now claim.

Yes it would. Or, to put it another way, I meant it in the objective sense of "if you don't comply, the government will send men with guns after you". I don't know what to tell you. There is of course a kind of implicit pejorative there, in that hurting people is wrong in a vacuum. But like anyone sensible, I recognize that violence can be justified in many cases, to prevent a greater evil. The state having the theoretical authority to use violence, and wielding it as a threat to prevent more chaos and suffering, is one such case. This is all pretty basic stuff.

The moral argument brought forward by pro-immigration extremists (when they are not outright anarchists who reject the premise that state violence is ever justified) is that the harm caused to immigrants by repression efforts is greater than any harm runaway immigration could cause. This is a dumb position and checked out from reality. But it has nothing to do with "pejorative redefinitions". It's just an extremely biased analysis with regards to the harms and benefits on both sides. A coherent anti-immigration argument still has to acknowledge that at some level you're saying "were an illegal to ignore all warnings and come anyway, there comes a point where we would physically shove, hit, or shoot that guy until he was no longer on our side of the border". Such an argument simply involves saying that the benefits of such a policy outweigh the minor moral cost of that violence.

Biden didn't wake up one day and go out of his way to coax ten million people into coming to the US.

No, but the people whose organization Biden also belongs to actively did this.

These people want to come, therefore what right have we to infringe on their freedom by stopping them?

Why do we enforce laws against and obsess over human trafficking, but not illegal immigration, even though they're literally the same thing?

It's because one of them negatively affects the average left-wing voter (since when we say "human trafficking", we usually mean "for sex purposes", which means the average domestic woman's ability to demand a price for sex is adversely affected), and one is neutral to positive for that voter (since when we say "illegal immigration", we usually mean "for labor purposes", which means the average domestic man's ability to demand a fair price for labor is adversely affected).

and it is a fundamentally moral, compassionate one.

No, it's concern trolling laundered through a "moral, compassionate" lens.

which means the average domestic woman's ability to demand a price for sex is adversely affected)

The average domestic woman is not competing with literal prostitutes and the average domestic man is offended to imply that about his womanfolk.

No, it's concern trolling laundered through a "moral, compassionate" lens.

See my analogy elsewhere in the thread to pro-choicers who insist that pro-lifers can't possibly be sincerely concerned about the lives of fetuses, and have to be using it as an excuse to oppress women. No! You can disagree with the principles, or you can say (as I do) that this is an impractical way to implement those principles, but your opponents genuinely, sincerely hold those principles! Honest!

Your gloss on human trafficking vs. illegal immigration misses the mark completely due to this baffling refusal to believe that pro-immigration advocates care about immigrants' welfare as human beings, as an end unto itself. "Immigrants" aren't a means to some other end. Liberals approve of "illegal immigrants" because they think of them as individuals trying to act on their own desires whose freedom US border services are unfairly restricting; and they disapprove of "human trafficking" because they think of victims of human trafficking as slaves and abductees whose freedom is being unfairly restricted by the traffickers. This is entirely consistent, and incredibly obvious. If you do not grasp this, then your theory-of-mind of anyone to your left fails completely.

Your gloss on human trafficking vs. illegal immigration misses the mark completely due to this baffling refusal to believe that pro-immigration advocates care about immigrants' welfare as human beings, as an end unto itself.

Those may be their feelings, but closer examination of the actual facts of migration policy reveal this to be, at best, Mrs. Jellyby-ism. So much undocumented immigration is facilitated by truly horrific cartels/people-smugglers that the U.S. government has long balked from designating the cartels as what they are - para-state criminal enterprises fully deserving of the foreign terrorist organization label just like the Haqqani network, Hezbollah, etc. - out of fear that it would open many illegal immigrants to criminal liability for materially-assisting an FTO.

Oh, I agree.

Please don't just post "I agree" posts.

I think "I agree" posts serve an important purpose in situations like this one, where A says something, B replies to A, and then A says "I agree". In that circumstance, specifically A's opinion of what B said is highly relevant, and an upvote wouldn't give B that relevant information because upvotes are anonymous.

More comments

There is much to what you say. It is also true that various leftists have, in unguarded moments, given much much more cynical arguments for immigration. For example, in the Blairite government in the UK:

Mr Neather was a speech writer who worked in Downing Street for Tony Blair and in the Home Office for Jack Straw and David Blunkett, in the early 2000s.

Writing in the Evening Standard, he revealed the "major shift" in immigration policy came after the publication of a policy paper from the Performance and Innovation Unit, a Downing Street think tank based in the Cabinet Office, in 2001.

He wrote a major speech for Barbara Roche, the then immigration minister, in 2000, which was largely based on drafts of the report.

He said the final published version of the report promoted the labour market case for immigration but unpublished versions contained additional reasons, he said.

He wrote: "Earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural.

"I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn't its main purpose – to rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date."

(Emphasis mine)

The Left support for immigration is a confusing mixture of:

  1. compassion towards immigrants
  2. cultural xenophilia and a desire for local non-native cultural enrichment
  3. economic beliefs that high immigration improves GDP and living standards
  4. a political belief that immigrants will support the leftists who are their allies
  5. discomfort with preventing immigrants getting what they want
  6. dislike of common reasons given by the right for opposing immigration - nationalism, anti-xenophilia, crime, religious differences
  7. discomfort following chains of thoughts that might lead to 5 or 6, and concern for the social consequences of doing so where their friends can hear it
  8. mistaken beliefs about the costs of immigration resulting from an ability to externalise them (e.g. the anger when immigrants were bussed to Martha's Vineyard and New York, the fact that lots of immigrants either work in the service industry or in warehouses)

I think it's important to point out as you are doing that people genuinely believe 1-3, but it's also fair to point out that darker motives 4-8 also exist and are not invalidated by 1-3.

