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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31065 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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I was ok with "safe, legal and rare"

I mean, we were never okay with that. So it seems like this is less about "mask off" and more that we just started winning for once, and then people who don't like that noticed and decided to react accordingly.

So from our perspective, we can either (1) do nothing and lose every battle, or (2) do something and win some battles but cause people who disagree with us to push back and potentially lose some or all of what we won.

2 seems strictly optimal in comparison with 1.

Ya I do not see the masks coming off it’s just that they won. And Roe let’s be honest was a constitutional issue which a lot of scholars on the left disagreeing with the reasoning. That wasn’t legislation.

If anything I think the Pro-life people have moderated since Roe ended. From memory the legislation they went for at the federal level was closer to the moderates position of having federal rules similar to the rules in Europe. I think the left just played the politics well to make you think they went extreme - when a lot of GOP politicians moderated their public positions after.

The story of the parent poster does not sound like it is adequately summarised by "people who disagree with us push back"; these people directionally agreed with you, up until the point where you won too much and it went too far for them. Being able to offer a compromise and stand by it, rather than always trying to seize a bit more, seems to be an ability that is tragically lost on all sides of the culture war.

these people directionally agreed with you, up until the point where you won too much and it went too far for them.

But this person says that "I want abortion available as an option". We don't. To the extent this is directional agreement, it seems quite weak and not really worth preserving at the expense of giving up on our actual policy goals. I guess you could say we might be alienating people who are willing to agree to a 20 week abortion ban or something, but not an earlier one, and sure, that's possible, but I'd just say the terms of that compromise are unacceptable to me so that's okay.

So, fair, my initial statement might have been a bit of an oversimplification.

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