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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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Minnesota doesn’t get to decide to take all of the benefits of membership in the United States and then just blatantly ignore our laws. They doubly don’t get to do that after facilitating the theft of billions of dollars in federal aid.

well I don't care about minnesota, but in my state we need our illegals to pick crops. It's really that simple. If Trump actually deports them all it will be a major economic blow, and we have the right to maintain our way of life and our livelihoods. The US is meant to be a loose confederation of states that each run themselves how they see fit.

  • -19

Look if you want to go back to pre antebellum understanding of the constitution and change the United States is to are then sure. Let’s do it. But that applies for a helluva lot more than immigration. We need to get rid of the income tax. And social security. And Medicare and Medicaid. Need to throw out a bunch if new deal regulations as well.

pre antebellum

Not good enough, we need to go pro-pre-ante-pen-bellum

Ha fair point. That’s what I get for posting quickly in the AM

To your point, though, I unironically want to repeal the 17th Amendment and go back to having Senators be appointed by the state legislatures, as specified in Article I, Section 3. If individual state legislatures choose to devolve this power to their respective electorates directly, that is their absolute right under the 10th Amendment—and otherwise, if the voters really want a say in their state’s Senators, then they are more than welcome to vote the bums out (of the state legislature)

A Senate, If You Can Keep It and Two Amendments on the Senate would be a good read for you if you have not seen it yet.

That is quite the incredible read. Thanks!

I actually quite like the concept of the solution, but he also admits in later posts that it's just not going to work. I'd probably agree that the two biggest problems are even explaining it to people and Goodhart's law on the algo. Still, the conceptualization of the problem and the broad principles guiding our search for a solution are more spot on than most treatments I've seen.

Shame that it's buried in a gigantic cluster of a thread on yet another silly, tragic, scissor shooting. I'd almost just collapsed the whole thread a few times, but I'm glad I managed to catch this. I'm sure I'll be toying with it in my mind for quite a while to come.

Oh sorry I linked to the wrong article, here is Two Amendments on the Senate, where he tries to fix up his amendment so that it does not rely on FORTRAN at least: https://decivitate.jamesjheaney.com/p/two-amendments-on-the-senate @stuckinbathroom so you see it.

Maybe I will write a top level post so everyone sees it. Not really culture war in itself but maybe I can find an angle to give it a personal spin.

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