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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   26257 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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What, just Charles Murray and this board? Doesn't feel plausible.

  • -21

I'm currently at a fairly conservative educational institution. I spend practically all my time around intelligent young conservatives.

I'd be very cautious about bringing up anything HBD-ish to others (to date, I don't think I have). Racism is not viewed favorably, and I'd have to be pretty cautious to avoid pattern-matching onto being a racist. Keep in mind that this caution also that this is despite everyone in sight being in favor of free speech. I suppose this might not be perfectly representative, because most in my social circles are more religious. But you really can't just think that because people are conservative or Republican, they're therefore acquainted with or in favor of Charles Murray. There is one person who told me that he likes to read Steve Sailer (I assume there are some others, but I don't know them), one person who I know wishes the south won the civil war (but is against slavery), and that's about the extent of things that could be classified as some variety of racism that I am aware of.

I do expect it to rise in commonality a little—the popularity of Substack along with Musk purchasing twitter should, I imagine, raise the prevalence of HBD-ish ideas, by putting them in places where people will actually read them. Not sure how I feel about that—it's probably good for us not to be under the delusion that differences are still due to oppression etc. But it may well lead to a revival of more distasteful garden-variety racism that has been largely removed from the united states for the last few decades, which is unfortunate.

To be fair, I forgot to mention that some people do make racist jokes.

There are varying degrees of racist jokes, and there are varying degrees to which different races are allowed to be made fun of, e.g.. What are you considering "racist jokes" here?

I don't even remember, and can't generate a suitable one off the top of my head, but someone said something that prompted me to add that.

Why do you think Amy Coney Barrett adopted Haitian children if there was no fixation on race? There is obviously a virtue signaling element to that kind of decision, which is tied to the racial dynamics at play. She is leaning into those dynamics rather than rejecting them.

You can have virtue signaling without race.

I agree, though I don’t think it’s mostly about virtue signaling to the left. It also seems (admittedly I have no firsthand experience) that a lot of those southern megachurches have a big fixation on fundraising for Africa, African famines and so on, and about Haiti. They have church groups that travel to these places, they spend a lot of money on political activity in these places. The left is often complaining about alleged American Christian involvement in eg. Uganda’s laws on homosexuality. Traditional Catholics also seem to hold Haiti as especially important (I suppose unsurprising given it’s a Catholic country), ACB’s adoption decision clearly wasn’t random.

Traditional Catholics also seem to hold Haiti as especially important

No we don't. Traditional Catholics are regularly in mainland Latin America(Columbia, Peru, Mexico, etc) doing stuff but rarely discuss Haiti.

It also seems (admittedly I have no firsthand experience) that a lot of those southern megachurches have a big fixation on fundraising for Africa, African famines and so on, and about Haiti.

It's bang for your buck. Africa is a big place and you'll see the focus is on "Christian" sub-Saharan Africa because the countries are pretty open to interventions. Same with Papua New Guinea as apposed to Western New Guinea. Also map interventions that were former British Colonies because then you need less language skills. Haiti does speak French but it's also rather close.

Boehner has said that his daughters are Democrats. No idea about the other two.

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