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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 2026

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It's always fun to hypothesise about all the things you could build after cutting down a (Schelling/Chesterton) fence, but the thing with a fence is that it holds back people on both sides. Do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that will blow once "strip citizenship from someone on the enemy team" is on the political menu?

The fence is down. If we can grant citizenship to infinity foreigners, then the blowing wind is sending them back.

I don't believe any law or norm or principle or logical consistency would stop the extremists on the other side from trying to denaturalize me if they thought they could get away with it.

I don't believe any law or norm or principle or logical consistency would stop the extremists on the other side from trying to denaturalize me if they thought they could get away with it.

Of course, but if you successfully denaturalize their allies, surely they will be more likely to think that they can get away with denaturalizing you.

Your argumentation is one of many that roughly has the shape of "the other party has already escalated maximally, there is nothing to lose from escalating back". I see this deployed left and right in internal culture wars, and even in real some-holds-barred wars like Ukraine/Russia. Yet, in each of those, it always turns out the other side did actually have more to escalate back with, and the cycle continues. Do you actually think/feel that you have nothing to lose, in your current situation?

The issue I have with this is the Chesterton Fence you propose has not historically existed. Remigration has happened many times in history. It’s often happened more often during war times but it has happened a lot in history. The Reconquista of Spain occurred. Haiti did it. Israel is basically doing it today. It was debated as a solution posts civil war. White Flight in America was basically forced migration.

Usually populations combining are fairly rare and only happen during conquests. Mass migration has only really happened to western civilizations over the last 30 years. Every other mass migration like Spanish to Americas or Normans to England happened during war times.

Remigration has happened many times in history.

Well okay, by the same standard extermination has happened many times in history too. Ancient Rome did it, Russia did it, Germany did it.

Why not just take all the leftists into a room somewhere and shoot them in the back of the head? Why not just go full Sulla on anyone who stands against your political objectives?

Pinochet is one of my favorite politicians so I have no fundamental issue with doing that when necessary, though in a way that limits life losts. It’s a reasonable response to present things like communism.

Which I will remind you was backed by the US and the government was being ran by the University of Chicago at the time.

Would you say Trump sending death squads to abduct every Democrat voter for summary execution would be a reasonable response to the risk of mass immigration ruining the country?

Sorry, there's a big fence here called "natural born citizen". They would have to be crazy to think about tearing it down.

there is nothing to lose from escalating back

It's not an escalation. It's an undoing of a previous escalation. A deescalation, even.

Do you actually think/feel that you have nothing to lose, in your current situation?

No, I think I have everything to lose. Which is why I want to win.

And again, beating this same drum for the thousandth time, this sort of argument only ever goes one way. No one even bothers trying this sort of argumentation on leftists because everyone knows they don't give a fuck. Mainstream, high level elected Democrats support open borders, mass replacement migration, packing the Supreme Court, abolishing the filibuster and their more extreme flanks are talking about abolishing the Senate.

It is an absurdity to look at that and then tut-tut about conservatives wanting to send back ethno-narcissists and communists who got a piece of paper two years ago.

It's literally just colonialism.

Just as orders from some distant capital give the white man power to displace the Indian, now that same distant capital give the Indian power to displace the white man.

We do this with the excuse, both times, that we're civilizing the wastes. The natives are Naziracists Savages; their ways of life must be destroyed to make way for ours.

So we'll stoke the blood feud, and pretend that the native is the Savage. We will send him to residential schools to educate him in our way. We will take his children away if he refuses to adopt our religion (Safety is our goddess- there's no Creator, no afterlife). And though there was a mechanism for us to get along, we will destroy it simply by making it illegal to enforce the law against its destruction.

We do this because we don't want to bother getting the fuck along. They are Savages, we (and they) believe we will win any war, and so they shall accept this eventual death or face immediate death.

No one even bothers trying this sort of argumentation on leftists because everyone knows they don't give a fuck.

I will point out that those who were raised Blue were raised to give a fuck. "We on the left do not blacklist," etc.

(There is a perspective that might say: "It is those who were raised as, what we were raised to consider, 'whackadoo fundies,' who left 'fundieism' and identified as joining the left, who went on to apply the attitudes learned by being raised as 'fundies,' toward their new political positions. And since their, often 'Quiverfull,' parents had way more kids than our parents (who had never even heard of 'Quiverfull' and we only learned about it from adults 'joining us' who had been raised that way), their numbers totally swamped ours and the 'left' that we were raised in is no more.")

(Which kind of...illustrates cultural shift as a result of uncontrolled migration. Even though it had been welcomed by the "victims" because "we need all the numbers we can get.")

Meanwhile I grew up during a time this kind of thing was happening to Unitarian Universalists where I lived. "We're losing numbers, let's welcome all those 'Bridget Loves Bernie,' and similar Catholic-Protestant, marriages etc....wait what's happening to our religion..."

Could summarize as, the UUs (I endorse this) and "the left" (maybe also) thought they were getting new full members who wanted to assimilate and would take direction, and then were stunned to find that the new members...well...just didn't. To grab a metaphor from my long-gone geeky adolescence, I guess you could say the UUs (and "the left"?) thought they were offering "free as in speech" (:wince: or...software) and the new members thought, or acted as if, they were being offered "free as in beer." (Newcomers interpreted certain things as the "pure licentiousness" their cultures of origin had perceived them as, but that was never what was meant by the original adherents; but with the newcomers' numbers so great, that turned out not to matter.)

I will point out that those who were raised Blue were raised to give a fuck. "We on the left do not blacklist," etc.

Sure they do. Do you think any of those good decent Blues would fund a film by Mel Gibson? They just won't blacklist communists, aka traitors trying to sell us out to an omnicidal tyranny.

They would have to be crazy to think about tearing it down.

They are crazy, and they will if they can. The attempt to flood the country with unwanted paper citizens is an attempt to do exactly this, in fact. The insistence that Mahmood who broke into the country a few years ago is EXACTLY as German as you is an attempt to dilute the concept out of existence. Equating blood citizenship and paper citizenship serves only to devalue the former.

Moreover, though, yes I don't think deporting their pets would cause any noticeable change in their plans.