I'd add somewhere in your list a feeling of guilt towards historical wrongs and a feeling that sacrificing their own countrymen's welfare in favor of immigrants' is somehow helping make up for it.

True

I think most of it is just economic, to be honest. The two-party consensus is that large-scale immigration is necessary for economic reasons - more workers enable more economic growth, and it fills out the bottom of the population pyramid, which is declining due to demographic transition. (For non-conspiratorial reasons - no one's scheming to reduce the native birthrate, and in fact the birthrate decline is global.)

When asked, neither party usually says that's the reason, though if pressed they will usually mention it as one among others, but I think it's the core reason and most of the rest is rationalisation.

When asked, neither party usually says that's the reason

The Canadian government will just state that business lobbying drove the approvals for temporary foreign workers, and Carney is being admirably clear that it is reason the program cannot simply be stopped despite the widespread belief it was abused after COVID

“When I talk to businesses around the country their No. 1 issue is tariffs, and their No. 2 issue is access to temporary foreign workers,” Carney told reporters.

The debate didn't really get moralized like down south, presumably because the PM had all the tools he needed to achieve his ends without dipping into asylum seekers, who seem especially aggravating.

Maybe. The numbers show that the economics aren’t working in Europe, and various parties have turned against it. Even the Left wing in the UK is nominally against it though for various of the reasons stated it hasn’t actually done very much.

Whether this is downstream of the economics not working out or other factors is hard to say.

Protecting one's borders is no more violence than locking the door to your house is violence to your neighbors. The left's position on this topic is, frankly, nonsense. Understanding it does not justify it.

Protecting one's borders is no more violence than locking the door to your house is violence to your neighbors.

Of course it is. Unless nobody ever contests your borders in the first place, of course you need violence to protect the border. Whether you beat, shoot or tie people up to stop them from crossing illegally, it's still violence. Necessary, advisable, ethical and desirable violence, but violence nontheless.

Well, it's less locking the door and more that one resident continues to invite guests in, only for them to find another resident trying to throw them out, cycling ad-infinitum.

Not that I support the former here, but a fair characterization would mention it.

The actions you must take to physically remove someone who's already in the country when they explicitly do not want to leave the country are violent however.

You may argue this violence is justified (I agree, somewhat), but if the ruling people are extremely averse to violence of government agents being televised, there we are.

Putting someone out who is in my house without permission is violence, in that the intruder is the one committing it. This is a basic axiom of English common law. I have already suffered an injury. It doesn't matter if the intruder is a beggar or the King of England, if he doesn't leave then I am justified in defending myself from the harms already committed.

Putting someone out who is in my house without permission is violence, in that the intruder is the one committing it. This is a basic axiom of English common law.

"Violence" is not a term defined at English common law, and the ordinary English meaning of the term has always included legally justified violence as "violence" and excluded non-violent crimes, let alone non-criminal torts like simple trespass. Breaking into premises has always been a marginal case.

There is a reason why the Libertarian Party pledge avoids the word, and instead talks about "initiating force"

This is a basic axiom of English common law.

Of course, it's trivial to cheat at that simply by declaring the entire nation in violation of that law, then proceeding to selectively enforce it only against those that improved the place.

I don't know why I keep getting replies which assume that I agree with this position when I specifically began my second paragraph with "Let this not be mistaken for a pro-open-borders argument on my part". I am not trying to justify it. I am only trying to get people to understand it. But I don't think OP did understand it, with that baffling talk of "for no other reason than he wanted to".

I am not trying to justify it. I am only trying to get people to understand it. But I don't think OP did understand it, with that baffling talk of "for no other reason than he wanted to".

It’s famously difficult to get someone to understand something when they don’t want to understand it.

Some of it has to do with it being very easy to ignore and talk past someone once you’ve pattern-matched them to “the Enemy”, even if you’re on ‘their side’…

…And some of it has to do with them thinking that they already understand the doubtlessly-malicious real motives of the Enemy, and not particularly being interested in being corrected- after all, how can you be sure that it’s not just Enemy action to try and sow uncertainty about the truth of their sinister motives, and attempt to sway your mind with their propaganda?

I recognize the steelman, I really do. I just really, really hate this argument. It boils my piss. The leftist framing of what is violence against them and what is violence on their part is always a definitional game that somehow excuses terrorism on their part but prevents speech on my part and thus I have an allergic reaction to the violence-discourse.

Isn't using men with guns to do something part of the standard definition of violence? How do illegal immigrants get removed from the country?

I'm actually a little surprised by the people pushing back on this one, as I don't consider it a "leftist framing." It's certainly compatible with a libertarian analysis as well.

Except for literal pacifists, basically every person on Earth agrees violence is acceptable under at least some circumstances, whether it be self-defense, carrying out a just/honorable war, defending ones property or whatever. The police and federal agents use violence to enforce the rule of law in society. I think the vast majority of ordinary people consider ordinary instances of police force/violence to be completely justified and necessary. Without that, you don't have the rule of law at all, you just have a bunch of suggestions and no means of enforcing them.

I agree that walls are not violence, though. But I don't think physical barriers are the primary way we prevent people from getting into or out of the country, or get rid of them once they get here.

