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 -
The right to peacefully protest is a direct Constitutional right. A direct right. I think there's reasonable room to disagree about, and interesting discussion to be had, regarding the line between obstruction and protest. From that framing, obviously protesting/obstructing is risky, sure, but that's an official state-approved exercise of rights as much as free speech is or as much as the right to a jury trial. There's considerable meat to the argument that a right left unexercised is effectively a dead right.
But can we agree that sabotaging ICE arrests and barricading streets falls well on the wrong side of that line? Peaceful protest is when you see how many people you can get to go to the town square and wave a sign to make it clear they're unhappy.
Of course, for all I know you may be right about the legalities of it. I personally think that the American Constitution is a document considerably flawed by being written by people who had persuaded themselves that it was appropriate to wage violent revolution over being asked to pay a couple of pennies on the pound of tax to repay the money that had been spent defending their homes from invasion. American philosophy of rights and liberty has been flawed from inception by its inability to agree on when you should sit down and shut up vs. when you should erupt and slaughter all the people down the road who you don't like and take their stuff, which is why e.g. Americans also have a direct constitutional right to free speech surrounded by a penumbra of all the things you aren't allowed to say and when you aren't allowed to say them.
That is not to say that American ideas have nothing to give to the world, far from it, but American constitutionality seems like Christianity to me in that it is an essentially apocalyptic doctrine which has survived and thrived for hundreds of years only because it gets interpreted so loosely.
It's my understanding that absent actually aiding a specific crime, it's perfectly legal albeit obnoxious to whistle and make people aware of police/ICE presence (lookout for a robbery no but generally warning people about ICE or a speed trap is fine) and is not sabotaging an arrest. Although you may get arrested anyways despite it being plainly unlawful for ICE to do so (personally I think the incentive structure regarding illegal arrests is pretty damn flawed but that's an issue for another day). Blocking a street on the other hand, against a specific patrol, is obstruction, yes. Blocking a street more generically is nominally a traffic crime and therefore not ICE jurisdiction, though obviously the line between those two is pretty weak. Blocking a street as part of a larger group is a different kind of discussion that has to do with "authorized" vs "unauthorized" protests and generally you can't march on a street that normally has traffic unless you have a permit.
It is historically true that the American rationale for when revolution is justified vs unjustified is a little muddled, although the Declaration of Independence attempts a standard. I mean, we did have a civil war over more or less that same issue. However speaking on the Constitution more broadly, despite some flaws I find it hard to argue too hard against it seeing as it's still the oldest democracy in the world. Norway is the second oldest and only dates to 1814 and even then it and many others typically went through far more extreme changes over the years to the core structure than ours did. The American Constitution notably stands virtually unchanged in its core formulation (the most significant change, in the long view, being merely senators being popularly elected). The rest were details, or adding in new rights, and not a fundamental reshaping of the balance of power or the structure of the checks and balances! This is quite rare. IIRC Belgium has a better claim and even that is almost 50 years later (amusingly they did somewhat the opposite than we did about 15 years ago, changing their senate from direct election to an assortment of regional parliaments).
I suppose it's fair to think that the loose interpretation helped its longevity, but to me rather it's that the checks and balances were generally done well, that the amendment process usually worked all right, and thus it's still a success I attribute to strength of structure, not looseness of structure. And although history is not a great experimental proving ground, that longevity is pretty decent evidence that at least something has worked. A lot of Americans at least are often surprised at how many democracies have had to toss out or totally rejigger their constitutions much more recently than you'd naively expect.
Blocking the road for ICE vehicles, on the other hand, absolutely is.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Time, place, and manner restrictions, applied in a viewpoint-neutral manner, have been repeatedly held to be fully compliant with the First Amendment. The First Amendment doesn't give you the right to scream directly in someone's face, if that would be disorderly conduct in any other circumstance.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link