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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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This is a wonderfully pithy explanation. And what you say applies not just to contemporary Western morality, but to American morality from its founding. America was always a forward-looking country - a new society, a better society, a society that smiled on all men in their individual pursuits of happiness

Please consider this response to consist of the shortest acceptable and most polite way to plainly speak my truth of: 'Demonstrably horseshit. You are wrong. I won't go so far as to accuse you of lying but you are clearly pursuing a different agenda than the people you are so radically misrepresenting'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization_Act_of_1790

This post and this one are unnecessarily antagonistic, and we're particularly not fond of this type of post where you basically say "I know the rules don't allow me to call you a lying liar, but I really want you to understand that if I were allowed to call you a lying liar I'd be calling you a lying liar right now."

Disagree with people without testing the boundaries of how insulting you can get away with being.

"I know the rules don't allow me to call you a lying liar, but I really want you to understand that if I were allowed to call you a lying liar I'd be calling you a lying liar right now."

And if I had said that I would understand your point. But what I said was 'please consider this...the shortest acceptable...way to speak my truth...I won't...accuse you of lying but you are clearly pursuing a different agenda...'

That wasn't insulting or 'testing boundaries' - that was speaking plainly while respecting boundaries. Sometimes people say things that aren't true for all kinds of reasons. Having a rule against saying 'I don't believe you' is good for encouraging productive exchanges. But you're enforcing a rule you just made up against pointing out even the possibility of disingenuity, which would only be good for encouraging people to be disingenuous.

As for the other comment (for reference: "Double posting but your response seemed to be, frankly, in bad faith. By all means put up a quote from a prominent early 20th century socialist that purports it's a magnetic force for every lugnut, troglodyte, hardheaded, menial laboring, 9 to 5, factory man in England or at least some data on party registration by demography. "But ackshually it was working class" has negative probative value. Better not to have responded at all.")

Please, and I'm asking sincerely, explain what about this comment was antagonistic, much less unnecessarily so. "But ackshually" wasn't loving but is a widely known enough meme to reasonably be considered playful. And whether I was responding to a comment that was completely true or completely false - it was completely unsupported by evidence. "Everyone knows you're wrong because most communists were working class" was a contribution with negative probative value and it would have been better not to respond at all. I'm still eager to hear how my response was antagonistic (especially 'unnecessarily'?) - and the fact the other guy 'broke the rules' doesn't mean I didn't - but there are quite explicitly rules about low-effort participation, providing evidence, assuming consensus, and writing like everyone is reading. The undermining of the legitimate authority of those rules by my interlocutor was the premise of my response.

NB The guy did go on to provide some interesting sources that I'm still enjoying and others now can as well. So frankly your intervention wasn't just untimely it's trying to fix something that wasn't broke.