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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 22, 2025

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Once the doxxers are significantly deterred to the point the criminal behaviour is drastically reduced, and the doxing threat against ICE agents for doing their jobs is removed, then ICE agents can go maskless again.

So there's a heckler's veto on good police procedure?

My philosophical problem with ICE agents masking, dressing plainly, and not providing identification is that I'm watching these videos of raids at stoplights and I'm thinking to myself: How do I go about making the decision to shoot or not to shoot a group of masked men attacking my car at a stoplight? Because the whole visual reads to me carjacking/kidnapping/robbery, and I'd be reaching for a weapon, and I'd feel that the entire history of American self-defense jurisprudence backs me up on this one.

Now am I vanishingly unlikely to be the target of an ICE raid? Sure. But procedurally the existence of a situation where the authorities are trying to arrest me, and the situation is such that I would be legally justified in shooting them, is anathema to law and order, even if the combination of events is rare.

If they're unmasked and you run into them attacking you at a stoplight, exactly how is seeing their faces going to help? Are you going to search their faces online, confirm that they're in some police database, and decide not to shoot them, all while they're attacking you?

Seeing their faces is useless until later, at which point you've already had to decide whether or not to shoot them.

Kidnappers are much more likely to wear masks, as they don't want to be seen and identified, so not wearing masks provides evidence that they're legit. Wearing uniforms and/or providing badges and names is more evidence against being miscreants. Obviously none of that is perfect, but the current videos provide zero evidence against the carjacking hypothesis, I just have to decide not to shoot.

Now am I vanishingly unlikely to be the target of an ICE raid? Sure.

As long as they're not working off of bad intel or a warrant or other paperwork with typos.

Or if I'm giving one of my Venezuelan teammates a ride after jiu jitsu, or one of my wife's law school classmates is at my house, or the guys who come with my drywall contractor who don't speak English and I don't ask questions about...

It's unlikely but it's bound to happen to somebody.

So there's a heckler's veto on good police procedure?

A hecklers veto has your heckler causing problems with X in order to prevent X. I don't think people opposed to ICE are trying to prevent ICE agents from exposing their faces.

In this case, a heckler's veto is being exercised on good police procedure. You're saying I can't advocate for the basic libertarian principle that agents of the state have to identify themselves until every single person in the united states agrees to treat them well.

Same issue. This is not a heckler's veto because the hecklers don't want to prevent them from identifying themselves.

A hecklers veto encourages hecklers by responding to their disruption by doing things that they want to happen. Responding to hecklers by doing things that they don't want to happen doesn't have similar problems, and is not a heckler's veto.

By your reasoning, having the police arrest a criminal is a heckler's veto on not arresting.

That's an unpleasant problem, but it's also a fully generalized one.

I'm against no knock raids for the same reason. There should never be a situation where the boundaries of acceptable self defense and the boundaries of acceptable law enforcement activity intersect. That venn diagram should be two circles.

That's a very strong point I hadn't considered in quite those terms.