This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Granted. It would be weird if a moral framework never influenced how people vote.
However, there are different stages.
The religion teaches tenets (love thy neighbor, blood for the blood god, etc) and leaves it to the individual member of how to interpret them in the voting booth.
The leaders of the religion routinely endorse political candidates, and their followers mostly vote for them.
A religion or groups of religions form a large voting block.
Religious organizations are a load-bearing part of the countries power structure. (Think medieval Europe, Iran, Taliban).
It took me a while to parse that sentence, because I took "liberalism" as a founding principle of the US, not as a group of political ideologies such as democratic socialism or social justice progressivism.
My reply is that SJP is just a political ideology. If its proponents do not meddle with politics, there is no point to it at all. And of course that means that it attracts plenty of sociopaths who play status games. But they have literally nothing worth protecting by keeping out of politics.
By contrast, the founders of the US had experienced life under a state religion, and they knew that this was not what they wanted. I would guess that their thought process went something like this:
The tenets of a religion being twisted under the pressure from realpolitik the way the SCOTUS has twisted the text of the constitution (e.g. commerce clause, Roe) is not something I would wish on my worst enemy.
If you look at Christianity from the standpoint of Secular Humanism, it is also just an ideology as any other. Christianity is a just group of people who meet on various councils, put together some philosophical texts etc. What is a difference between Christians and secular humanists themselves - who also go around on meetings, put together things like humanist manifesto etc? Or socialists, who gather around communities, discuss things every 5 years as part of socialist international and so forth?
And of course secularists have a lot of things worth protecting by keeping out of politics - like their moral status where they feel as if they have the high ground from which they can criticize everybody else. Things like running secular communist experiment #45 with another disastrous result will only discredit beautiful ideas behind, that may work in smaller communities. So all the arguments that you use when supposedly "protecting" Christians by banning them from attaining political power also work for secularists.
Christianity survived 2000 years of tenets twisting by everybody including bishops and popes. Don't worry, Christians will be fine.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link