site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36339 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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.

14
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Don't sleep on this excellent Caplan piece. The man is a national treasure.

In "Lawsuits are the Hitman of the State," Caplan makes the case that the Texas "Heartbeat Act" is functionally equivalent to workplace discrimination laws that punish racist or sexist remarks.

(One thing I would be interested to see further discussion from Caplan on is the development of the idea that having a "job" is a "right," but he doesn't go into that in this piece. Basically, the Constitution is a document of enumerated powers, meaning the federal government can't--in theory--do anything the Constitution doesn't explicitly allow it to do. But the judicially-crafted breadth of the Fourteenth Amendment, combined with loose interpretation of the Commerce and Tax-and-Spend clauses, metastasized through the 20th century into today's rather grabby American legal system. This has given rise to the idea that you haven't just got a right to your own labor, but that you have a right to personally profit from other people's capital, at their expense, even if you contribute nothing of value to the enterprise.)

Something I really like about Caplan is how concise he manages to be while making absolutely cutting points:

The government starts with the blatantly illegal goal of banning “bigots from expressing their opinions in a way that abuses or offends their co-workers.” Then instead of respecting those limits, the government’s judicial branch gets creative: “Murder’s illegal? Fine, we’ll hire hitmen instead.” By affirming liability, it dangles piles of cash in front of potential plaintiffs to terrorize employers into banning what the government, legally, must allow.

Precedent on what counts as "government action" is remarkably unhelpful in understanding these things. Georgia v. McCollum (1992) is all about how a defendant in voir dire acts as an organ of the state when they select their own jury, and therefore are forbidden from considering race when seeking to exclude potential jurors. This, even though in virtually every other regard, as Justice O'Connor then noted, "our [past] decisions specifically establish that criminal defendants and their lawyers are not government actors when they perform traditional trial functions." Whether any particular action counts as "government action" proscribed by the Fourteenth Amendment does not seem to depend at all on who actually took the action, in other words, but only on how the Court wants the case to come out.

So I think Caplan is dead on, here--the Civil Rights movement basically shredded any kind of principled interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, in pursuit of socially-engineered results.

Civil rights wasn’t just a change in the 14th amendment. It basically was a new constitution. So many items (either explicitly or implicitly) under the CRA blatantly contradict the constitution (eg freedom of association, contract clause, 14th amendment as you note). CRA also dramatically expanded the scope of the executive and heavily reduced the scope of the State’s powers.

I can only think of the NRA and possibly the 17th amendment which committed such violence to the constitutional scheme.

I can only think of the NRA and possibly the 17th amendment which committed such violence to the constitutional scheme.

Not Marbury v. Madison? (Kidding, kind of.)

But relatedly, the Civil Rights Act was just the legislative prong; I would argue that the Warren court overall did far greater violence to American liberty than any specific act of Congress. In particular, "one man one vote" via Baker v. Carr (1962) and Reynolds v. Sims (1964) stripped "protected minority" status from rural Americans, in effect ensuring that the United States would eventually follow the same trajectory as every other urban-centered empire in history. When your cities are packed with low-agency wards of the state who can vote themselves unlimited quantities of free grain, keeping the lights on becomes an increasingly fraught undertaking.

stripped "protected minority" status from rural Americans

That is one way to put it. But in 1960, the twenty-eighth district of the CA Senate, made up of Alpine, Mono, and Inyo Counties, had a total population of fifteen thousand people. The thirty-eighth district, Los Angeles County, had a population over 6,000,000. Is there some other "protected minority" that is given veto power over state legislation?

Is there some other "protected minority" that is given veto power over state legislation?

That's Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence in a nutshell.

Then I assume you have an example? Because the case law on redistricting certainly doesn't say that.

The case law on redistricting studiously avoids recognizing that the problem with "one man, one vote" is exactly the problem the Framers recognized when reaching the Great Compromise. Urban and rural populations have different interests. Majority rule is mob rule. Protecting minority interests by creating a bicameral legislature with separate apportionment rules, instituting the electoral college, implementing an independent judiciary, etc. are all moves aimed at preventing "one man, one vote" from being the law of the land.

Then I assume you have an example?

Every single "strict scrutiny" case overturning state legislation grounded in a "suspect classification" is a concrete and often explicit example of a protected minority being given veto power over state legislation.

Then it sounds like you don't have an example, because that is nothing like what was happening in CA. You are advocating for giving rural voters veto power over ALL legislation, not the tiny minority of legislation that intentionally discriminates against them, as is the case re the equal protection cases to which you refer.

Then it sounds like you don't have an example

I just gave you all the examples. I can't tell whether you're being deliberately obtuse in hopes of setting some rhetorical trap, or whether I have mistakenly attributed to you a substantial knowledge of the law that you don't actually possess. (For some reason I thought you were a lawyer, but now I'm thinking I must be mistaken about that. If so, my apologies!)

You are advocating for giving rural voters veto power over ALL legislation, not the tiny minority of legislation that intentionally discriminates against them

What reason would they have to use a veto power on anything else?

Or maybe more importantly--why are you advocating for rural voters to never have a veto over ANY legislation, even legislation that intentionally discriminates against them? Because that is clearly the result of "one man, one vote."

More comments

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats