site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The original intention of the whole Bill of Rights was that it was a limitation on the Federal government only. For SCOTUS to interfere in the internal affairs of a state in the name of enforcing the federal Bill of Rights would have been an unacceptable abridgement of state sovereignty according to both the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists.

I think the preambulatory clause of the 2nd amendment has something to do with the intended meaning - it would be odd if it was a pure rhetorical flourish on the part of the 1st Congress. The obvious interpretation of "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State" is that the drafters of the 2nd amendment expected someone to be regulating the militia, and given the structure of the original constitution, the power to regulate the militia is shared between Congress and the states, and founding-era practice was that the power retained by the states included powers that the modern 2nd amendment movement would prefer the states not to have.

Part of the problem here is that there isn't a standard originalist theory of how the Bill of Rights became incorporated against the States. The relevant original intent is the original intent of the framers and ratifiers of the 14th amendment, and this is hard to work out because the Jim Crow-era SCOTUS rendered the Privileges and Immunities clause nugatory in a way which was almost certainly not compatible with the intent of the Reconstruction Congress. In practice originalist thought cashes out as "the 1860s Congress intended to reach back in time and impose a 1790s understanding of the Bill of Rights on the States" which usually leads to coherent law even if it doesn't make sense as political history. But it doesn't give a clear answer in cases where the 1790's understanding of the Bill of Rights doesn't make sense without federalism, like the Establishment clause, or the carefully negotiated compromise about who controlled the militia. Local byelaws against going armed in urban areas were a lot rarer in 1790s America than in the UK (where they were ubiquitous) but nobody at the time thought they were constitutionally problematic (except in Vermont, which had a much broader RKBA clause in its early state constitution than the other states), ditto state-level bans on gun ownership by free blacks if you want a less happy precedent.

The other problem is that handguns that actually worked were not available at the time of the founding, so applying the 1790's understanding of the RKBA to the most important questions in modern gun policy (which are largely about routine concealed carry of handguns) involves somewhat strained hypotheticals.

The relevant original intent is the original intent of the framers and ratifiers of the 14th amendment, and this is hard to work out because the Jim Crow-era SCOTUS rendered the Privileges and Immunities clause nugatory in a way which was almost certainly not compatible with the intent of the Reconstruction Congress.

There are some law review articles arguing why Slaughterhouse was correctly decided, which even if not persuasive, marshal some interesting evidence against the now-common position that Slaughterhouse was beyond wrong.

Rehabilitating the Slaughterhouse Cases by Maltz
Privileges or Immunities by Hamburger
The Fourteenth Amendment and the Privileges and Immunities of American Citizenship by Lash (book, not article)