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 -
Popping the filter bubble and the sanctity of life.
This Tuesday I was presented with a piece of Trivia that brought me up short.
My initial reaction was to quite literally exclaim "bullshit!" but having looked into it, there does appear to be a case. According to the Sixth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada (which is currently the most recent report available) Canadian doctors euthanized 16,499 individuals in 2024, an increase of 7.5% over the 15,343 euthanized in 2023. Meanwhile The Trace a website maintained by the Gun Control advocacy organization Everytown USA maintains that there were 14,651 instances of Homicide by Gunshot in 2025. While this number does not include self-inflicted gunshots (IE Suicides) it does include an estimated 1,200 cases where the shooting was likely justified (IE suspects being shot by police or by would-be victims) and at least 2 instances of execution by firing squad.
Upon review of those numbers and their associated trend-lines where instances of euthanasia in Canada have increased with each consecutive year since it was legalized, while homicide in the US has been trending downward for the last 5 years from it's Pandemic-era peak it actually seems likely to me that more people are killed by doctors in Canada than are killed by guns in the US. Not "per capita" but by raw quantity (16 thousand people and change versus 14 thousand and change).
Considering the above in the context of another story that came across my feed a couple weeks ago. A Ghoulish Proposal Gets a Prestige Endorsement, it seems to me that there is a concerted effort on the part of certain factions to commodify and devalue Human life. See this story from the New York Times last year Organ Donors are too Rare we Need a New Definition of Death. I expect the media to assure me that that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy announcing that the Network for Hope (an organ procurement non-profit serving Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio) having had their certification revoked on the basis of credible claims that many donors were not legally dead at the time their organs were harvested is completely unrelated.
On a slightly different track, back when Harris was running for president there was this "ridiculous claim" that the Left wanted to legalize Abortion up to the moment of crowning, but just this Monday, Massachusetts became the 10th state in the union to do just that.
As in my prior "Popping filter bubbles" posts I don't feel like any of these things really warrant a post on their own, but when taken together they illustrate a trend, and I find myself lacking the vocabulary to describe my growing sense of unease with where this one seems to be going.
I'm yet to see anyone try to reconcile "it is ghoulish to euthanise grandma" and "it is ghoulish to keep grandma on abysmal QALY life support that costs $100,000s for 2 more decades". Perhaps we should reintroduce death by exposure. If it's hunger and the elements killing grandma, then no one is staining their hands with sin, right?
The "ghoulish proposal" is in this case is doing away with the Dead Donor Rule and expanding MAID explicitly as a means of increasing access to donor organs.
I thought the post was talking about people stuck in comas on indefinite life support, or simply put "vegetables". Everything I'd heard on this forum before would suggest that people were mostly against spending doctor-hours and money on such hopeless and fruitless cases.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's hard to reconcile on purity grounds, which 'ghoulish' evokes. But it's not hard on more practical grounds, like "It's bad to euthanise terminally ill grandma, because that sets us on a slippery slope where we're euthanizing Mom because she's got killer migraines and Sis because feeling depressed"
(all the MAID horror stories I've seen are women, but that may just be reporting bias; almost no one cares if a mostly healthy guy offs himself, with help or without)
Thinking about that slippery slope and the hard cases that introduce it, maybe the structure we want is that mercy killing should be illegal and prosecuted by the legal system, but it always remains a possibility for individual action. Someone knows their parent is in incredible pain and wants to die: it's then their prerogative to perform the killing themselves, taking the moral weight of the act onto themselves. It's a decision that's incredibly weighty and a lot to ask of someone, but that's exactly what we want anyway instead of offloading it onto society and the bureaucratic apparatuses to make it routine. And if the killing is discovered with lots of evidence pointing to the person who did it, it's prosecutable.
It's then up to a jury to decide legal guilt, and they can judge the "cancer patient in extreme pain somehow receives an OD of a painkiller" and the "20 year old TikToker with a terminal case of POTS is killed" differently.
This sort of thing is a cry for tyranny. Legal things should be legal, not illegal but overlooked if the right people find it convenient to do so.
You misread me: I said that mercy killing should be illegal and prosecuted. But, if sometimes illegal things are still the moral thing, someone can choose to do the illegal thing and bear the potential consequences if they're certain it's still right. I don't think the person is expected or required to make it easy for the government to prosecute them for the crime, but the government should earnestly do so with the tools at its disposal.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If the option of euthanizing Mom for killer migraines wasn't available, would actual migraine treatment be more available?
Personally I'm in favor of actually fighting against encroachment on the cases which you think are too far, rather than relying on outraged Christian pro-life gesticulating and "slippery slope" blanket denial then acting like Surprised Pikachu when that wasn't enough.
Well friend, as soon as people step up to fight for better medical care, then we outraged Christians won't be carrying it all on our own and the particular level of moral purity you want for the cause will be better calibrated to your needs and preferences.
More options
Context Copy link
The point of "slippery slope" is this doesn't work. Once the principle has been yielded, you can fight all you want but you're going to slip down the slope.
Yes, that's what those advocating that some particular change is a slippery slope say.
"We've already established that you're a whore, now we're just haggling over the price".
Give in on "well okay some lives are not worth living" and you have no defence when the inch becomes a foot, then a yard, then a mile, each time the argument for extension is "but you already agreed we could do this, we just need a teeny little bit more".
The defense is "I am not giving more than an inch because I prefer it that way". It doesn't have to be based on principles. In fact principled arguments are the brittle ones as we can see here in the first place - they hold until they don't, and then suddenly the conservative, lacking a branch to grab on and having no practice in digging his heels in in any arbitrary spot, "has no defense".
Instead of staking everything on being or not being a whore, perhaps some people should learn to haggle.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
A terminally ill grandma being euthanised is a tragedy, a healthy young man offing himself is a statistic—just like if he got forced off to war and blown up, perished in a workplace accident, or got bustled to death by random street crime.
Perhaps the way to square the circle is to frame it as an accessibility question for war volunteers, not euthanasia. Why should the terminally ill grandma or the depressed TikToker be denied their opportunity to die to defend Democracy in Ukraine, if they want to? If need be, we can roll their wheelchair straight into the flight path of a Russian drone, and (at $300 surcharge) even let them hold a rifle in their last moments for the aesthetics. Maybe the Russians can be persuaded to play along and provide a preagreed time and place in return for partial sanctions relief.
(I don't know what percentage of pro-lifers also has a categorical revulsion towards making women fight in a war, but surely it is much less than 100?)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link