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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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people like @HlynkaCG who have a mental block that disallows them to understand that the dice are loaded from the very start and classical liberalism is just a slightly roundabout way for the 5% of natural masters to exploit the to exploit the 95% of natural slaves without even the responsibility of having to care for them*

In my defense or perhaps to my detriment, its not a "mental block" so much as i was never particularly "liberal" to begin with except in the loosest sense of the term as it might have been used 300 years ago. IE being a sincere republican rather than an absolute monarchist.

What if slavery taints the soul of the slaver just as much if not more than it taints the soul of the slave?

What if contra Locke, Rousseau, Mills, Rawls, and our own Scott Alexander, there is nothing "rational" about believing in "self interest" or civilization, nor that these ideals are somehow "the default"? What if niceness community and civilization are a conscious choice that each individual must make on their own?