I'm actually a little surprised by the people pushing back on this one

I'm not. In the US, at least, right-wing political violence is usually carried out under the guise of law enforcement. Violence by law enforcement is presumed justified and classified as not-actually-violence because it is (mostly) regular and (usually) socially sanctioned. To point out that law enforcement is, in fact, violence is to give left-wing critiques an exploitable breach in the intellectual firewall.

(One can still defend having laws and law enforcement with all of the above, but the point is to not have to in the first place)

Isn't using men with guns to do something part of the standard definition of violence? How do illegal immigrants get removed from the country?

"Worst argument in the world" people, when someone wants to have borders....

Did you read the rest of my comment? I'm not using "violence" in a pejorative sense here, I'm using it because within the linguistic resources of English it is the most general word available, unless I am very much mistaken.

Do you have a better word for that category of human activity that is more neutral? Because I personally don't think the neutral use of the word "violence" should be considered an attempt to try to sway an argument one way or another, because there are many instances where "violence" is morally acceptable and justified, maybe even necessary for the functioning of society.

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Probably because people suspect you are a liberal, and as a liberal, you don't have to agree with the position of an open borders progressive (or true libertarian) to help ensure that massive amounts of immigration happens. Progressives can just use the moral framework that you believe in to wedge in an argument that you can't reject, and therefore immigration that you can't stop. The only way you can stop it is by abandoning your liberal principles. Stopping peaceful migrants requires force that liberals aren't comfortable with. Even though they don't want that much immigration, they ultimately waste their energy on criticizing the only methods that actually work, which are the ones that involve use of force.

Borders and liberals coexisted for a long time before everyone lost their minds. And conservatives were equally useless at arguing against progressives on this topic, as the US demonstrated.

Yes, but their existence wasn't because of the liberals.

I don't know why I keep getting replies which assume that I agree with this position when I specifically began my second paragraph with "Let this not be mistaken for a pro-open-borders argument on my part"

Not doing this is surprisingly hard. But also, people just want to state their objections for the record, it's not necessarily aimed at you.

I don't know why I keep getting replies which assume that I agree with this position when I specifically began my second paragraph with "Let this not be mistaken for a pro-open-borders argument on my part".

Expectations versus reality moment. Important lesson. This is one of the, if not the, best places on the web for this too.

Back when we were on reddit I'd occasionally get bored and post in some other sub and pretty soon my blood pressure would spike and I'd crawl back here and be grateful for the levels of hostile and incompetent reading comprehension we somehow manage to maintain.

How could any amount of missing paperwork justify bringing lethal force to bear against a human being? That's the impulse, and it is a fundamentally moral, compassionate one.

…

the "imported for no clear reason" framing obscures this, which is at once uncharitable to the decision-makers

First of all, thank you for stating clearly the view from within the pro-immigration left’s mindset; it’s one that is based on moral precepts very different from the ones we usually hear about ‘round these here parts, and it’s always good to get a periodic reminder of how the other half lives (and thinks).

Nevertheless, I want to answer the above-quoted passages in good faith, as a not-especially-pro-immigration non-leftist (though I am myself a child of immigrants).

How, indeed, could missing paperwork justify the use of lethal force? In the first place, I would argue that lethal force is seldom necessary to enforce sane immigration policy: simply patrolling the border properly—much easier nowadays with autonomous drones—and enforcing citizenship requirements for any government benefits plus employer compliance with E-Verify or similar, together with harsh penalties for violation and immediate deportation of illegal aliens, would suffice in almost all cases. Still, it is true that deportation is ultimately backed by the threat of force, up to and including lethal force should the prospective deportee resist hard enough. How is this OK? Because the alternative—that is, that we should never enforce immigration law—implicitly grants to every would-be illegal immigrant the unilateral right to nullify American law! Once we let that camel’s nose into the tent, everyone will start asking, quite reasonably, why they should be bound to abide by laws they find immoral, or even merely inconvenient, and what can we say to them? “Actually, the law is subordinate to my particular moral code”? Well, why are your morals better than mine, and by whose authority do your morals supersede the law of the land? And, more darkly, how do you propose to stop people with very different morals from using the same argument, should they ever get their hands on the reins of power? I am reminded of the famous scene from A Man For All Seasons: “Yes, I’d give the devil the benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”

In short, respect for the rule of law—even when your morality disagrees with the law—is the ultimately the only way to prevent a Hobbesian war of all against all. In game theory terms, we most punish defectors, lest everyone think it’s a good idea to defect.

I would also argue that “imported for no clear reason” is the wrong framing—there is a reason, namely that Biden (or his handlers, or the Democrat activist class, or whoever else you want to blame for this decision) wanted to do so, and in particular wanted to do so out of the deeply-held moral sentiments that you have just articulated (in addition to base political considerations, of course). But even granting, charitably, that this policy was the result of well-intended moral judgments rather than mere political gamesmanship, I would say that the decision-makers here are very clearly in the wrong, and it is not at all uncharitable to say so.

The President is the chief executive of the federal government. That means his job is to carry out the law as Congress has created it (and as the judiciary has interpreted it): nothing more and nothing less. In particular, the President’s own moral scruples should play no part in how he faithfully carries out the duties of his office. I have no problem with the President using the “bully pulpit” to argue for or against this or that moral view; nor do I see any issue with an ex-President, in his personal capacity, acting according to whatever moral beliefs he may hold (see, e.g., President Carter and Habitat for Humanity); nor is there anything preventing the President from encouraging Congress to pass laws that accord with his morals. But when he is on the job, the President must hold his personal beliefs aside and execute the role that has been entrusted to him.

