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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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If you consider children to be actual people with rights, then you reject the fundamental right of the parent to mold them into whatever they please.

Forget trans, every cultural standard that removes agency from children is up for review for exclusion from the eschaton.

Parents as the only role model and as an absolute force in a child's life is a single point of failure, at best it's a benevolent dictatorship and at worst its tyranny.

If you consider children to be actual people with rights, then you reject the fundamental right of the parent to mold them into whatever they please.

I find that framing disingenuous. If you take away the children from their parents, because you don't like the way they're raising them, you're not respecting the child's rights and actual personhood, you're merely transferring the right to mold them on to a bunch of bureaucrats.

It's funny how the "nature vs. nurture" stuff flips political valence when gay/trans issues come along. The right is skeptical of the state's ability to improve test scores and career outcomes for women and (non-asian) minorities but thinks the state is quite capable of convincing people to cut off their own genitals. The left thinks that representation and role models are hugely important in convincing women and minorities to enter male-dominated career paths, but can't possibly influence kids gender or sexual identity.

The right is skeptical of the state's ability to improve test scores and career outcomes for women and (non-asian) minorities but thinks the state is quite capable of convincing people to cut off their own genitals.

Is this not just the empirical reality we observe? Black test scores remain low despite decades of effort and millions of dollars thrown at the problem, but the incidence rate of people cutting off their own genitals has skyrocketed in the last 10 years.

Yes, and you can explain that as either a) the government is really bad at getting black kids to study and really good at convincing them to chop off their genitals or b) the state isn't actually very influential over either and culture/genetics is the driving force in both cases.

Or the government isn't magic. They can only perform the possible.

Getting black kids to want to perform better, possible.

Getting kids to want to cut their dicks off, possible.

Getting black kids to actually perform better, not possible.

I think it's possible. It just requires indoctrinating them into the culture which The Experts (TM) currently consider "white supremacist". And this is not something that will be done, especially as making black kids perform better would mean also making them and their kid middle class, with middle class voting patterns. And who needs that trouble? Certainly not people who are now in power in places where there are a lot of black kids. They already have the votes locked in, thankyouverymuch, and they don't need to mess with a working system.

I don't know that the "high-low coalition vs. the middle" concept applies to your assertion, though. Surely the counterargument is that black people and families will be loyal to the party whose policies gave their children better opportunities, i.e. delivering tangible progress?

I don't know. I suppose if I was an East Coast machine politician who was never in any real danger of losing to an R candidate, I like to think I'd have enough electoral free reign to do what I thought would objectively improve things for my constituents.

Surely the counterargument is that black people and families will be loyal to the party whose policies gave their children better opportunities, i.e. delivering tangible progress?

It's hard to reason about current parties while assuming they would behave in a way that current parties would never do. If Democrats would implement "western culture" values, they wouldn't be Democrats anymore - at least not the Democrats we have known for 2 or 3 generations. Would prospective black middle class stay with them then? Who knows, that's a huge unknown. But it is known that black permanent welfare class reliably votes for current Democrats, so why risk it? It's not like they'd get tired of being permanent welfare class and revolt - if they were capable of figuring this out, that'd happen decades ago. Right now they are all in on state-sanctioned racism as a way out of the hole. Which would work about as great as projects worked as a solution for housing problem.

I'd have enough electoral free reign to do what I thought would objectively improve things for my constituents.

You could. Or you could do things that ensure your party is in power for another generation and you personally and everybody you choose to become multimillionaires and generally get near-royalty status, including being virtually untouchable to law enforcement (if you keep within certain - very wide - bounds and do not get into a fight with a more powerful royalty). Sure, there might be saints among them, but even if those pop out, people surrounding them would explain to them quickly what are the costs of rocking the boat.