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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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https://apple.news/APEuOPHP2TWqeUTR_h8QypA

So the Republican speaker of the house has decided to open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden’s business dealings with hunter. I have serious doubts that this will go very far as democrats still control the senate. This looks like an attempt to stir up the base for re-election season.

I personally see this as a big distraction as we have a lot of very serious problems that need to be addressed. BRICs, Taiwan, Ukraine, inflation, and

Ugh, I know “Twitter isn’t real life” is commonly used to refer to liberals but this feels very much like a “Twitter isn’t real life” moment for republicans. Total waste of time.

How about increasing funding for asylum adjudication, so that the wait for adjudication is 6 months, not several years? That will pretty much eliminate the border issue, since it will massively decrease the incentive to enter the country and give asylum a shot. That would have bipartisan support, especially from people like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who for all intents and purposes really control what passes the Senate.

How about a law to preserve the substance of the Pico plurality decision, which is probably no longer good law, to prevent red schools from removing ideas they don't like, and blue states from doing the same?

How about a law to preserve the substance of the Pico plurality decision, which is probably no longer good law, to prevent red schools from removing ideas they don't like, and blue states from doing the same?

That sounds like a horrible idea. I can see why blues would go along with it on the assumption it will hurt reds more, but why would anyone else agree to it?

  1. I don't understand why you frame it as which side gets to hurt the other more, as opposed to both sides benefiting from ensuring that their ideas are not censored.
  2. Have you not heard of cancel culture, and the like? Do you think that only conservatives try to censor ideas that they don't like? A law that prevents censorship benefits all sides.

Because realistically the way that law would play out is that school libraries have to keep the actual porn that got stocked because it’s gay, but academic cancel culture is unaffected.

I’m not just nybblerposting here- academic cancel culture is mostly done through pressuring academics to resign. Actual use of hard power to reshape anything to do with schools is extremely red coded.

Except that my suggestion was re codifying Pico, which does not prevent the removal of material because it includes sex, or profanity, or violence, etc. It only apples to removal of books based "upon disagreement with constitutionally protected ideas in those books, or upon a desire on petitioners' part to impose upon the students of the [school] a political orthodoxy to which petitioners and their constituents adhered."

So, absent Pico, blue schools will almost certainly remove books that are supposedly "racist."