site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   14003 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This community is a spinoff of a spinoff of a rationalist community, there are is no question there are a lot of Zionist Jews here.

The MAGA types that would be here are more likely to be of the variety highly skeptical of the war (the low-IQ MAGA rank-and-file that supports the war at like 90%+ are not represented here much as far as I can tell). High-IQ Iran War supporters here, very likely to be Jews. Not to say there also aren't skeptical Jews as well.

But I don't get why people would want a location marker to correlate people's opinions on this question. If you really wanted signal you would want a different kind of profile badge that would not be appropriate for this forum.

It's interesting to see the parts of the American conservative coalition that are represented even after we account for tastes in intellectualism(like duh, megachurch Evangelicals do not want to engage in philosophical political discussion. That's not to say they're stupid, but they simply have different tastes). We have tradcaths but no orthodox Jews and I've never seen a confessional Lutheran. We have libertarian techbros and NrX types but few of the deep red RFK fan lifestyle skeptics- you know, the real life Ron Swanson types. Really very few crunchycons at all. None of the black dissidents you see hanging around conservative intellectual circles but lots of white nationalists. We've had conservative housewives in the past, but I think all of our women are working right now.

I've never seen a confessional Lutheran.

Hello.

like duh, megachurch Evangelicals do not want to engage in philosophical political discussion.

Speak for yourself! Some Evangelicals get C.S. Lewis-Pilled.

Are you a "megachurch" evangelical, though?

Eh. Depends on your definition. I’ve been at small churches and bigger churches over the years. Current church is on the big side, but I don’t know if it’s “mega”. I’m not sure how many members we have exactly, but there are two different service times and several hundred people at each service. Plus there’s a “satellite campus” on the other side of town, and another one up in the valley.

Have any of your churches ever utilized a smoke machine during a worship service?

Wait, is this "smoke machine as in theater" or would a Catholic censer count?

Genuinely "smoke machine as in theater." I would also count it as a yes if any of his churches have ever conducted a men's conference featuring monster trucks.

confessional Lutheran

What does that mean, in this context?

A Lutheran belonging to a body which split from the main Lutheran body in his country over the belief that that body doesn’t embrace the Augsburg confession anymore. In the USA the main such body would be the Missouri synod, very common in intellectual conservative circles and big enough to be locally dominant in some areas- but all the self proclaimed confessional Protestants here seem to be reformed.

I actually had to look up the Lutheran church I grew up attending... Evangelical Lutheran, apparently (which is, confusingly enough, not "evangelical"?)

All I know is, the pastor was insistent that nobody bring lutefisk to the smorgasbord, which always disappointed my grandmother. Dunno where that falls ecumenically.

In Lutheran circles, "evangelical" means "believes in the gospel according to Luther's understanding of the gospel," or in other words believe in salvation by faith alone. Luther originally wanted his followers to be called "evangelicals" becaue he believed that his understanding of the gospel, evangelion, was the most important element of his theology. By this definition virtually all protestants are "evangelicals," roughly speaking, and it has that meaning in some of the northern European countries where Lutheranism became the normative version of Protestantism.

The term has come to mean different things in the British and US context because of the history of great revivals with the goal of convincing mass numbers of people to have an emotional experience of surrender to the divine, which was central to their understanding of the gospel in a way that Lutherans/Calvinists/Catholics generally connected to sacraments rather than conversion experiences. Evangelicals (in that sense) also strongly defined themselves as popular preachers who wanted to make large numbers of people have a conversion experience, and felt that naming themselves after the evangelion was worthwhile because that was their message. You could make the argument that Anglo-American evangelicals were also evangelicals in the sense Luther would have meant it, but they just shouted it really, really loudly.

In that sense, Methodism, Pentecostalism, and most forms of the Baptists had major evangelical influences, and you can still find some Anglicans in the UK (a few) and the US (a few more) who would identify with the evangelical movement.

The "Lutheran" term came about because the common Catholic custom was to call a heresy by the name of its inventor, as in Arianism, Hussitism, Calvinism, and also the old-fashioned Christian term for Islam that hydro likes to use, Mohammedanism.

I guess the lesson is that the terms people call themselves rarely denote something concrete. "Democrat" and "Republican?" Their dispute isn't really over whether the US should be a democracy or a republic, though some particularly confused and pedantic Republicans like to claim "the us isn't a democracy, it's a republic!" like those aren't compatible, and the US is of course a Federal Democratic Republic and those terms lent their names to the first American party system (Federalists vs Democratic-Republicans) and to the current party system, while "Democratic Republic" on its own means communist, and "The Democratic Republic of America" is basically the "Man in the High Castle" of conservative fear fantasies. We live in a confusing world, and whales are fish.

Presumably it means, “Lutheran, with conservative theology,” or in other words a Lutheran who believes in the real presence as a literal metaphysical belief and takes the Augsburg confession as a literal statement of truth about reality.

Though I’m not sure it’s true we don’t have any. I know we have some confessional Protestants who have positive views of Lutheran scholasticism. Presumably at least one of those is a Lutheran.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats