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 -
Gotcha. I do think the answer is purely political, though. It might be smart to enshrine such a consideration into the law (it might not, too, but it might!). But as a general rule legislatures do not pass laws because it is smart to do so. Legislatures pass laws for all kinds of reasons, but the main one is "because certain people asked for it," where "certain people" may be constituents, or special interest groups, or friends and family, or Hollywood, or...
There are other reasons, of course, but the point is that there are many good ideas we do not adopt simply because no one stands to personally benefit sufficiently that there is what is sometimes called the "political will" to do it. Sometimes lawyers get together and do the meta-legislation of crafting proposals with the ostensible purpose of improving the operation of the legal system. The most famous of these are probably the "uniform code" recommendations crafted by the Uniform Law Commission, but even these often end up being quite political in their development and adoption.
As a purely practical matter, I suppose it might also seem like a waste of time to craft pre-emptive hypotheticals when the point of a lawyer is often to draw distinctions between like cases. Since hypothesis space is infinite and no two cases are ever exactly alike (this is the challenge often posed by reliance on "precedent"), it's not at all clear that crafting pre-emptive hypotheticals would actually help anything.
I certainly share the sense of frustration from good ideas not being implemented because nobody stands to gain.
It seems to like it would at least help:
In the hypothetical world where the 2nd Amendment came with test cases where it would fail, say- "Arms or munitions of any nature capable of killing >10 people in 1 minute", it seems to me like it would end the faffing about on whether AR-15s should be banned (I'm not saying they should be, just that in this case it would be much clearer, even if it lead to arguments of whether an AR-15 can do that).
As long as it sets a clear intent and guidelines to follow, it ought to be a positive change outside degenerate situations like "the rules are made up and nothing matters", and while some naked lawfare approaches that today, we're not quite there yet.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link