An analogy: would it be acceptable for the CEO of a public company to unilaterally decide to sell off all the company’s assets to raise money to give to charity? I would say no: the CEO is answerable to the shareholders, who endowed him with stewardship over their capital in the expectation that he would carefully husband the business to maximize their return on investment. The moral worth of the charity is irrelevant: if the shareholders want to, they can decide to donate to that charity with their own money—and if the CEO decides to give his bonus to the charity, or to briefly bring up the benefits of that charity at the next shareholders’ general meeting, then good for him! But in his capacity as CEO, he has but one mandate entrusted to him by the shareholders, which he is bound to carry out faithfully, personal morals notwithstanding.

employer compliance with E-Verify

Sorry, but this just doesn't do what you think it does. Even in the hands of the most scrupulous employers E-verify is hopeless.

I am 100% on the record that the Federal government should provide some accurate method for employers to verify that applicants are entitled to work (and, stretch goal, be continuously notified if that changes). That doesn't even remotely exist.

I don't believe Biden was unwilling to use force to stop border hoppers- he is, after all, a very moderate democrat with few firm convictions. I suspect that instead he wanted the workers. America, like most other advanced economies, has functionally full employment and a lot of blue collar jobs left unfilled. Japan, Poland, etc are doing the same thing.

"America, like most other advanced economies, has functionally full employment and a lot of blue collar jobs left unfilled. Japan, Poland, etc are doing the same thing."

A blatant lie, easily disproven merely by opening one's eyes. One does not get the millions of fentanyl deaths, the hollowed out Rust Belt, nor the millions upon millions drowning in debt because they literally can't make enough. Nor, for that matter, would you see the H1B shenanigans as employers post tech jobs exclusively in foreign papers, to try and find a loophole around posting requirements.

Good joke putting Japan in there, btw. A nation with employment stats more fraudulent than the US is hard to find, but Japan is up to the challenge, just straight up defining homelessness out of existence. Sorry, but no amount of sophistry is going to get me to pretend that a girl turning tricks to earn enough money to stay at an internet cafe for the night is not, in fact, homeless.

Sorry, but no amount of sophistry is going to get me to pretend that a girl turning tricks to earn enough money to stay at an internet cafe for the night is not, in fact, homeless.

I think a key point here is whether the room's rented on a semi-permanent basis.

I got stuck in motels for a month and a half back in 2022 (after getting summarily ejected from college), and it sucked, because motels tend to have specific dates booked out well in advance forcing you to move motels on a weekly basis or so. It still beats being under a bridge, of course, but it's a hell of a lot worse than having a home.

If the girl can actually hold a specific room for many months, that solves a lot of the problem and is closer to renting than to being homeless. If she has to move regularly, then that brings a lot of the issues with homelessness back into play.

The fact is that you almost never see homeless in Tokyo. I was asked for money perhaps three times in six years of living there. My understanding is that Japanese homeless are much more tractable than American homeless and the government mostly pays to keep them housed without too much trouble.

These stories are certainly disturbing but they're largely sensationalized rarities. Family support systems keep the majority off the streets even if they're personally broke. In the cases where you have a girl in the situation you describe it's almost definitely a case of some sort of seriously bad home life (eg molestation, etc) and not simply "times are hard in Japan." While living in one's parents' home well into adulthood may be odd to those from anglo or European countries, it's not such an anomaly here. When you have a girl who has opted out of that it's for a reason.

Homelessness does exist in Japan, of course, but it's miles away from the type of widespread homelessness you see in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. (I am only naming places I've actually been.)

Japan, Poland, etc are doing the same thing.

Why would that mean anything, let alone that the decisions is justify on material / economic grounds? World elites have remarkably narrow worldviews. Do you think gender self-ID was implemented in a good chunk of Europe for material reasons? Do you think there were BLM marches there because of how badly black people were treated?

Iran and Russia also have economic migrants.

Draw an ideological throughline between Japan, the USA, Russia, Poland, France, Japan, Iran, Germany, etc.

Japan has far fewer economic migrants than other developed countries. That has changed a little recently (and immediately prompted a turn to the right politically). Including them on this list seems unreasonable unless you count having any number of economic migrants at all. There is clearly a difference between what Japan has allowed and what Europe or the United States has allowed.

Just once I'd like to see an example of a country that didn't follow suit and suffered some horrible negative consequences.

Also: sure, I think the leaders of most of these countries are on board for the world depopulation train.

I mean... the communist block arguably qualifies.

Yes, they totally didn't do a whole bunch of other things that are more likely to be responsible for their outcome.

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I think you know at this point that very few people here buy into the moral imperative that liberals and progressives like to invoke when it comes to immigration. It's easy to place myself in the shoes of someone trying to come here from a less economically stable and more dangerous place. Of course I'd want to come here. That's not the point that people care to discuss, because the structural and cultural issues that have come about from Biden's policies take priority over the tiresome moral grandstanding.

Biden's government elected to not use violence to stop mass immigration which aligned with the progressive moral framing and aligned with our economic model that relies on cheap, exploitable labor. When his admin chose not to stop millions of people with force it had massive downstream effects. The "fundamentally moral" intentions behind that decision is no longer a political get out of jail free card, and that has to be demonstrated to the progressive and liberal-minded folk so that it can be made abundantly clear that this type of progressive immigration policy is a total nonstarter.

