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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025

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Those who say life is worth living at any price have already written for themselves an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person they will not betray to stay alive. (…) But that is not the general thought of the Western world today. Safety uber alles, and the state to make sure it is "unsafe" in a large way to violate that in a big way.

I would dispute that state-mandated safetyism should be construed as a craven commitment to self-preservation. Not for nothing is it called the nanny-state - it is an essentially altruistic impulse, or to pick a more negative word, it's patronizing in the truest sense. The bureaucrats who make the rules and the lobbyists who campaign for them are not thinking of their own lives - they're getting high on the belief that they are saving other people's lives, the lives of the poor, stupid, reckless children called human beings, who cannot be trusted to seek what's good for them.

I would dispute that state-mandated safetyism should be construed as a craven commitment to self-preservation.

It is the worship of Safety.

the lives of the poor, stupid, reckless children called human beings, who cannot be trusted to seek what's good for them

Thus they center themselves on themselves and worship themselves as the source of that good.
As the source of preservation and sustainment ("they'd be dead if it weren't for me").
As a reflection of Holy Safety herself.