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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

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Do me a favor and don’t accuse me of supporting things for reasons I have clearly expressed are NOT the reason and that I am acting in good faith. My beliefs here are not due to “tribal conflict”. I actually believe homosexuality is bad for the individual and a net negative to the commons.

I don’t support firing people from government jobs for being gay/pregnant. Though religious institutions should have a choice.

I do though have no problem with schools choosing what books to give to students. End of the day they costs money and someone has to choose what to buy. Someone has to tell children what to read. But they can buy whatever they want on Amazon. Or we can go 100% voucher system.

I am also making no claims that the culture war doesn’t exists. It has to exists. All societies have cultures and they have a huge influence on the wealth of the nation and the happiness of the civilization.

99% of the population still agrees we shouldn’t have an elementary school showing a pornographic video of a 40 year old man having sex with a 10 year and how the student should handle that encounter. All societies have cultural lines. Greece taught their young men how to terrorize their local peasantry so civilization has had all sorts of norms.

I don't think you are acting in bad faith, I think you sincerely believe these things. I don't think you are waging the culture war here. This gets at something more high level, that I am probably doing a bad job at communicating it.

Right wingers and Progressives make about 90% of the same arguments on why their morality is the better one, the structure is the same, the goal is the same, the specific details are just different. Like the serial numbers are filed off. You both want to save "the innocent" particularly other people's "innocent". And it makes no difference whether those people want to be saved by y'all or not. But there is a massive blind spot, you both can't see how the same your argument is, and you both think your the right ones, both using the same exact reasoning for it too. This is a lack of cognitive empathy, the ability to take yourself out of your own mind and put yourself in someone else's, to see the world from their viewpoint. And its made more extreme by how similar your arguments are, this isn't some alien x human difference. This is tribalism, the inability to put yourself in the outgroup's shoes.

But the most galling part isn't that you are tribal, it's that you can't account for it. It doesn't compute. It's an epistemological arrogance.

I can recognize that you and I have different beliefs, I can empathize with why you have those beliefs(at a high level, I don't personally know you), and I can still view you as a human-agent. Do I think my beliefs would be better for you, of course, who doesn't think that. Do I feel the need to save you from your poor beliefs? Your children from the poor beliefs of their parents? Absolutely not, you are your own person, your own community, and I respect the freedom and human dignity for y'all to chart your own course. I can also recognize that my beliefs might not be the truly correct ones, and thus the existence of other communities with other beliefs is a net good.

So then why do you feel you should force your beliefs on others? To save them, when they don't want you to, when they don't see it as saving them. Leave them alone. You might believe that homosexuality is bad for the individual, and negative for the commons. Then leave, form your own commons, create your own community, and if it truly is so, then your community will flourish and the Progs will wither until eventually there is one left. Tend to your own flock and let prog's tend to theirs.

The failure to do so, is that tribal instinct. The primal, childish drive to have your own way, because your way is the only way. It is the vice of lesser men. And I pity the fool who would boast of winning their small battle while damning our species to hell.

Are you a Consequentialist or a Deontologist? Christians are almost always required to be the latter so stop trying to use the arguments of the former. If I showed you the reduction in mental illness and increase in happiness flowed from prog values you would not change your beliefs, so stop trying to use that as your argument. It's disingenuous.

I stand by this, and you avoided answering it.

I think you are still giving lower standing to my words than they deserve. You are trying to apply mistake theory. That there is a logically mistake or lack of empathy.

Just because two arguments have the same structure does not mean both are wrong. Or that in the case of a culture war either side is wrong. As the old saying goes politics is downstream of culture. Culture does have a big effect on a society or civilization. I saw an interesting chart the other day on Twitter and it showed America being 3 civilizations in a 100 years - Orthodox Jews, Amish, and Latter Day Saints. That is what happens under the current dominant culture. An entire civilization will basically be wiped out due to homosexuality and the collapse in tfr.

When culture has consequences it is not mistake theory. Its is conflict theory. So yes I believe in the common good which means my disagreements with the other side are not mistake theory. It’s conflict. Conflict happens. It is not a bad thing.