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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25738 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 20, 2025

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I think French would take two tacks here. Firstly, he'd argue that you underestimate what is and remains possible for Christians in the United States.

Well, I made my argument without reference to pragmatics of the current culture war, so this seems neither here nor there, but either way my point is that French's pointing to the cost is highly selective. Christians are already systemically excluded from public spaces, and are having hostile ideas actively promoted by the means of their own taxpayer dollars. If French wants to argue that access to public libraries in California outweighs the benefits of having a truly Christian education system in conservative pockets, he's welcome to make the case, but I need to see it before responding to it.

Secondly, he'd challenge you as to what your alternative is. Fine, abandon the idea of viewpoint neutrality, and perhaps even the whole idea of classical liberalism. What then? What do you want to build instead?

This might vary from country to country, but for the west, something like Orban's "illiberal democracy" is probably the best option, or from what few glimpses I saw of him, Bukele seems to have a good vision for his country as well.

For what it's worth I think that final crack about "assuming he doesn't know perfectly well" is conspiratorial and beneath you.

What?! How dare you! I consider myself to be the conspiracy theorist of the forum, have you not seen my flair?!

more free association

...are you sure? I don't follow him at all, but I didn't have him pegged as one of those anti-CRA guys.

In what way is he standing in the way of anyone, much less other Christians?

In that he's an influential speaker arguing for staying the course, when we're obviously headed for an iceberg.

If you'll pardon the slur, it does not surprise me that Ahmari is, by disposition, more of a bootlicker than French. Ahmari is coming from traditions that accept the right and even the duty of religious authorities to order society in a top-down way for the common good; French is coming from a tradition that sees that vision as prone to corrupt both true religion and civic society.

Asking me to pardon that is a bit of a tall order, to be honest (you were saying something about things being beneath me?), but aside from the insult I think this is an astute observation. Technically I'm in neither camp, but as the joke goes, I'm a Catholic-atheist, and I think Ahmari is just straightforwardly correct here. The Protestant approach relies on overwhelming levels of values uniformity and values adherence, and between mass migration and secularization, we are seeing the levels of both falling off a cliff.

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