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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   7843 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026

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upturn the rules based international order

Can we at least do away with this cliche? It's not a thing any more.

Nobody ever explained what the rules are, in this rules based order. New rules could be invented on the fly, like 'responsibility to protect', various police actions or authorized uses of force. Not authorized by the UNSC but by the US president... just like the rest of great power politics throughout human history, where rules were drawn up by the strong.

This is a game everyone can play and indeed everyone is playing it. Iran is making a new rules based order in the straits of Hormuz.

In Britain a similar story has been repeated, wherein government hesitation to pursue an outlawing of unconstitutional parties like Reform and Restore in spite of their unconstitutionality necessarily depriving them of the protections of assembly, since there is no democracy outside the nation state which is the guarantor of freedoms and rights for people, and necessarily that seeking it’s abolition are (morally but not necessarily legally) outside it’s protections.

Also, this sentence is far too long and ungrammatical, can you at least make it easier to read?

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