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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 20, 2025

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Yes. There are many kinds of insanity about in the modern world. Unconditional and generous public welfare is one, equality of the sexes is another, and one-vote-per-head is certainly a third. I'm not saying that the right thing (though perhaps the right-wing thing!) to do would be to simply roll back the clock, but the systems and procedures that Western societies have settled on as they are are clearly mere stop-gap measures, oversimplifications, that have been unfortunately sanctified. Much to our current and greater future misery.

Well the founding fathers for instance were very against direct democracy, which is why they favored a constitutional republic as a kind of government by middle man. They originally wanted to limit political participation to land owners or stakeholders in society. I’m not at all against that way of thinking. And I’ve seen variants of it in today’s world. I’ve seen the young take shots at the old over climate change saying you don’t care about the policies you’re enacting because you’ll be dead long before you see the consequences of it. I’ve seen others say you shouldn’t be allowed to run for office unless you’re married with a certain amount of children. Otherwise how are you going to convince me you have a future stake in society?

The thinking was actually a subplot in Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. It was the difference he drew between a citizen and a civilian. A citizen was someone who joined the military and fought for their society and earned his right of full benefit and participation in the community. A civilian was someone who didn’t and had no right. It was actually very controversial when the book came out and Heinlein was called a fascist thinker over it. He was the furthest thing from a fascist though. In his own life he was a libertarian socialist and had very anarchistic sympathies.