Certainly. But that does not change the fact that their belief in this moral imperative is the fundamental motivation of liberal policymakers. Ignoring this factor achieves nothing; it's on the same level as pro-choice activists who don't take pro-lifers' outrage about abortions-as-murder seriously and keep trying to second-guess their supposed true reasons for acting as they do.

For some maybe. For Democrats trying to win elections, it's a trend to latch onto to get additional votes.

It's ignoring in the sense that you will not convince the other side by using it as an argument, and that it doesn't carry the political weight that used to not even 2 years ago. It might drive your side to vote more, but it's a double-edged sword that also drives your political opponents to vote. Conservatives will have to contend with it, yes, and it cannot be completely ignored, but leaning into "morality" over practicality will not be a winning strategy for Democrats in the next election cycle now that we have examples of "moral" policy's impact on society.

He outlines how Democrats could frame a compelling message around corruption and abuse of power, citing Senator Jon Ossoff’s July speech as an example of effective messaging that ties everyday struggles (like high medical costs and housing insecurity) to elite corruption.

Oh, yes? Like the allegations about Nancy Pelosi and insider trading? When you start going on about elite corruption, you have two choices:

(1) Investigate the said corruption. This may mean you piss off your deep pocket donors, which means no money, which means oops we can't run the party.

(2) "Investigate" the said corruption, but don't do anything about it really. This means the voters now know, rather than suspect, you're a bunch of hypocrites and as bad as the other guys.

If Ezra is expecting Mr. Deeds to show up and clean house, he'll be a long time waiting.

Ezra Klein is a woke idiot who lied about Charles Murray to push blank slate liberalism and he did it knowingly, and not out of ignorance, because the narrative was more important than the truth.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=IeWMw2hb4gY&ab_channel=Motte%26Bailey

So why should we believe him now?

Edit: Tretiak beat me to the punch, but I directly linked to the podcast he mentioned. Take a listen. If Ezra Klein posted here, on the motte, with the same tone and argumentation he did on the podcast, he'd be permanently banned within the hour. Why should we listen to someone who would be just as obnoxious as Alexander Turok or BurdensomeCount?

This is mostly an attack on various people. Such things aren't explicitly banned, but they are heavily treading into waging the culture war. I was going to make this just a warning. But looking through your history its basically the only thing we warn/temp ban you about.

5 day ban. It will escalate quickly if see this again, we shouldn't have to ask you a half dozen times to follow a specific rule.

Is Count gone for good? I hated hating Turok but loved hating Count.

If BC had any shame he'd never post anywhere on the internet ever again after he posted such vulgar blood libel, but God preserve us, he will likely return.

I've reached a point in my development as a man that I can appreciate a truly excellent villain, and should consider his departure a great personal loss.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=IeWMw2hb4gY&ab_channel=Motte%26Bailey

The Intellectual Dark Web lives on in our memories. In case anyone else is curious here is the first CW thread top-level post on the discussion with Harris. Probably the first of several.

Ezra Klein is a woke idiot who lied about Charles Murray to push blank slate liberalism and he did it knowingly, and not out of ignorance, because the narrative was more important than the truth.

There's an argument to be had around the value of any given noble lie or paternalistic social engineering. Ezra Klein, however, is not the person to make these arguments, because he can't give much than an inch without falling into a crisis of dissonance.

Frankly I’m stunned that Ezra has ‘any’ audience at all. It’s even more concerning to me I live in a locality that’s colored by the mentality of his type of thinking. I understand the backdrop people like him are coming from, but he is a ‘horrible’ advocate for the cause. Sam could’ve had a much more sensible discussion about this with someone like Shaun. Ezra is too psychologically fragile and had a hard time stomaching and keeping down what he was hearing. He is not the guy for practically any subject out there.

I understand the backdrop people like him are coming from, but he is a ‘horrible’ advocate for the cause.

Is he? Refusing to engage with these claims is the cause. Giving them too much legitimacy would be the opposite of being a good advocate.

It's not an accident that the wonky side of the Left wing media system reacted much like the rest when this topic came up. The point of having wonks is so you can get some answer for how science can serve your values while drawing the line on what beliefs are worth taking seriously or investigating. So Vox will have Turkheimer on to both admit that IQ is correlated with X, Y and Z but also that anyone who suggests a gap with origins in genetics or one we can't easily change is suspect because of how far out ahead of their skis they are.

The point of Vox is that you don't need to consider Charles Murray because you already have the answers.

If Ezra wanted to refuse to engage the claims then he should’ve refused to appear on Sam’s podcast altogether. Agreeing to it and then looking like a fool trying to be obscurant over every point doesn’t only make you look disingenuous; it also makes you look like an idiot.

This isn’t an ongoing debate that’s being had behind closed doors in lab coats and under microscopes. What Ezra did was the equivalent of walking onto a debate stage and try to lecture an astronomer that the Earth is flat. Maybe he’ll end up appeasing everyone in his political circle who’s got blinders onto the world. To everyone else, he looked like a moron; because he was one.

I don’t know what anyone has to consult Murray over. Scholars like Richard Haier have already upheld his claims and have said Murray was being very conservative in presenting his findings. This says nothing of the idiots on the popular left circuit like Seder who contend Murray is a racist, while having never read his book. In fact, Seder hasn’t even read Murray’s Wikipedia page; if you think a man who married and had children with a one handed Thai Buddhist in a foreign country is a racist. You’ve exposed nothing but your own ignorance at that point. Most of his critics are idiots because they refuse to read or actually engage his arguments. Ironically, his conclusions are also very much in line with policy works like Ezra in the first place. It goes to show Ezra has likely never read a word of anything Murray ever wrote.

if you think a man who married and had children with a one handed Thai Buddhist in a foreign country is a racist. You’ve exposed nothing but your own ignorance at that point.

