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 -
This is going too far into culture-warring and boo-outgrouping. When you are describing your outgroup and what they "clearly" do or don't care about, if you can't describe them in terms they would recognize or agree with, you are not describing, you are projecting. "Left-wingers clearly don't care about child abuse (because they disagree with me politically)" is just a cheap accusation that "My enemies are evil and lie about not being evil."
You may actually believe that-- we've had this conversation many times, with many people, and clearly many people do sincerely believe that left-wingers are uniformly evil and hate children. I'm sure it is not news to you that many left-wingers think similarly vile things about right-wingers. And if a left-winger came here and said "Right-wingers clearly don't care about laws or democracy or child-rape because (insert a random scrape of social media)," I am sure you'd expect us to tell him that such generalizations are not acceptable here. Even if you really believe your enemies are all cartoon villains.
You're already on our radar as a likely troll and/or alt, so if you're testing the waters, consider them tested, and you as well.
I'm just making inferences from facts.
Saying 'pest-control operators do not care about the well-being of rodents or they wouldn't be laying traps to kill them' is not boo-outgrouping.
In my opinion, killing somebody or supporting their killing is a demonstration that you do not care about their well-being. Maybe I'm wrong, some ecological arguments could be made along the lines of prey/predator balance, maybe we do need to kill [some of] the humans to solve climate change...
This is something that can be debated.
'Children are precious and should be protected' is actually a political value that is not universal. Even to this day we have people protesting for example Columbus Day, because they disagree that the human sacrifice stopping was good, actually.
Or people supporting an American woman who confessed to killing her own children.
I'm not strawmanning people as evil, this is real beliefs that they tell us about.
Some people do want to kill children in the womb, this is a fact, and my claim is that this means they do not care for their well-being.
Well if somebody wants to come up and claim that Ramaswamy and his supporters support child-rape because of his recent campaign statements, substantiating the argument with evidence, shouldn't they be able to do so?
How should I present my arguments in a way that is palatable to you?
Read the rules. I will not indulge your bad faith justifications.
I have. I don't understand what is bad faith in saying that people who support the killing of children, human offspring, human beings, in at least some circumstances (before birth) are demonstrably not maximally concerned about the well-being of children. What qualifiers do I need to add to that statement not to make it offensive to you?
There is clearly a segment of the population which prioritizes the well-being or perhaps the mental health of a woman over that of her children in the womb for abortion supporters, or outside of the womb for Lindsay Clancy supporters.
Most people who are pro-abortion have a definition of 'child' that does include bouncing three-year-olds and does not include balls of 256 totipotent cells. I feel sure you know this. You can disapprove all you like, but deducing that therefore abortionists are a-ok with the murder or neglect of three-year-olds is logically fallacious (and wrong). Thus, the requirement to be able to state somebody else's beliefs in terms they'd accept, because if you can do that then you won't make fallacious arguments like
because you know that being pro-abortion does not have anything to do with whether you are for brutalising little children, and neither does relaxing 'standards of child safety'. There are the rare mentally ill person who genuinely doesn't give a damn about children, or sadistically wants children to suffer, but they're rare as hell.
Who is maximally concerned about the well-being of children? Me? You? There are other things in the world that get traded off against the well-being of children: time, cost, convenience, the richness of life for those over 8 years old, potentially the right of refugees not to be tortured to death in their home countries depending on your immigration views. That doesn't mean you have no concern for child protection.
Many pro-abortion people support abortion way after the 24 weeks limit of viability outside the womb.
There is not much practical difference between some types of abortions and going into a NICU ward and hacking premies with a scalpel.
Euphemism for cultures that practice child marriage or sex slavery, genital mutilation, slavery in general... These are the cultures open-borders types love to import into Western countries, therefore casting doubt that they want to improve the well-being of children in the country, as immigrants do not immediately abandon cultural habits upon crossing the border.
Only 4-5% of Britons think abortion should be extended beyond the current 24 weeks limit according to Pew surveys.
YouGov found that 19% of Americans felt abortion should be illegal at all ages, 9% felt that it should be legal beyond 27 weeks, and the remaining 73% of Americans felt that abortion became morally impermissible at some time between 0 weeks and 27 weeks. So that's 7 out of 8 pro-abortionists opposed.
Responses fluctate depending on exactly how you word the question, but Gallup put 13% of people thought third-trimester abortion should be legal (remember that's out of the 80% who are okay with abortion in general). That rose to 20% in 2022, almost certainly because of Roe vs. Wade making the issue salient and tribal, again out of 80% who are broadly comfortable with some level of abortion. A supermajority of pro-abortion voters continue to oppose it.
All of this is before you start distinguishing 'I don't think this should be illegal, there are times when it might be appropriate' to 'I think that people should kill pre-term babies for fun'.
There's just no way you can get from this to 'most people are fine with children dying'.
Pro-refugee open-borders types overwhelmingly think that these are libels that almost never happen, and to the extent that they do happen, will stop happening with some education. Again, you simply cannot get from "I think we need to take in people who are desperately poor, suffering, and often persecuted by their government; it would be terrible if one of them did something nasty to a child but we can't let millions of people suffer just in case one of them does something bad," to "I'm basically okay with children being raped and enslaved, who needs Child Services?".
Well I don't want to call you a liar but since you're here typing on a keyboard instead of rescuing orphans in some war-torn country somewhere, I believe that on some level you are fine with children dying.
That does not mean that you personally do the killing yourself, or even tolerate witnessing it.
Regarding your equivocation on what exactly pro-abortion people support, if you support abortion in the US, you effectively support Planned Parenthood and this is an organization that effectively pays people who deliberately kill babies that would live outside of the womb.
There is evidence of this. Being milquetoast about it does not change the reality of voting for people who subsidize Planned Parenthood or donating to it.
This is similar to the gish-gallop of the pro-trans people who won't acknowledge the harm done to teenagers with sterilizing hormones or unnecessary surgeries.
We all are doing that in some way. The best we can do is to work toward suppressing these things. Our governments are just as effective at stopping child abuse as they are at stopping school shootings or stopping teenagers from smoking the Devil's lettuce.
Maybe if you had Bukele, Duterte or Lee Kuan Yew in charge.
Those weasel words are doing an awful lot of work. In reality, as you know perfectly well, I am not keen on children dying and it is perfectly possible to support abortion in the US without supporting late-term abortions. A supermajority of your fellow citizens do.
I gave you facts about what pro-abortion people support. You don't like those facts, and they don't support your case, but that is not my problem.
I think that the person accusing people of supporting sexual slavery and mutilation of children if they allow immigration from the Middle East, and supporting child-murder if they don't support an absolute ban on abortion, should show a little self-awareness before accusing other people of bad argumentative practices.
If you want to argue that we should close down ineffective government departments, be my guest. I'm pretty sure we have most of the same political opinions, but frankly your arguments for them leave much to be desired.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link