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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28115 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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Society - even liberal society - is governed by countless rules, minor and major, designed to prevent some parties taking advantage of others even if it is "consensual". You can't pay someone $2 an hour even if they consent, you can't sign up to 30 years of indentured servitude even if you consent, you can't practice as a self-taught surgeon even if all your patients consent. You can't engage in duels or cannibalism even if both parties consent. So we agree that clearly 'consent' isn't everything; we're not (for the most part) ancaps. Some things are social negatives, and it is understood that tolerating them is bad for society, period.

Do you believe there's any liberal society anywhere that will ever have the moral confidence and courage to declare certain sexual acts to be criminal even if everyone involved is a consenting adult? (The examples you mentioned are technically against the law.) After all, surely any hope of "reversing" the sexual revolution, if that is even possible, is moot if you don't actually believe that.

Incest is already illegal in many Western countries, not too long ago so was homosexuality.

I think possibilities for radical cultural change are always underestimated.

Homosexuality was illegal in the US for ages, as was miscegenation. You can be a liberal society with doublethink characteristics, just like how the People's Republic of China has ruthless working conditions for a workers state, just like how the US espouses anti-racism but there are few consequences for anti-white rhetoric. Bernie Sanders "If you're white you don't know how it feels to be poor" for instance.

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