In fairness, there’s a non-negligible amount of genuine racists who include Asians alongside whites in the “civilized” category.

What Ezra did was the equivalent of walking onto a debate stage and try to lecture an astronomer that the Earth is flat. Maybe he’ll end up appeasing everyone in his political circle who’s got blinders onto the world. To everyone else, he looked like a moron; because he was one.

I wasn't making a moral defense of Klein, I think his behavior speaks for itself. But I think you're underselling just how many people have these same beliefs. Most people don't care and/or instinctively side with Klein (or know they should if they know what's good for them).

In this environment, this behavior can work or fill an important niche. Who is more likely to get a say in polite circles? Some Vox writer posting about an exciting study on some teaching intervention that showed IQ improvements or a more Murrayist take?

Ironically, his conclusions are also very much in line with policy works like Ezra in the first place. It goes to show Ezra has likely never read a word of anything Murray ever wrote.

I don't think you give Klein enough credit. He is a higher class of commentator than Seder. He reads. By his own account he has read and reviewed Murray, and at least knows Murray is for UBI:

The other thing you brought up his UBI work. The reason I bring this up is that, the reason Charles Murray’s work is problematic, is that he uses these arguments about IQ — and a lot of other arguments he makes about other things — to push these points into the public debate, where he is very, very, very influential. He’s not by any means a silenced actor in Washington. He gives Congressional testimony. He won the Bradley Prize in 2016 and got a $250,000 check for it. His book on UBI, it is completely of a piece with this. I reviewed that book when it came out. It’s an interesting book, people should read it, but it is a way of cutting social spending. According to Murray’s own numbers, he says it would cut social spending by a trillion dollars in 2020. To give you a sense of scale, Obamacare costs two trillion dollars over 10 years.

This is another book in a different way that is a huge argument for cutting social spending, which in part he justifies by saying, we are trying to redress racial inequality based on an idea that it is a product of American history, when in fact it is some combination of innate and environmental, but at any rate, it is not something we’re going to be able to change, and so we should stop trying, or at least stop trying in the way we have been.

Because Klein is cleverer than Seder he can see that Murray is offering a poisoned chalice. Vox is about enhancing the arguments of left-wingers so they can advance their agenda. Focusing on the short-term gain of having Republicans agree with you on one program when it undercuts the central pillars of that agenda would be deeply unwise. Social constructionism is far more useful to Klein than Murray's tactical (in his mind) retreat. Setting up a test that could obviate the need for any left-wing policy by attacking the basic assumptions is also incredibly unwise.

Klein doesn't want to cut social spending. Klein doesn't believe that such spending cannot solve persistent problems or that the government should accept that it can at best ameliorate some human capital gaps. Why would he want to? The alternate thesis is what allows his side to accrue power and, hopefully, fix problems. What's Vox's reason for being if the answer is that there's no clever move to be made, let's just stop people starving?

Harris understandably had no patience for engaging in the discussion given how the conversation started, but Klein basically states that not moving towards a more socialist and redistributive position when citing these facts is itself suspect:

This is something you brought up earlier when you brought up that quote from Murray about luck, and I think it’s an important conversation. I think that if you follow Murrayism on this, if you were doing it without the political commitments he brings to it, it actually takes you to a very radical and interesting place.

If you say that our IQ is genetic and environmental, but at any rate, it’s not our fault, because we don’t choose either one of those, and there’s not much we can do about it. Not just our IQ, but something you’ve said is that, you know, a lot of traits come down like this — the big five personality traits, determination. Look, you can connect genetic inheritance to divorce. I think it’s a .2 or .4 correlation. So, if you begin to believe that, actually you begin to ask the question of, should, do we deserve what we have? Should society be vastly more redistributed than it actually is? Should we be much less within this construct that what we’re getting, we’re getting because of hard work and determination and intelligence and the application of our talents? In fact, we need to move to something that is, I’m not literally advocating this, but more in the range of full socialism.

What I think is so interesting about the way he takes this debate — and I recognize this is not somewhere you took the debate, but I do think this is a useful thing to talk about — is that if you really did believe things immutable, if you really did believe that this was our inheritance both environmental and genetic and we can’t do much about it, then I think the implications of that are radical, and the implications aren’t that you take away help from people. It’s that you say pretty much what all of us has is primarily illegitimate. We didn’t do anything to earn it. I just happened to be born with the collection of talents that got me where I am. And as such, what we should spread around in society is much more vast.

Funnily enough, I don’t ever see people take that attitude on this. Again, the history of these ideas in America is they tend to be used to justify the status quo, not radically more generous versions of the status quo, but I do think that’s interesting, and I don’t understand why people don’t take that leap. I think that the implication of this is, it’s luck, and if you want to believe that — and, again, I don’t believe they’re immutable, I don’t think that’s what the evidence shows — but if you do believe they’re luck, I don’t think it takes you where he went in your conversation.

Believing in HBD is itself bad, but using it to cut state spending...beyond the pale.

I don’t know what anyone has to consult Murray over.

Murray seems to be the Bart Ehrman of intelligence research. Attacked because he's prominent, but there is also an incentive to make it a lot more about him than may be necessary, since it gives a certain view a convenient avatar to attack and to thus marginalize amongst your audience by proxy.

I wasn't making a moral defense of Klein, I think his behavior speaks for itself. But I think you're underselling just how many people have these same beliefs. Most people don't care and/or instinctively side with Klein (or know they should if they know what's good for them).

Virtually my entire critique of Ezra was the intellectual indefensibility of what he was saying. I wasn’t primarily talking about his moral characteristics either.

I’m actually very concerned about the number of people who think like Ezra does, because I live in an urban center that’s full of people as insane as he is.

In this environment, this behavior can work or fill an important niche. Who is more likely to get a say in polite circles? Some Vox writer posting about an exciting study on some teaching intervention that showed IQ improvements or a more Murrayist take?

Ezra would, sadly enough.

I don't think you give Klein enough credit. He is a higher class of commentator than Seder. He reads. By his own account he has read and reviewed Murray, and at least knows Murray is for UBI…

And that’s the sad part if people consider Ezra a cut above the rest, because his analysis is almost equally mediocre by comparison. If Ezra does read, he shows little in the way of his ability to comprehend and integrate what he’s read. And his appearance on Sam’s podcast in particular is but a small indication of that.

If Vox is trying to enhance the arguments of the left, then they’re incredibly bad at it. The best critique of Murray’s argument that could be characterized as ‘left-wing’ came from Chomsky in the appendix of The IQ Controversy which was published several decades ago. And it’s one that doesn’t begin with the premise of how butthurt you are over basic scientific facts. I suspect Sam had more than enough space to have a sensible discussion with Ezra about policy specifics, if only Ezra were able to get past the most basic hurdles in the argument; which he failed to do.

I don’t know how influential people like Murray are today. I suspect he’s hardly animating activity in the social sciences or having an analogous impact like the shadow of neoliberalism that Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys cast over our economic policy, which still rules the day, today. Maybe he’s inspired present day researchers like Razib Khan or others, but I don’t know.

I realize that I just duplicated your post - yeah, Ezra is a dumb policy wonk who is trying to pretend that he wasn't a fellow traveller of woke to push neoliberal policy. If he recommends anything, much like the anti-compass, we should do the opposite - because anything this smug prick recommends or advocates for is the the will of smuggest of LA radlibs.

he's like a less intelligent and more liberal and sanitized version of Matt Ygalsias

I understand the worry people like Ezra have. His appearance on the podcast was a horrible debate for him, but it was highly instructive for illustrating a similar view the left and the right both share. Ezra has a view of these topics that’s almost on par with the way the right-wing views the concept of a gateway drug.

Weed is an innocuous drug. We have known that chemically, medicinally and almost every other way you want to have it for a long time. So why do so many on the right remain so uptight about it even though society has become more acceptable of its use? Well because there’s at least one way a gateway drug retains a valid use as a concept. It’s proximity to everything else.

I knew a person once who wanted to open a dispensary in a state that had at that time fairly recently legalized recreational marijuana. And he was well positioned to do it. But after thinking over it for awhile he decided against it, because of the ‘type’ of clientele that’s mostly associated with smoking it. Yes, otherwise normal people also smoke weed, but we all know the popular images of the kind of people who use it. And those types of people do exist. In large numbers. And much of the time, those ‘are’ the kinds of people you’re dealing with.

But it goes even further than that and also puts you in proximity to other people. Hard drug users, or maybe not people who do hard drugs, but drug dealers who sell weed along with hard drugs. And that puts you in closer proximity if not outright in the same circle with those people. If you are a person who doesn’t want the risks associated with that kind of activity or it’s more than you want to think about from a business perspective as the person I was talking to, you’ll abandon the idea entirely just as he did.

Yes, of course IQ exists. Of course there are differences between people and populations. Just as there are height differences, skin tone differences, hair and eye color differences, the whole 9 yards. But these are all differences in a mundane sense and shouldn’t attract such significant attention to them that the KKK and every Neo-Nazi group closely follow your research activity and publication pipeline, and it places those people at the discussion table along with you; because these differences are truly inconsequential and meaningless. And yes, I don’t want those assholes at my table either.

Large swathes of my family are racially intermixed. Several cousins are half Hispanic. I have a red head cousin who’s been in a long-term relationship with a black man. When I was in high school I was in love with a black girl. But you can understand why the whole table becomes quiet and nervous if you bring up a topic like that, especially when large audiences are tuning in to see what you have to say. I think Ezra feels the same way. And I don’t blame him for it. But his approach for handling the matter is not one I would adopt. Sam was having a debate. Ezra was speaking to the mob.

The poisonous conception of the schoolmarmish imagination that ideas can be dangerous as drugs. That, for the good of people that certain ideas must be censored to prevent their 'radicalization' goes against liberalism and democracy.

Who, whom? Who are these exalted figures who get to determine what is and what is not permissible?

Trust the science, except when it goes against the narrative. Free speech and academic freedom, except when it upsets our deep-seated beliefs - that are not beliefs, but just moral decency.

I am tired of it all.

Weed is an innocuous drug. We have known that chemically, medicinally and almost every other way you want to have it for a long time.

Far from it. Plenty of people in psych wards would disagree strenuously with you.

I’m actually curious now. Got any stats and case studies on this?

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2424288/

This study says people who used weed prior to age 18 were 2.4 times more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia than those who hadn't, and rates scaled with heavier use:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2424288/

They also estimated that about 13% of all schizophrenia cases could be eliminated by eliminating cannabis usage.

You'd probably get similar numbers for tobacco use though -- I don't see anything there that establishes cause and effect?

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Huh. That’s interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Weed is an innocuous drug.

No it is not. Weed, unlike alcohol, has massive long term mental health consequences. Modern weed also isn't really a 'soft' drug; it's so potent that the ancestors would have recognized it as more like hashish.

Plus weed makes you lazy.

I was wondering when I would see someone make this comment.

(Not insulting you at all. But I knew it was coming. Lol.)

I mean, pot advocates never seem to address that weed isn't really a soft drug anymore; weed users are basically using hashish. Society harshly judges everclear drinkers in a way it doesn't for even straight whiskey drinkers.

I think that is more about the class signification than the percentage ABV. High proof whisky is seen as a premium product and the people who drink it as whisky connoisseurs.

You and I, I suspect have the same stance on this. I’m not a supporter of drug use and have never taken any drug in my life.

But on this particular point, you’re drawing up a distinction that isn’t relevant to what I’m pointing out. Is the problem ‘weed’ or weed smokers who are “basically using hashish?” I’m pretty judgmental in general of casual drinkers who help themselves on far too casually an occasion, never mind the scorn I have for truly intense drinkers. But there is a qualitative difference to be between comparison someone who picks up a joint and someone who picks up a container of everclear.

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I stopped listening to Ezra Klein ever since he appeared on Sam Harris’ podcast and looked like a complete moron.

Trump is a hiccup in our democracy. Until there comes a hard and fast dismantling of institutions, you can’t license the claim that he’s an authoritarian when the same system you approve of has also put all the candidates you’re palatable to in the same seat Trump is in right now.

That podcast episode kicked off the downward spiral of /r/SamHarris. It's also a great example of what reddit became across the entire site. The debate brought in tons of Klein apologists and progressives which turned the subreddit into a battleground. On one side you had liberals who simply accepted the available evidence (those siding with Harris), and on the other you had the anti-racists who alternated between the arguments of denying or questioning the data and labeling anyone who accepted it as racist (those siding with Klein). Boiled down, it was another example of secular evangelists spreading the framework of their religion: if data suggests uncomfortable conclusions about racial differences, the data is false and those who believe it are racist.

That debate and its aftermath had a significant impact on my perception of the social left. They weren't actually in favor of using objective truths to solve real world problems. They were only in favor of promoting specific moral "truths" while suppressing any evidence they deemed to be immoral.

That podcast episode kicked off the downward spiral of /r/SamHarris

Before that, the sub had a functional moratorium on all IQ topics on grounds of non-relevance to Sam Harris' work. After that...well, that went out the window and nothing good followed.

It really did seem to outrage people that a) it came up and b) we let the discussion go (I was a mod at the time). And those people never left and never got over Harris having the sheer gall.

But this wasn't the first place this happened. There really is something odd going on with reddit where a lot of subs end up degenerating into snark subs critical of the central figure.

That debate and its aftermath had a significant impact on my perception of the social left. They weren't actually in favor of using objective truths to solve real world problems. They were only in favor of promoting specific moral "truths" while suppressing any evidence they deemed to be immoral.

It was especially a blow because of who Ezra Klein was supposed to be. Vox was supposed to be the smart, wonky wing of the Democrat's base. You're supposed to be able to get the counter-intuitive take or someone chasing the data to the end. But, on this issue, they took the Rutherfordian line of "just don't worry about it" (at best).

Colors the whole thing.

we let the discussion go (I was a mod at the time)

Who were you?

But this wasn't the first place this happened. There really is something odd going on with reddit where a lot of subs end up degenerating into snark subs critical of the central figure.

Hm? It's a relatively common phenomenum in video game forums. Pretty typical tipping point culture.

Most fan groups have some fan distribution includes some balance of positive fans and disgruntled fans who more or less stay because being disgruntled becomes their hobby. Positive fans grow tired / bored with the content, while disgruntled fans grow larger as more people become disgrunted / have no where else to hang. Eventually, disgruntled fans hit a tipping poing towards becoming a decisive plurality as their toxicity starts to actively drive away positive fans, leaving a greater preponderance of disgruntled fans, making the forum a relatively toxic mess.

It's Vico's Barbarism of Reflection in action

I can understand the avoidance of IQ topics, given the incendiary nature of them, and to that extent I probably agree with Sam (and maybe Ezra?) that they probably shouldn't be so openly talked about. Too many bad actors.

Ezra just came off so slippery in a bad way in that exchange.

Harris criticized the Vox article that was written by another journalist. Klein then claimed he was editor-in-chief at the time, but didn’t assign or edit it, but that he stood by it, but that it’s ultimately on him as editor-in-chief, but that it was a good article, but that he can only speak from his perspective.

He also said:

"And by the way I’m not here to say you’re racist, I don’t think you are. We have not called you one." Of course, after that he went on to explain all the racially damaging things he thought Sam had done. To Ezra, I guess Sam was (is) effectively a racist, not an intentional racist. That was really the progressive argument in a nutshell for about 10 years.

"And by the way I’m not here to say you’re racist, I don’t think you are. We have not called you one." Of course, after that he went on to explain all the racially damaging things he thought Sam had done. To Ezra, I guess Sam was (is) effectively a racist, not an intentional racist. That was really the progressive argument in a nutshell for about 10 years.

Smearing someone as a useful idiot for racists at best then psychoanalyzing them for not taking it well...if we're talking about gall, that's up there.

This is one of the reasons I find it hard to be sympathetic now that the worm has turned and people are angry at having to share Twitter with people they think are too interested in the topic. People were absolutely brazen about being bad faith.

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